“The blues are the roots, everything else is the fruits” -- Willie Dixon

[IllmaticDelta]

A look back at/celebration of the most influential style of music that's fed all American popular music since the late 19th century and even music abroad throughout the world. The Blues and it's impact comes in many forms.

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll is characterized by specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues chord progression is the most common. The blue notes that, for expressive purposes are sung or played flattened or gradually bent (minor 3rd to major 3rd) in relation to the pitch of the major scale, are also an important part of the sound.

The blues genre is based on the blues form but possesses other characteristics such as specific lyrics, bass lines and instruments. Blues can be subdivided into several subgenres ranging from country to urban blues that were more or less popular during different periods of the 20th century. Best known are the Delta, Piedmont, Jump and Chicago blues styles. World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a hybrid form called blues-rock evolved.

Form


The blues form is a cyclic musical form in which repeating progression of chords mirrors the call and response scheme commonly found in African and African-American music. During the first decades of the 20th century blues music was not clearly defined in terms of a particular chord progression. With the popularity of early performers, such as Bessie Smith, use of the twelve-bar blues spread across the music industry during the 1920s and 30s. Other chord progressions, such as 8-bar forms, are still considered blues; examples include "How Long Blues", "Trouble in Mind", and Big Bill Broonzy's "Key to the Highway". There are also 16-bar blues, as in Ray Charles's instrumental "Sweet 16 Bars" and in Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man". Idiosyncratic numbers of bars are also encountered occasionally, as with the 9-bar progression in "Sitting on Top of the World" by Walter Vinson.


The basic 12-bar lyric framework of a blues composition is reflected by a standard harmonic progression of 12 bars in a 4/4 time signature. The blues chords associated to a twelve-bar blues are typically a set of three different chords played over a 12-bar scheme. They are labeled by Roman numbers referring to the degrees of the progression. For instance, for a blues in the key of C, C is the tonic chord (I) and F is the subdominant (IV). The last chord is the dominant (V) turnaround, marking the transition to the beginning of the next progression. The lyrics generally end on the last beat of the tenth bar or the first beat of the 11th bar, and the final two bars are given to the instrumentalist as a break; the harmony of this two-bar break, the turnaround, can be extremely complex, sometimes consisting of single notes that defy analysis in terms of chords.

Much of the time, some or all of these chords are played in the harmonic seventh (7th) form. The use of the harmonic seventh interval is characteristic of blues and is popularly called the "blues seven". Blues seven chords add to the harmonic chord a note with a frequency in a 7:4 ratio to the fundamental note. At a 7:4 ratio, it is not close to any interval on the conventional Western diatonic scale. For convenience or by necessity it is often approximated by a minor seventh interval or a dominant seventh chord.


In melody, blues is distinguished by the use of the flattened third, fifth and seventh of the associated major scale. These specialized notes are called the blue or bent notes. These scale tones may replace the natural scale tones, or they may be added to the scale, as in the case of the minor blues scale, in which the flattened third replaces the natural third, the flattened seventh replaces the natural seventh and the flattened fifth is added between the natural fourth and natural fifth. While the 12-bar harmonic progression had been intermittently used for centuries, the revolutionary aspect of blues was the frequent use of the flattened third, flattened seventh, and even flattened fifth in the melody, together with crushing—playing directly adjacent notes at the same time (i.e., diminished second)—and sliding, similar to using grace notes. The blue notes allow for key moments of expression during the cadences, melodies, and embellishments of the blues.



Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and call-and-response, and they form a repetitive effect called a groove. Characteristic of the blues since its Afro-American origins, the shuffles played a central role in swing music. The simplest shuffles, which were the clearest signature of the R&B wave that started in the mid 1940s, were a three-note riff on the bass strings of the guitar. When this riff was played over the bass and the drums, the groove "feel" was created. Shuffle rhythm is often vocalized as "dow, da dow, da dow, da" or "dump, da dump, da dump, da": it consists of uneven, or "swung," eighth notes. On a guitar this may be played as a simple steady bass or it may add to that stepwise quarter note motion from the fifth to the sixth of the chord and back. An example is provided by the following guitar tablature for the first four bars of a blues progression in E

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Pre-war blues

The American sheet music publishing industry produced a great deal of ragtime music. By 1912, the sheet music industry had published three popular blues-like compositions, precipitating the Tin Pan Alley adoption of blues elements: "Baby Seals' Blues" by "Baby" F. Seals (arranged by Artie Matthews), "Dallas Blues" by Hart Wand and "The Memphis Blues" by W. C. Handy.
In the 1920s, the blues became a major element of African American and American popular music, reaching white audiences via Handy's arrangements and the classic female blues performers. The blues evolved from informal performances in bars to entertainment in theaters. Blues performances were organized by the Theater Owners Bookers Association in nightclubs such as the Cotton Club and juke joints such as the bars along Beale Street in Memphis. Several record companies, such as the American Record Corporation, Okeh Records, and Paramount Records, began to record African American music.

