harsh realities of life for blacks in the region. Itinerant entertainers were an established presence among black working communities, but now they were abandoning the Anglo-Irish base of their repertoire in favour of something more deeply personal, reflecting the fact. While whites in Dixie continued to pursue their long musical traditions, the irksome social conditions for southern blacks brought about considerable innovations in their religious and secular music at the end of the 19th century, including a new form of folk song: the blues. Some records by whites were even sold in the "race" category, to the artist's occasional indignation! This did not always mean that the two were musically distinguishable. By the same token, to take account of segregation in the South and racial prejudice in the North, the industry marketed black music as "race" records. "We're just a bunch of hillbillies from North Carolina and Virginia," he replied, "Call it what you like." That is how the term "hillbilly" came to be printed on records aimed at southern whites. Peer asked Hopkins what to call his brand of music. When producer Ralph Peer was exploring the Appalachians in the 1920s, he made some records of violinist Al Hopkins and his string band. Record companies, however, needed clear marketing terminology for the buying public. Southerners did not have any special name for the music that they played for dancing and relaxation. However, with the imposition of segregation in 1870, black and white music began to diverge. By the end of the 19th century this mixture had produced a fairly homogeneous musical tradition. The 18th century South of the plantations was a melting pot of the different musical traditions of its native and immigrant communities: English, Irish, Scots, Spanish, French, Polish, Italians, African slaves and, of course, Cherokee and Choctaw Indians. This form of the blues has always been (and remains) present in Country music. The blues of poor whites certainly owed much to their black neighbours, but it also had many original aspects to it and a highly individual feeling. For a long time this view completely obscured the fact that white musicians had been playing blues in the South from the very beginning. "White Blues" is usually thought of "Was a 1960s American pheno- menon where northern musicians came into contact with black Chicago and San Francisco blues artists or, more often, copied English bands like the Rolling Stones or the Yardbirds.
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