By Manfred CurinckxMeanwhile in Alabama...Alabama, when it comes to blues history, doesn’t seem equally reputed as it’s fellow states Mississippi,Georgia, the Carolina’s or Texas. So why is that?Answering that question is not so easy. Several factors must have been at play, causing the Alabama bluesto become less documented and somewhat missing its deserved place in music history. By no means the blues in the 1920’s and 1930’s was less prevalent in Alabama than in its neighboring state Mississippi. Field researchers, Folklorists and recorders for Library Of Congress Alan and John Lomax combed through the Alabama counties and prisons, looking for and recording blues men and women. This luckily gave us the opportunity to somehow reconstruct a view on what the early blues in Alabama was like. The geography and location of Alabama had an enormous influence on the local blues and folk music in the 19th and early 20th century. The Southern and Central part of the State has very fertile soil. Farms and plantations for cotton were abundant. This was the area were the early blues was influenced largely by the songs and traditions of the slaves.Here we can find the ‘Black Belt’, famous for its blues history. The name mainly relates to the darkness of the soil, to lesser extent to the skin colour of the people living and working there, although this area was where the african decendent population mainly lived, many related to the slaves of the decades before them. Typical for the blues in that area is the similarity to Mississippi Delta and Country blues. Cross border migration, similar working and living conditions and day to day problems (like the boll weevil infestation for instance) contributed largely to that. There were other influences however that affected the sound of the early blues in Alabama. The Appalachian Mountain range, running into the North of the State, and the State of Georgia to the east, argely affected the sound, adding Piedmondstyle and Jazz influence to mix. A clear picture of the early blues is offered by the Alabama Public Television film "Alabama Black Belt Blues". In this film the early Lomax and Ruby Pickens Tartt recordings of Vera Hall, Dock Reed, Rich Amerson and others bring the music to the fore and demonstrate the blues tradition, which is still very strong there today. The movie explains the role of the blues in the region from slavery onward, in cotton fields, church pews, prisons and juke joints. The recorded artists naturally give us the best idea of what the music was like, and there were many among which Bo Weavil Jackson, Ed Bell, Big Mama Thornton, Vera Hall, Lucille Bogan, Daddy Stovepipe (Johnny Watson), Sonny Scott, Clifford Gibson, Cow Cow Davenport... And let’s not forget the great Louisiana Red, who was born in Bessemer, Alabama in 1932. Johnny Shines lived in Alabama for a large part of his life. Another very important blues guitarist from Alabama was Ike Zimmerman. I will also mention W.C. Handy as well and some Jazz artists like Dinah Washington and Nat King Cole, but since my focus is on early blues guitar I will leave the honour to documenting them to others.