Discover Jontavious Willis: The Stories Behind the Blues with Professor Matthew D. Morrison

When you next watch a blues performer, listen closely to the bent notes, rolling bass lines, and vocal inflections that form the genre’s soul-stirring sound. What you’re hearing is not just a uniquely American style of music, but a living archive of Black history, community, and cultural survival.  

Originating in the late 19th century among African Americans in the Deep South, the blues genre became foundational to all of modern American popular music—so much so that blues legend Willie Dixon famously declared, "The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits."

Ahead of West Georgia Bluesman Jontavious Willis’s performance at The Studio on October 21, we sat down with Stanford musicologist Dr. Matthew D. Morrison (author of Blacksound) to talk about how the blues shaped popular culture, how early industry models commodified sounds specific to African American communities, and what it means to listen to the blues today.

To understand why blues music feels so revolutionary, you have to look at the notes themselves. Unlike standard Western scales where every note sits neatly in a fixed pitch, the blues relies on microtonal bends—notes that are bent and shaped beyond traditional notation.

“The blues scale is not just a variation of the Western scale, but really kind of a scale of its own... where the notes are not as rigid or a bit more flexible, and can be bent and turned, says Morrison. 

Instead, blues music originally lived through oral tradition, passed down by ear in rural Black churches, living rooms, juke joints, and local gatherings. Willis, who learned about the Blues from his great-grandmother and community, says that this style of music was rarely documented on paper. 

This communal transmission kept the blues deeply rooted in Black culture, laying the groundwork for modern artists like Jontavious Willis.

But by the 1920s, early vocal records from pioneers like Ma Rainey and Mamie Smith expanded the music’s reach, effectively launching the modern recording industry. Record labels quickly recognized the commercial power of these sounds, and began packaging and selling records directly to Black audiences, under the label of "Race Records.”

Yet Morrison notes that this commercial boom didn’t necessarily result in artistic ownership or power in the mainstream music industry—largely due to systemic inequalities and copyright laws.

At the time, copyright law really only recognized tangible things like written sheet music as intellectual property. If a harmonic sound—like the blues scale—wasn't documented on paper, the law treated it as unowned public domain. Mainstream labels and white artists could re-record songs first created by Black musicians and adapt their harmonic sounds for broader pop audiences—often without credit or compensation. 

Compounded by Jim Crow era inequalities, this legal loophole allowed non-Black artists to profit off sounds born in African American communities. As Morrison points out, it shows how the early music industry failed to recognize oral tradition and performance as legitimate intellectual property. This tension persisted throughout the 20th century: While African American artists continually innovated new music styles, the ability to package and profit a sound has historically depended on an artist’s proximity to power.  

Despite these historical inequities, Morrison says there is no doubt where this music stems from—or why it continues to resonate.

“I am careful to not suggest that Black innovation and inventiveness are necessarily forgotten, because I believe that that is part of what attracts people to this work in the first place,” Morrison says. Rather, Morrison argues that many African American musicians instead face the erasure of recognition for their particular creative practice—especially for those engaged in the acts of live performance and communal music-making. 

This brings us back to Jontavious Willis: Carrying forward the un-amplified, acoustic traditions of West Georgia blues, Jontavious’s musicianship pays direct homage to his family heritage and keeps alive the rich, regional oral legacy of early bluesmaking. 

So when you sit in the audience and watch Willis perform, Dr. Morrison offers a simple challenge to audience members: