This verse, recorded by Big Bill Broonzy, recalls the rural roots of the blues:

Farming is all right, little girl, if you knows just what to do
Farming is all right, little girl, if you knows just what to do
Cause it killed my old grandpap, oh Lord, I declare I'm going to make it kill me too.

As more and more African Americans moved north, from rural areas to cities in what has been called "The Great Migration," blues lyrics began to reflect the urban experience, giving rise to what became known as "urban blues." This blues song by Little Bill Gaither and Big Bill Broonzy, recorded in Chicago in l941, is an example:

I used to live in New Orleans, it's been a good many years ago
I used to live in New Orleans, it's been a good many years ago
But since I been up North I been sleepin' on the barroom floor.
I been on relief in Chicago and soup lines in Kokomo,
I been on relief in Chicago and soup lines in Kokomo,
But I'm going right back down South where I won't be driven from door to door.

Source: Some of the earliest blues songs were recorded from sharecroppers following the Civil War and in the early 1900s. In l936, Kokomo Arnold sang a blues about the boll-weevil, an insect barely a quarter of an inch long that devasted the cotton crop in the southern U.S. earlier in the century