As the recording industry grew, country blues performers like Bo Carter, Jimmie Rodgers (country singer), Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red and Blind Blake became more popular in the African American community. Kentucky-born Sylvester Weaver was in 1923 the first to record the slide guitar style, in which a guitar is fretted with a knife blade or the sawed-off neck of a bottle. The slide guitar became an important part of the Delta blues. The first blues recordings from the 1920s are categorized as a traditional, rural country blues and a more polished 'city' or urban blues.

Country blues performers often improvised, either without accompaniment or with only a banjo or guitar. Regional styles of country blues varied widely in the early 20th century. The (Mississippi) Delta blues was a rootsy sparse style with passionate vocals accompanied by slide guitar. The little-recorded Robert Johnson combined elements of urban and rural blues. In addition to Robert Johnson, influential performers of this style included his predecessors Charley Patton and Son House. Singers such as Blind Willie McTell and Blind Boy Fuller performed in the southeastern "delicate and lyrical" Piedmont blues tradition, which used an elaborate ragtime-based fingerpicking guitar technique. Georgia also had an early slide tradition, with Curley Weaver, Tampa Red, "Barbecue Bob" Hicks and James "Kokomo" Arnold as representatives of this style.

The lively Memphis blues style, which developed in the 1920s and 1930s near Memphis, Tennessee, was influenced by jug bands such as the Memphis Jug Band or the Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers. Performers such as Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Robert Wilkins, Joe McCoy, Casey Bill Weldon and Memphis Minnie used a variety of unusual instruments such as washboard, fiddle, kazoo or mandolin. Memphis Minnie was famous for her virtuoso guitar style. Pianist Memphis Slim began his career in Memphis, but his distinct style was smoother and had some swing elements. Many blues musicians based in Memphis moved to Chicago in the late 1930s or early 1940s and became part of the urban blues movement, which blended country music and electric blues.


City or urban blues styles were more codified and elaborate as a performer was no longer within their local, immediate community and had to adapt to a larger, more varied audience's aesthetic. Classic female urban and vaudeville blues singers were popular in the 1920s, among them Mamie Smith, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Victoria Spivey. Mamie Smith, more a vaudeville performer than a blues artist, was the first African-American to record a blues in 1920; her second record, "Crazy Blues", sold 75,000 copies in its first month. Ma Rainey, the "Mother of Blues", and Bessie Smith each "[sang] around center tones, perhaps in order to project her voice more easily to the back of a room." Smith would "...sing a song in an unusual key, and her artistry in bending and stretching notes with her beautiful, powerful contralto to accommodate her own interpretation was unsurpassed." Urban male performers included popular black musicians of the era, such Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy and Leroy Carr. An important label of this era was the chicagoean Bluebird label. Before WWII, Tampa Red was sometimes referred to as "the Guitar Wizard". Carr accompanied himself on the piano with Scrapper Blackwell on guitar, a format that continued well into the 50s with people such as Charles Brown, and even Nat "King" Cole.
Boogie-woogie was another important style of 1930s and early 1940s urban blues. While the style is often associated with solo piano, boogie-woogie was also used to accompany singers and, as a solo part, in bands and small combos. Boogie-Woogie style was characterized by a regular bass figure, an ostinato or riff and shifts of level in the left hand, elaborating each chord and trills and decorations in the right hand. Boogie-woogie was pioneered by the Chicago-based Jimmy Yancey and the Boogie-Woogie Trio (Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis). Chicago boogie-woogie performers included Clarence "Pine Top" Smith and Earl Hines, who "linked the propulsive left-hand rhythms of the ragtime pianists with melodic figures similar to those of Armstrong's trumpet in the right hand." The smooth Louisiana style of Professor Longhair and, more recently, Dr. John blends classic rhythm and blues with blues styles.

