Why Is Moody Jones Called The Great Migration?

Born in the small town Earle, Arkansas, Moody Jones interest in music started at a very early age when he learned how to play the guitar after his brother bought him a broken guitar for $3, which Moody fixed and started to develop an interest for. In this rural farming town only 2,400 people reside, 88.7% being African American and 10.8% being caucasian (Komara, E. M. 2006). As the years went by Moody Jones played guitar for country dances and at his local church. Jones moved to East St. Louis in the late 20’s, by which he was already making music from homemade instruments. Later Moody leaned the guitar in 1938, so he moved to Chicago and joined the blues circuits along with his cousins Floyd Jones and Snooky Pryor. Moody Jones is probably

M. 2006). Between 1915 to 1970, six million African Americans departed from their ancestral homes in the South to the North and West of America (Layson, H., 2015). This massive movement of African Americans citizens from the South to the North was called “The Great Migration”. The main reason for this these people to pick-up and leave their homes where the extreme social conditions. The South prompted many migrants with a strong incentive to leave. Reconstruction, state legislatures throughout the South had passed laws mandating the separation of the races in every area of social life (marriage, education, housing, transportation, recreation, health care, etc..). Through the Jim Crow Laws and social custom, southern states had systematically developed a severe racial caste system (The Rough Guide to The Blues. 2007). The conditions for an African American in that time had it so a black person could not even contradict what a white person said or even speak to a white person unless spoken to first. A type of caste system was enforced. These weren 't only enforced by the government but by local citizens as well. White Citizens performed widespread campaigns of lynches of African Americans without anyone stopping them. Between 1880 and 1950, lynch mobs of mainly white men tortured and murdered approximately 3,500 African Americans, often before large crowds of spectators, to avenge unlawful

Snooky Pryor worked a lot with Moody Jones, they came up with hits like, Sweet home Chicago and Boogie. Influenced by Sonny Boy Williamson, the harpist Snooky Pryor was considered a pioneer of postwar Chicago blues sound and claims to have been the first player to amplify the harmonica. James Edward Pryor He moved to Chicago around 1940 (The Rough Guide to The Blues. 2007). Pryor was definitely a troublemaker when he served in the U.S. Army. Pryor was discharged for blowing bugle calls through a PA system, which led him to experiment with playing the harmonica that way. Pryor was discharged in 1945, shortly after moving to Chicago he bought an amplifier and played harmonica at Maxwell Street Market, which he eventually became a regular on the Chicago blues scene. Pryor recorded some of the first postwar Chicago blues, in 1948, including "Telephone Blues" and "Snooky & Moody 's Boogie", with Moody Jones (Layson, H., 2015). The track to this day is considered a Blues classic following the WWII. Pryor and Jones worked on "Stockyard Blues" and "Keep What You Got", with Moody 's cousin Floyd Jones. In 1967, Pryor moved to Ullin, Illinois where he worked as a carpenter in the late 1960s but eventually make a musical comeback in the late 1980s. Rediscovered by fans of Chicago blues and resumed recording occasionally until his death in nearby Cape Girardeau,