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George's Music Springing the Blues Festival

George's Music Springing the Blues Festival
April 4-6, 2008
Performance Schedule




Springing The Blues 2007

Every spring thousands of people gather in Jacksonville Beach to celebrate America's indigenous musical art form, the Blues. Springing the Blues Festival has teamed with George's Music to present Florida's largest outdoor free blues festival. The event will continue to be held annually on it's original site at the oceanfront Seawalk Pavilion in Jacksonville Beach. The week's events kicked off with the Blues in the Schools program where performer Roger "Hurricane" Wilson visited local Jacksonville schools performing and educating kids about blues music.

This year's attendance was among the best ever. The festival kicked off on Friday, April 6th and lasted through Sunday, April 8th. This year's headliner Tab Benoit brought down the house on Saturday night with another memorable performance. This year's event featured 3 days of music on two stages - the Main Stage and also the West Stage which included an amazing performance by George's Music's "Win a Spot at the Festival" winner Conrad Oberg. We would like to thank all of you that attended this years event, we hope you enjoyed it! Mark your calendar for next year's event April 4-6.

Here are some photos of this years event:

George's Music President George Hines getting presented with the key to the city of Jacksonville Beach commemmorationg George's Music's 10th year of sponsorship of the Springing the Blues festival.

Jammin' on the Custom Shop Guitars at the Gibson trailer!

George's Music's Guest Spot Winner, Conrad Oberg performing on the West Stage on Saturday...

A happy George's Music customer enjoying the festivities on Saturday!

Jacksonville Regional Manager Alan Friedman presenting a lucky autographed guitar winner with his new collectible!

George Hines and Festival Coordinator Sam Veal - the man that makes it all happen!

Jacksonville Beach customer Bruce Barclay - the winner of the autographed Ibanez Artcore Guitar with Jacksonville Beach manager Derek Porter

Winner of his new Apple iPOD, Dan Coady with Jax Beach manager Scott Relstab

Click here to view and purchase Springing the Blues Festival photos!

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BLUES

What Are the Blues?
Blues music began as the primary artistic expression of a minority culture: It was created mainly by black working class men and women. Through its simplicity, sensuality, poetry, humor and irony, it mirrored the qualities and the attitudes of blacks in America for three-quarters of a century.

The definition and most important extra-musical meaning of "blues" refers to a state of mind. But “the blues” did not enter popular American usage until after the Civil War as a description of music that expressed such a mental state among African Americans. It is generally understood that a blues performer sings or plays to rid himself of "the blues."

As the blues was created largely by illiterate musicians, scarcely any of whom could read music, improvisation, both verbal and musical, was an essential part of it, though not to the extent that it was in jazz. To facilitate improvisation, a number of patterns evolved, of which the most familiar is the 12-bar blues, Apparently, this form crystallized in the first decade of the 20th century as a three-line stanza in which the blues singer sings two lines of the same lyrics. While singing these two lines, the singer must come up with the last line of the verse to coordinate with the other two. The simplicity of blues lyrics gave the blues singer freedom to express emotion while improvising. This structure was supported by a fixed harmonic progression, which all blues performers knew and which they played almost automatically.

From the Delta to Chicago
In its early years, the blues was wholly an African-American art form. Influential in its development were the collective unaccompanied work songs of the plantation culture, which followed a responsorial "leader-and-chorus" form with an emphasis on rhythm and meter similar in nature to the marching songs of the military.

Work songs increasingly took the form of solo calls or "hollers" comparatively free in form but close to blues in feeling. The vocal style of the blues probably derived from the holler. One of the most famous work song leaders was Huddy Ledbetter, better known as "Ledbelly." As blues increased in popularity, Ledbelly moved from leading work songs to singing the blues and was very successful at it.

Self-proclaimed "Father of the Blues" W.C. Handy first heard the music in 1903 in the Mississippi Delta. By the late 1920s, the blues were being heard throughout the Delta at fish fries and juke joints, performed by such bluesmen as Charley Patton, Son House, Willie Brown, Bo Carter and the Mississippi Sheiks and Tommy Johnson. Delta bluesman John Lee Hooker is famous for "Boogie Chillun", first recorded for VeeJay records in 1948.

In the early 1930s the most popular blues singer was Leroy Can, a pianist who was accompanied with uncanny rapport by the guitarist Scrapper Blackwell. Their approach had a strong southern character, but their lyrics had a considered, reflective quality, colored by disappointment rather than bitterness and reflecting the mood of many of their listeners. Carr was widely copied, and his classic performances, such as "How Long, How Long Blues" and "Midnight Hour Blues" were recorded by numerous singers, even in the 1970s long after his death in 1935.

In the 1940s, the heart of the blues scene shifted to Chicago's south side. There, greats like Elmore James, Willie Mabon, Jimmy Rogers, Sonny Boy Williamson, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. Songs like "Hoochie Coochie Man", "Mannish Boy", "Sloppy Drunk", and "Don't Start Me Talkin" are representative of this time.

Who Plays the Blues?
There is an ongoing debate among blues enthusiasts: Can people who are not African American truly enjoy and/or play the blues? Purists insist that white people cannot truly appreciate the blues, while others argue that the feeling within blues music comes from personal hardship — a lesson learned by people of all backgrounds.

Many rock ‘n roll bands mention bluesmen as early influences. When the Beatles arrived in the United States, they wanted to meet Muddy Waters and Bo Didley (and were astonished that mainstream America was not aware of these artists). The Rolling Stones took their name from the song by Muddy Waters and Keith Richards said that early on, their aim was to turn people on to Muddy Waters. Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Alvin Lee, Steve Miller and Jimi Hendrix also paid homage to the great bluesmen through their music.