Another development in this period was big band blues. The "territory bands" operating out of Kansas City, the Bennie Moten orchestra, Jay McShann, and the Count Basie Orchestra were also concentrating on the blues, with 12-bar blues instrumentals such as Basie's "One O'Clock Jump" and "Jumpin' at the Woodside" and boisterous "blues shouting" by Jimmy Rushing on songs such as "Going to Chicago" and "Sent for You Yesterday". A well-known big band blues tune is Glenn Miller's "In the Mood". In the 1940s, the jump blues style developed. Jump blues grew up from the boogie woogie wave and was strongly influenced by big band music. It uses saxophone or other brass instruments and the guitar in the rhythm section to create a jazzy, up-tempo sound with declamatory vocals. Jump blues tunes by Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner, based in Kansas City, Missouri, influenced the development of later styles such as rock and roll and rhythm and blues. Dallas-born T-Bone Walker, who is often associated with the California blues style,performed a successful transition from the early urban blues à la Lonnie Johnson and Leroy Carr to the jump blues style and dominated the blues-jazz scene at Los Angeles during the 1940s

1950s

The transition from country to urban blues, that began in the 1920s, had always been driven by the successive waves of economic crisis and booms and the associated move of the rural Blacks to urban areas, the Great Migration. The long boom in the aftermath of World War II induced a massive migration of the African American population, the Second Great Migration, which was accompanied by a significant increase of the real income of the urban Blacks. The new migrants constituted a new market for the music industry. The name race record disappeared and was succeeded by Rhythm and Blues. This rapidly evolving market was mirrored by the Billboard Rhythm and Blues Chart. This marketing strategy reinforced trends within urban blues music such as the progressive electrification of the instruments, their amplification and the generalization of the blues beat, the blues shuffle, that became ubiquitous in R&B. This commercial stream had important consequences for blues music which, together with Jazz and Gospel music, became a component of the R&B wave
After World War II and in the 1950s, new styles of electric blues music became popular in cities such as Chicago, Memphis, Detroit and St. Louis. Electric blues used electric guitars, double bass (slowly replaced by bass guitar), drums, and harmonica played through a microphone and a PA system or a guitar amplifier. Chicago became a center for electric blues from 1948 on, when Muddy Waters recorded his first success: "I Can't Be Satisfied". Chicago blues is influenced to a large extent by the Mississippi blues style, because many performers had migrated from the Mississippi region. Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Jimmy Reed were all born in Mississippi and moved to Chicago during the Great Migration. Their style is characterized by the use of electric guitar, sometimes slide guitar, harmonica, and a rhythm section of bass and drums. J. T. Brown who played in Elmore James's bands, or J. B. Lenoir's also used saxophones, but these were used more as "backing" or rhythmic support than as solo instruments.

Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) are well known harmonica (called "harp" by blues musicians) players of the early Chicago blues scene. Other harp players such as Big Walter Horton were also influential. Muddy Waters and Elmore James were known for their innovative use of slide electric guitar. Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters were known for their deep, "gravelly" voices.

Bassist and composer Willie Dixon played a major role on the Chicago blues scene. He composed and wrote many standard blues songs of the period, such as "Hoochie Coochie Man", "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (both penned for Muddy Waters) and, "Wang Dang Doodle" and "Back Door Man" for Howlin' Wolf. Most artists of the Chicago blues style recorded for the Chicago-based Chess Records and Checker Records labels. Smaller blues labels of this era included Vee-Jay Records and J.O.B. Records. During the early 1950s, the dominating Chicago labels were challenged by Sam Phillips' Sun Records company in Memphis, which recorded B. B. King and Howlin' Wolf before he moved to Chicago in 1960. After Phillips discovered Elvis Presley in 1954, the Sun label turned to the rapidly expanding white audience and started recording mostly rock 'n' roll.

In the 1950s, blues had a huge influence on mainstream American popular music. While popular musicians like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, both recording for Chess, were influenced by the Chicago blues, their enthusiastic playing styles departed from the melancholy aspects of blues. Chicago blues also influenced Louisiana's zydeco music, with Clifton Chenier using blues accents. Zydeco musicians used electric solo guitar and cajun arrangements of blues standards.

Overseas, in England, electric blues took root there during a much acclaimed Muddy Waters tour. Waters, unsuspecting of his audience's tendency towards skiffle, an acoustic, softer brand of blues, turned up his amp and started to play his Chicago brand of electric blues. Although the audience was largely jolted by the performance, the performance influenced local musicians such as Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies to emulate this louder style, inspiring the British invasion of the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds.

