Both Uses of
blues
in
The Grapes of Wrath
- He sang the "McAlester Blues" and then, to make up for it to the older people, he sang "Jesus Calls Me to His Side.†
Chpt 17 *
- A boy with a guitar sang the "Down Home Blues,"1 chording delicately for himself, and on his second chorus three harmonicas and a fiddle joined him.†
Chpt 24
Definitions:
-
(1)
(blues as in: sings the blues) a style of music that originated among African Americans at the beginning of the 20th century; has a melancholy sound from repeated use of blue notes
(blue notes are musical notes sung or played at a lower pitch than those of the major scale -- especially the flatted third, fifth and seventh) -
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) More rarely, blues can refer to multiple shades of the color blue.