Talking blues

Development of the genre#

Woody Guthrie and his song “Talking Hard Work” is a title-tribute to Bouchillon’s “Talking Blues” and “Born in Hard Luck”. The “Talking Blues” begins with the line: Several sources of the 1940s–1950s, including the Almanac Singers, wrongly credited Guthrie as the creator of the talking blues. By the 1940s, what had started as a comedic country music genre became a more pronounced 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: 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. Bob Dylan recorded “Talking World War III Blues” in 1963. 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:

Notable examples#

• “Talking Blues” (1926) and “New Talking Blues” (1928) by Christopher Allen Bouchillon.
• “Talking Dust Bowl Blues” (1940), “Talking Fishing Blues”, “Talking Centralia”, “Talking Columbia”, “Talking Hard Work”, “Talking Sailor”, and “Talking Subway” by Woody Guthrie.
• “Talking Union,” by Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Millard Lampell.
• “Atomic Talking Blues” (a.k.a. “Talking Atom”, “Old Man Atom”) by Vern Partlow.
• “Talking Inflation Blues” by Tom Glazer.
• “Talkin’ New York”, “Talking World War III Blues” (1963), “Talking New York”, “Talking Hava Negiliah Blues”, “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues”, “I Shall Be Free No. 10”, and “Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues” by Bob Dylan, all recorded during the 1960s.
• “To Beat The Devil” by Kris Kristofferson
• “Talkin’ Candy Bar Blues” by Peter, Paul & Mary on A Song Will Rise (1965).
• “Singing in Viet Nam Talking Blues” by Johnny Cash.
• “Talking Birmingham Jam” (1963), “Talking Airplane Disaster” (1963), “Talking Cuban Crisis” (1963), “Talking Vietnam” (1964) by Phil Ochs.
• “Talking Thunderbird Blues” (1973), “Fraternity Blues” (1977) by Townes Van Zandt.
• One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer by George Thorogood and the Destroyers
• “Talking New Bob Dylan” by Loudon Wainwright III on his album History (1992).
• “Alice’s Restaurant” (1967) by Arlo Guthrie
• “Catch and Release” by Billy Strings on Highway Prayers (2024)

See also#

• Bob and wheel
• Hip hop music
• Rapping
• Recitation song
• Spoken word
• Sprechgesang
• Talking Timbuktu

Further reading#

• van der Merwe, Peter (1989). Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. .