In the late 1950s, a new blues style emerged on Chicago's West Side pioneered by Magic Sam, Buddy Guy and Otis Rush on Cobra Records. The 'West Side Sound' had strong rhythmic support from a rhythm guitar, bass guitar and drums and as pefected by Guy, Freddie King, Magic Slim and Luther Allison was dominated by amplified electric lead guitar.

Other blues artists, such as John Lee Hooker had influences not directly related to the Chicago style. John Lee Hooker's blues is more "personal", based on Hooker's deep rough voice accompanied by a single electric guitar. Though not directly influenced by boogie woogie, his "groovy" style is sometimes called "guitar boogie". His first hit, "Boogie Chillen", reached #1 on the R&B charts in 1949.

By the late 1950s, the swamp blues genre developed near Baton Rouge, with performers such as Lightnin' Slim, Slim Harpo, Sam Myers and Jerry McCain around the producer J. D. "Jay" Miller and the Excello label. Strongly influenced by Jimmy Reed, Swamp blues has a slower pace and a simpler use of the harmonica than the Chicago blues style performers such as Little Walter or Muddy Waters. Songs from this genre include "Scratch my Back", "She's Tough" and "I'm a King Bee". Alan Lomax's recordings of Mississippi Fred McDowell would eventually bring him wider attention on both the blues and folk circuit, with McDowell's droning style influencing North Mississippi hill country blues musicians

 

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cont...

1960s and 1970s

By the beginning of the 1960s, genres influenced by African American music such as rock and roll and soul were part of mainstream popular music. White performers had brought African-American music to new audiences, both within the US and abroad. However, the blues wave that brought artists such as Muddy Waters to the foreground had stopped. Bluesmen such as Big Bill Broonzy and Willie Dixon started looking for new markets in Europe. dikk Waterman and the blues festivals he organized in Europe played a major role in propagating blues music abroad. In the UK, bands emulated US blues legends, and UK blues-rock-based bands had an influential role throughout the 1960s.


Blues performers such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters continued to perform to enthusiastic audiences, inspiring new artists steeped in traditional blues, such as New York–born Taj Mahal. John Lee Hooker blended his blues style with rock elements and playing with younger white musicians, creating a musical style that can be heard on the 1971 album Endless Boogie. B. B. King's virtuoso guitar technique earned him the eponymous title "king of the blues". In contrast to the Chicago style, King's band used strong brass support from a saxophone, trumpet, and trombone, instead of using slide guitar or harp. Tennessee-born Bobby "Blue" Bland, like B. B. King, also straddled the blues and R&B genres. During this period, Freddie King and Albert King often played with rock and soul musicians (Eric Clapton, Booker T & the MGs) and had a major influence on those styles of music.

The music of the Civil Rights and Free Speech movements in the US prompted a resurgence of interest in American roots music and early African American music. As well as Jimmi Bass Music festivals such as the Newport Folk Festival brought traditional blues to a new audience, which helped to revive interest in prewar acoustic blues and performers such as Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, and Reverend Gary Davis. Many compilations of classic prewar blues were republished by the Yazoo Records. J. B. Lenoir from the Chicago blues movement in the 1950s recorded several LPs using acoustic guitar, sometimes accompanied by Willie Dixon on the acoustic bass or drums. His songs, originally distributed in Europe only, commented on political issues such as racism or Vietnam War issues, which was unusual for this period. His Alabama Blues recording had a song that stated:

I never will go back to Alabama, that is not the place for me (2x)
You know they killed my sister and my brother,
and the whole world let them peoples go down there free

White audiences' interest in the blues during the 1960s increased due to the Chicago-based Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the British blues movement. The style of British blues developed in the UK, when bands such as The Animals, Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, and Cream and Irish musician Rory Gallagher performed classic blues songs from the Delta or Chicago blues traditions. Many of Led Zeppelin's earlier hits were renditions of traditional blues songs.

The British and blues musicians of the early 1960s inspired a number of American blues rock fusion performers, including Canned Heat, the early Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, The J. Geils Band, Ry Cooder, and The Allman Brothers Band. One blues rock performer, Jimi Hendrix, was a rarity in his field at the time: a black man who played psychedelic rock. Hendrix was a skilled guitarist, and a pioneer in the innovative use of distortion and feedback in his music. Through these artists and others, blues music influenced the development of rock music.

