Guitars, Sears and the Blues

From Reason, via the Big Picture:

The new breed of Delta musicians needed an instrument that was affordable, portable, and capable of producing a wide variety of musical timbres. The guitar could provide harmonic support, rhythmic propulsion, and enough sustain to draw out the long melismatic lines of African-American field hollers. A guitar played with a slide could reproduce the characteristic whine of the single-string didley-bow—a homemade instrument, cobbled together from boards, wire, and nails, that served as the first instrument for many Delta musicians. Creative use of tuning allowed bluesmen like Charlie Patton and Booker White to produce raucous rhythmic accompaniments.
The six strings and fixed frets of the guitar enabled the guitarist to play a much richer variety of harmonies than even the most skilled banjo player. The guitar had a wider range than other string instruments and was especially effective underneath the human voice. A true Delta master like Robert Johnson could juggle all of these elements simultaneously, while singing. One or two musicians could take the place of four or five without sacrificing sound or versatility, thereby lowering costs and expanding opportunities.
The first Sears, Roebuck catalog was published in 1888. It would go on to transform America. Farmers were no longer subject to the variable quality and arbitrary pricing of local general stores. The catalog brought things like washing machines and the latest fashions to the most far-flung outposts. Guitars first appeared in the catalog in 1894 for $4.50 (around $112 in today’s money). By 1908 Sears was offering a guitar, outfitted for steel strings, for $1.89 ($45 today), making it the cheapest harmony-generating instrument available.
Throughout the 1910s Delta blacks routinely ordered a wide assortment of goods from Sears, Roebuck, including the instrument that would define them. In an interview with Alan Lomax, Gospel songwriter Charles Haffner recalled the switch from the reels of the past to the new blues sound: “Back around that time the guitar came into style, and the first blues I remember originated.…Yessir, we were entering into a jazz age, and the old world was being transformed.”

The Mississippi Delta is a fascinating place.  Some of the richest farmland in the world and some of the poorest people in the U.S.