Blues Lyrics on the Web
Since I hope to design a website that contains a collection of blues lyrics from the 1920s and 1930s and allows visitors to search the collection for specific words, I decided to use this week’s assignment to look for other websites that feature collections of blues lyrics. I conducted my search mainly by exploring the first few dozen results that Google provided when I typed in “blues lyrics.” Whenever a website featured a large list of links, I also attempted to use these lyrics; unfortunately, more often than not, these links led to sites or pages that no longer existed.
After several hours of searching, I had discovered more than 20 websites that feature a collection of blues lyrics. None of these sites, however, feature the kind of search capabilities that I imagine for my own website. Many, in fact, do not feature any search capabilities at all. For this reason, the website I hope to design will provide a service that, apparently, no other site does.
Even though none of the sites that I found feature extensive search capabilities, it was quite instructive to look the various online collections of blue lyrics. Here are some of the highlights of my search:
Blues Lyrics On Line: Google’s first result for “blues lyrics” brought me to Blues Lyrics On Line. As the “What’s New” page indicates, this site has not been updated since 1999. The site also has a limited bandwidth, so it became temporarily unavailable just about every other time I tried to visit it. Despite these limits, I consider it one of the best sites I found. It contains lyrics to over 500 recorded blues songs. The songs collected cover just about every time period and musical styles, and they can be browsed by artist or song title. As the homepage indicates, the site’s creator attempted to collect lyrics based on their originality, which means that many obscure songs have been included.
Although the site does not feature any search capabilities, the homepage lists a series of provocative questions such as “Has anybody written a blues song about spaceflight?” and “Is there a blues song that mentions the Kinsey Report?” with a link that leads to the answers. Aside from to the quality of the collection, I thought these questions (and their answers) were one of the site’s best features.
Harry’s Blues Lyrics & Tabs Online: Google’s second major result was Harry’s Blues Lyrics & Tabs Online, which contains lyrics to more than 2,500 recorded blues songs. (Blues Lyrics On Line’s list of links, many of which were no long working, also led me to this site.) As on Blues Lyrics On Line, the songs collected cover just about every time period and musical style, and they can be browsed by artist or song title. On this site, however, the collection is, to a great extent, the result of many users’ contributions. The collection therefore tends to include relatively popular songs, as well as many redundancies resulting from different artists’ recording the same song. The sheer size of the collection, however, prevents these issues from too much of a drawback.
At the same time, the size of the collection makes browsing a bit more difficult. On Blues Lyrics On Line allows visitors to view all the songs collected on a single web page, here visitors have to look at several pages. Still, a much more serious drawback is the amount of advertising connected to the site. The site is surrounded by advertising and, even worse, my pop-up blocker was constantly blocking pop-up ads as I explored the site.
Despite these drawbacks, Harry’s Blues Lyrics & Tabs Online had several distinctive features to its credit. In addition to browsing lyrics by artist and song title, visitors can browse by musical style or song topic. Also, one page contains an extensive glossary of words and phrases in blues lyrics, such as “ball the jack,” “black cat bone,” “jelly roll,” and “riding the blinds.” Another page contains a list of lyrics and tabs (i.e. musical entablature) that users would like to see. Site users can contribute to the glossary, request new lyrics and tabs, or supply lyrics and tabs that others have requested.
The Online Blues: One of the best-looking sites I encountered (mainly because it featured photographs of blues artists along the top of every page) was The Online Blues. As the updates listed on the homepage indicate, this site has been updated relatively recently. The size of the collection seems commensurate with Blues Lyrics On Line, but the site focuses on the work of about 30 relatively well-known artists from various time periods and with different musical styles. On this site, visitors cannot browse by song title; instead, they must click on one of the artists’ names along the left margin of every page to see links to a particular artist’s lyrics. For most artists, the number of songs for which lyrics are available is less than 20. The site also contains a form with which visitors can contribute lyrics.
As with Harry’s Blues Lyrics & Tabs Online, the amount of advertising connected to this site represent a major drawback. Although the site is not surrounded by advertising, it produces pop-up ads and contains links to commercial sites that are in no way related to blues. (These links are probably the result of the creator’s policy of listing links only to those sites that agree to provide a link to The Online Blues.) Another drawback is that the lyrics are presented in a kind of single-spaced format that does not give a good sense of stanza breaks. (This format is probably the result of using a standard form for how lyrics are contributed and presented.)
HarpTab.com: The “Blues Lyrics” section of HarpTab.com is somewhat similar to The Online Blues. Like The Online Blues, it contains a list of artist’s links, which in turn lead to links to particular lyrics. In addition, the lyrics are presented in a format that does not give a good sense of stanza breaks. HarpTab.com, however, has a couple of advantages over The Online Blues–it features hardly any advertising, and it contains a somewhat larger assortment of artists.
MetroLyrics: MetroLyrics.com appears to be a kind of clearinghouse for song lyrics. In other words, the site contains a large database of musical artists, and users can rate particular artists, as well as contribute song lyrics these artists. Because of the nature of the site, it can only be as good as its users make it. In the case of its blues section, MetroLyrics is not very good, since the section has received relatively few contributions.
Blues Lyrics and Hoodoo: From a historian’s standpoint, Blues Lyrics and Hoodoo is the probably the most interesting site I found. It consists of an online book in progress about African-American folk magic, entitled Hoodoo in Theory and Practice, and a collection of lyrics fore the more than 75 songs to which the book refers. The site’s creator encourages visitors to contribute lyrics, and includes a list of desired songs to this end. Of course, since the creator desires lyrics in order to illustrate aspects of African-American folk magic, the thematic range of the songs are relatively limited in scope. Unlike most of websites I encountered, which are little more than lyrics repositories, the contents on this site reflect a clear and highly fascinating curatorial intention.
Sites Devoted to Specific Artists: In addition to the sites list above, I came across several sites devoted to the lyrics of a specific blues artist. Such sites include A Tribute to Buddy Guy and The Robert Johnson Notebooks. However, since I am more interested in sites that collect the lyrics of multiple artists, I did not look at very many sites in this vein.
Sites Featuring Multiple Musical Genres: A number of sites feature song lyrics from multiple genres. MetroLyrics is one example, but other examples include Jazz Lyrics + Blues Lyrics, The Heptune Classical Jazz and Blues Lyrics Page, and Black Cat Rockabilly Europe. Since the coverage of blues lyrics on these sites tend to be more limited than on sites devoted to blues, I did not look at very many sites in this vein.