Fife and drum blues is a rural derivation of traditional country blues. It is performed typically with one lead fife player, often also the band leader and vocalist, and a troop of drummers. Unlike a drum corps, the drum troop is loosely structured. As such, a fife and drum band may have any number of snare, tom, and bass drum players. Fife and drum performances were family affairs often held at reunions and big picnics.
Fifes were carved from cane that grew locally. Drums were often handmade, and equally often just percussive objects. The vocals seem to derive from two main styles:
- Traditional call and response of Black Spirituals
- Short, repetitive lyrics
The genre originates in very rural areas of the farming South and today persists in a stretch of Southern states stretching from northwest Georgia to an area south of Memphis, namely North Mississippi. Notable performers are Napoleon Strickland, Othar Turner, Turner's granddaughter Shardé Thomas and Jessie Mae Hemphill. Performers play blues songs as well as religious songs such as "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "When I Lay My Burden Down", "Sitting on Top of the World."
Famous quotes containing the words fife and drum, fife and, fife, drum and/or blues:
“When we are in health, all sounds fife and drum for us; we hear the notes of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the dawn.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When we are in health, all sounds fife and drum for us; we hear the notes of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the dawn.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“‘Oh beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,
Play the Dead March as you carry me along;
Take me to the green valley, there lay the sod o’er me,
For I’m a young cowboy and I know I’ve done wrong.”
—Unknown. As I Walked Out in the Streets of Laredo (l. 5–8)
“We call ourselves a free nation, and yet we let ourselves be told what cabs we can and can’t take by a man at a hotel door, simply because he has a drum major’s uniform on.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Holly Golightly: You know those days when you’ve got the mean reds?
Paul: The mean reds? You mean like the blues?
Holly Golightly: No, the blues are because you’re getting fat or maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re just sad, that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of.”
—George Axelrod (b. 1922)