Before rock and roll started taking America by storm in the 1950s, you wouldn't find a minister

or holy roller anywhere in the country who didn't refer to the blues as the devil's music.

During the Middle Ages, the church told people that any kind of music that wasn't about God

was the work of the devil.

That became a popular refrain for church leaders, then and sometimes now. By the early 20th century,

it was jazz music, linked to the brothels of Storyville in New Orleans that was being blamed for lewd and lascivious behavior.

Jazz seemed really bad. But then came the Blues.

It's been said the devil himself presided over the birth of the Blues in the Mississippi Delta in the 1920s,

and that he's kept a grip on the offspring of the blues in the Mississippi Delta in the 1920s, and that he's kept a grip on the offspring

of the blues ever since. It wasn't just that blues players were black, and therefore

a threat to the white population of the segregated region. No, it was the fact that African Americans

in those days were determined to enjoy what little life had to offer

them, and that meant dancing, drinking, and of course, music.

But there was another rarely acknowledged reason why white society and the religious authorities

were suspicious, even fearful of black music. The blues sounded

otherworldly to the whites, conjuring up voodoo and African rhythms that could only be,

you guessed it, the devil's music. For far-right Christians in the South, distrustful of anything that didn't conform to

mainstream religion and suspicious of secular music in general, the blues were like nothing

they'd heard before. They knew that African Americans had their own version of gospel music,

but the blues were something else altogether.

From the very beginning, the blues were the devil's music. It had nothing to do with church.

The blues were not about faith, salvation, or redemption. The music was about nothing but worldly things.

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