Santana, which was originally called the Carlos Santana Blues Band, also experimented with Latin-influenced blues and blues-rock music around this time. At the end of the 1950s appeared the very bluesy Tulsa Sound merging rock'n'roll, jazz and country influences. This particular music style started to be broadly popularized within the 1970s by J.J. Cale and the cover versions performed by Eric Clapton of "After Midnight" and "Cocaine".

In the early 1970s, The Texas rock-blues style emerged, which used guitars in both solo and rhythm roles. In contrast with the West Side blues, the Texas style is strongly influenced by the British rock-blues movement. Major artists of the Texas style are Johnny Winter, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and ZZ Top. These artists all began their musical journey in the 1970s, but they did not achieve major international success until the next decade

1980s to the 2000s

Since the 1980s, there has been a resurgence of interest in the blues among a certain part of the African-American population, particularly around Jackson, Mississippi and other deep South regions. Often termed "soul blues" or "Southern soul", the music at the heart of this movement was given new life by the unexpected success of two particular recordings on the Jackson-based Malaco label: Z. Z. Hill's Down Home Blues (1982) and Little Milton's The Blues is Alright (1984). Contemporary African-American performers who work this vein of the blues include Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle, Sir Charles Jones, Bettye LaVette, Marvin Sease and Peggy Scott-Adams.

During the 1980s, blues also continued in both traditional and new forms. In 1986, the album Strong Persuader revealed Robert Cray as a major blues artist. The first Stevie Ray Vaughan recording, Texas Flood, was released in 1983, and the Texas-based guitarist exploded onto the international stage. 1989 saw a revival of John Lee Hooker's popularity with the album The Healer. Eric Clapton, known for his performances with the Blues Breakers and Cream, made a comeback in the 1990s with his album Unplugged, in which he played some standard blues numbers on acoustic guitar. However, beginning in the 1990s, digital multitrack recording and other technological advances and new marketing strategies that include video clip production have increased costs, and challenge the spontaneity and improvisation that are an important component of blues music.

In the 1980s and 1990s, blues publications such as Living Blues and Blues Revue began to be distributed, major cities began forming blues societies, outdoor blues festivals became more common, and more nightclubs and venues for blues emerged.

In the 1990s, largely ignored hill country blues gained minor recognition in both blues and alternative rock music circles with North Mississippi artists R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. Blues performers explored a range of musical genres, as can be seen, for example, from the broad array of nominees of the yearly Blues Music Awards, previously named W. C. Handy or of the Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary and Traditional Blues Album. The Bilboard Blues Album chart monitors and therefore provides an overview over the current blues production. Contemporary blues music is nurtured by several blues labels such as: Alligator Records, Ruf Records, Severn Records, Chess Records (MCA), Delmark Records, NorthernBlues Music, Fat Possum Records and Vanguard Records (Artemis Records). Some labels are famous for their rediscovering and remastering of blues rarities such as Arhoolie Records, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (heir of Folkways Records) and Yazoo Records (Shanachie Records)

Musical impact

Blues musical styles, forms (12-bar blues), melodies, and the blues scale have influenced many other genres of music, such as rock and roll, jazz, and popular music. Prominent jazz, folk or rock performers, such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Bob Dylan have performed significant blues recordings. The blues scale is often used in popular songs like Harold Arlen's "Blues in the Night", blues ballads like "Since I Fell for You" and "Please Send Me Someone to Love", and even in orchestral works such as George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Concerto in F". Gershwin's second "Prelude" for solo piano is an interesting example of a classical blues, maintaining the form with academic strictness. The blues scale is ubiquitous in modern popular music and informs many modal frames, especially the ladder of thirds used in rock music (for example, in "A Hard Day's Night"). Blues forms are used in the theme to the televised Batman, teen idol Fabian's hit, "Turn Me Loose", country music star Jimmie Rodgers' music, and guitarist/vocalist Tracy Chapman's hit "Give Me One Reason".

The blues' 12-bar structure and the blues scale was a major influence on rock and roll music. Rock and roll has been called "blues with a backbeat"; Carl Perkins called rockabilly "blues with a country beat". Rockabillies were also said to be 12-bar blues played with a bluegrass beat. "Hound Dog", with its unmodified 12-bar structure (in both harmony and lyrics) and a melody centered on flatted third of the tonic (and flatted seventh of the subdominant), is a blues song transformed into a rock and roll song. Jerry Lee Lewis's style of rock and roll was heavily influenced by the blues and its derivative boogie woogie. His style of music was not exactly rockabilly but it has been often called real rock and roll (this is a label he shares with several African American rock and roll performers).

