Blues began with enslaved African peoples' work songs in the cotton fields of the Deep South of America. The Slave Narrative of Mr. Sam Polite, given at 93 years of age, chronicles that life. It was written on St. Helena, a cotton producing Sea Island in the Carolinas, where Mr. Polite was born into slavery. The Sea Island slaves were cut off from the mainland, there were no bridges and they had no boats so the musical traditions were locked in.

"Slabe wuk till daak on Sattidy jest lak any udder day but on Sunday slabe dont wuk en can visit back and fort on de plantations. I wuk in field on Maussa Johnnie Fripp plantation. Sometime we sing wen us wuk. One song been go lak dis

"Go way Ole Man, Go way Ole Man / Were you bin all day / If you treat me good I stay Till de judgment day / But if you treat me bad I sho' to run away."

On Sattiday night ebery slabe dat wuks gits a peck ob corn and pea sometime meat and clabber [soured cream]. You hab straw in your matress but dey gib you blanket. Ebery year in de Christmas month you gits four eider fibe yaard cloth 'cording to how you is. Out ob dat you haffa mek you clote [clothes]. You wears dat same clote till de next year. You wears hit winter en summer. You dont git no coat but dey gib you shoe. If slabe don't do tas [task] dey git licking wid lash on naked back. I see plenty sell on banjo table. Dey put you up on flatform en dey sell you. I see my uncle sell he brung one hunred dollar."

Source: Library of Congress

The poignancy of those words speaks loud. Loud too is the rhyming poetry in the song learned in an ante bellum time when Mr. Polite was old enough to work in the cotton fields. The cadence of poetry added rhythmic power to the work songs and made the words easier to learn by rote. Poetry is often in rural music but this was in a language that was neither truly English or West African. In the coastal Carolinas and Georgia it was Gullah—an Anglo-African dialect derived from the Gula ethnic group in America. They originated in the borderland between Liberia and Sierra Leone. Gullah is now officially recognized as a language.

The blues music genre is American. The word blues derives from an Old English expression blue devils, used to describe figures seen in hallucinations during alcohol withdrawal. The music comes from the African experience in America which Mr. Polite recounted so vividly. Early rural blues was not recorded nor heard on the radio, those did not exist then, neither was the music written down. It was music learned and sung in the fields in the same oral tradition as storytelling.

For entertainment, the songs were accompanied by the simplest of household items turned into makeshift instruments, a washboard made percussion, a wooden box and broom handle with a string, the bass. A store bought harmonica and a homemade guitar were added, sometimes with only one string. They played gliding the neck of a bottle or a knife along the string. The musicians were not paid, there was little or no money among the enslaved people unless it came from the plantation owner in payment for a hog raised behind their shack, as Mr Polite attested.

"You kin sell aig [egg} and chicken to store and Maussa will buy your hawg. In dat way slabe kin hab money for buy ting lak fish and watebber he want. We dont get much fish in slabery cos we nebber hab boat. You kin ketch possum and racoon wid your dawg."

Work songs are an African tradition. One man calls the first line, the others respond together. Early rural Blues opened with four lines of lyric the same, which later reduced to two repeated lines. Work songs gave a shared rhythm and purpose, a sense of team effort to complete tasks.

"Sometime one tas [a quarter acre] sometime two tas and sometime tree. You haf for wuk till tas tru. Wen cotton done mek you hab odder tas. Haffa cut cord ob maash grass meybe [spartina marsh grass].

Mr. Polite records that slaves worshiped together with owners on Sundays in Prayers or Praise Houses and brought their music in from the fields to church, where it was adapted for religious teaching using repetitive lyrics. A spiritual style evolved based on church teachings mixed with expressions of hope, and aspirations like" I'm Going to Walk in Jerusalem, Just Like John" and "Swing Low Sweet Chariot."

Mr Polite: "In Slabery we go to white folks chuch. Slabe dont know nuttin bout baptising. Wen slabe dead you cant knock off wuk for berry um. You haffa wait till night time for put um in de grabe."

When a string is tuned above its classical pitch, the sound it makes becomes brighter and livelier. When a string is tuned slightly below pitch, it becomes flat, a morose, sad sound. Lower-tuned blue or worried notes were slurred between major and minor, shaken and bent to add effect. In a piano there are naturally occurring blue notes to keep sound spacing regular. A heavy walking bass line was a key element of blues, which they called the groove. Blue notes were sung to give emotional expression, instruments were pushed beyond their design limits, seeking the sounds of human anguish and joy. The African American diaspora carried blue notes to Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis, Kansas City and everywhere they went in search of work and equality in the hundred years between Emancipation and Civil rights legislation.

Mr Polite: Wen gun shoot on Bay Pint for Freedom I been sebenteen year old wuking slabe.