Talking Blues - Development of The Genre

Development of The Genre

Woody Guthrie popularized the style after Bouchillon; his "Talking Hard Work" is a title-tribute to Bouchillon's "Talking Blues" and "Born in Hard Luck". Several sources of the 1940s - 1950s, including the Almanac Singers, wrongly credited Guthrie as the creator of the talking blues; he was rather the innovator who explored the use of the form for political and topical subject matter. By the 1940s, what had started as a comedic country music genre became known as a form of wry political protest singing. This sample lyric, from "Talking Union" by Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Millard Lampell shows the development of the genre into a vehicle for political commentary:

Now, if you want higher wages, let me tell you what to do
You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you
You got to build you a union, got to make it strong
But if you all stick together, boys, it won't be long
You'll get shorter hours, better working conditions, vacations with pay ... take your kids to the seashore.

In 1958, the musician and folk music scholar John Greenway recorded an album collection called "Talking Blues" on the Folkways label. His compendium included 15 talking blues songs by Guthrie, Tom Glazer, and others, and was, according to the music historian Manfred Helfert, the "obvious source" for the many 1960s forays into the genre by Bob Dylan. The best known of Dylan's talking blues is "Talking World War III Blues" from 1963:

Well, I rung the fallout shelter bell
And I leaned my head and I gave a yell
"Give me a string bean, I'm a hungry man!"
A shotgun fired and away I ran
I don't blame them too much, though ... he didn't know me

Dylan's fame and his repeated use of the talking blues form contributed to the genre becoming a widely popular vehicle for the composition of songs with political content. When the country singer Johnny Cash recorded a song that described his trip to Vietnam with his wife June Carter Cash, he chose the talking blues format to describe his dissent against the Vietnam War.

Talking blues is also popular as a medium for parody, as in "Like a Lamb to the Slaughter", Frank Hayes's talking-blues parody of Matty Groves:

One high, one holy holiday, on the first day of the year,
Little Matty Groves to church did go, some holy words to hear
When in come old Lord Arnold's wife, she looked at him and said,
"Come here often? What's your sign?" And off they went to bed.
In the interests of brevity, we'll omit some of the more repetitive parts of the song.
Like the part where they get undressed.
All forty-seven verses of it.