Blame It On The Blues is a 1914 jazz/blues/stomp song by Chas. L Cooke. It is written in the key of G in simple duple time. The beginning of the piece starts off with a sequence that repeats three times, each time down an octave. The right hand retains the melody throughout the entire piece and the left hand plays an eighth note pattern that alternates from being on the beat to being syncopated. The right hand is mainly syncopated. Like many blues pieces, there are many accidentals scattered throughout the whole song. The song itself is only about three pages long, but with its many repeats, it becomes around six pages. Just by looking at it and doing a quick musical analysis of the piece, you can tell it’s jazz/blues. When you listen to it, you can feel its syncopation and it definitely sounds very repetitive, almost cyclical. When I had this thought about the piece being “cyclical” I hadn’t even realized what the image on the title page was. It is a man and woman, drawn in black and white, sitting in a coil which looks like circles going up and up. Listening to the piece also makes me feel cartoonishly upbeat and active, like I want to complete a task. I think this is because jazzy, old-timey music such as this piece is used in soundtracks for silent films. In those films, the characters/people are moving around very quickly (due to the way it was animated) doing mundane or silly activities. Still, I couldn’t help but listen to it multiple times. I started this post in a very serious and focused mood but I couldn’t help but go down a rabbit hole of popular jazz/blues tunes of the early twentieth century. I guess you might say I could “blame it on the blues”.  

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