Early country music was infused with the blues. Jimmie Rodgers, Moon Mullican, Bob Wills, Bill Monroe and Hank Williams have all described themselves as blues singers and their music has a blues feel that is different to the country pop of Eddy Arnold. A lot of the 1970s-era "outlaw" country music by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings also borrowed from the blues. When Jerry Lee Lewis returned to country after the decline of 1950s style rock and roll, he sang his country with a blues feel and often included blues standards on his albums. Many early rock and roll songs are based on blues: "That's All Right Mama", "Johnny B. Goode", "Blue Suede Shoes", "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On", "Shake, Rattle, and Roll", and "Long Tall Sally". The early African American rock musicians retained the sexual themes and innuendos of blues music: "Got a gal named Sue, knows just what to do" ("Tutti Frutti", Little Richard) or "See the girl with the red dress on, She can do the Birdland all night long" ("What'd I Say", Ray Charles). The 12-bar blues structure can be found even in novelty pop songs, such as Bob Dylan's "Obviously Five Believers" and Esther and Abi Ofarim's "Cinderella Rockefella".

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music based on the use of the blue notes. It emerged in African-American communities of the United States from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The use of blue notes and the prominence of call-and-response patterns in the music and lyrics are indicative of African influence. The blues influenced later American and Western popular music, as it became the roots of ragtime, country music, jazz, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, heavy metal, hip-hop, and other popular music forms.

As the basis for American music, the rhythms and musical progressions of Blues music has had a public following since the early 20th century. As time progressed, the sounds of Blues music have been altered, expanded, and often renamed. The basis of rock 'n' roll, hip hop, rap, heavy metal, and jazz all have a genesis in Blues music.



The origins of blues is not unlike the origins of life. For many years it was recorded only by memory, and relayed only live, and in person. The Blues were born in the North Mississippi Delta following the Civil War. Influenced by African roots, field hollers, ballads, church music and rhythmic dance tunes called jump-ups evolved into a music for a singer who would engage in call-and-response with his guitar. He would sing a line, and the guitar would answer.
With this simple introduction taken from the History of Rock we can begin to explain the Blues.

Some consider the Blues to be the source, the “root of the tree” for all modern American popular music. It’s influence is seen in Country, Bluegrass, Rock, Soul, R&B, Hip Hop, Jazz, Dixieland, and nearly every other type of music that exists as “modern music” today. Blues, it is often said, has the lowest level bond with the listener, taking the rawest of emotions, the simplest of music, and turning it into a lifting experience with a technique born from the plantation and slave days of early America. This rich gift brought to the American public was born from injustice, hard times, bad luck, and perseverance, all lamented and rejoiced in songs sung in the fields and in church.

A “Field Holler” was it’s earliest form, sung by men and women working in the fields by hand often times picking or chopping cotton, raising tobacco, or other hard labor. One worker would sing a line, the others would answer in unison across the fields. This kept a cadence or timing that other workers could keep up and in time with the other workers, and it helped pass the day more quickly as the field hands were often doing the most mundane and boring tasks. The beginning moments of the recent hit movie “Oh Brother Where Art Thou?” shows this unique field holler tradition as the opening credits begin with the chain gang scene.

Born in the Mississippi Delta, the Blues evolved from the “juke joint” – of which this restaurant you are sitting in takes into account in its design. The Juke Joint came about as Southern American culture was segregated between black and white communities - each with it’s own venues for entertainment and relaxation. The Juke Joint was the center of the “adult entertainment” in line after church in American Black communities in the south. It was a place you could come and relax, drink and eat, and listen to music. Since the musicians could hardly afford instruments they played simple unamplified instruments such as guitars, harmonicas, and string basses made from wash tubs or modified instruments. The audience couldn’t afford fancy entertainment, much less a day off after their five and half day work weeks, so the Juke Joint was simple, easy, and affordable. (See “About the Building”). The Blues grew up in the juke joints, taking shape and form, and offering the public entertainment at an affordable price that struck a cord in their hearts.

The origin of modern blues is Clarksdale Mississippi, at “the Crossroads” – made famous by Robert Johnson an early blues master who allegedly “sold his soul to the devil” to learn to play and make better blues music. The story goes he met the devil at the corner of Highway 61 and 49, “The cross roads”. This is also referenced in the movie “Oh Brother Where Art Thou?” . From Clarksdale the Blues spread north to Memphis, St. Louis, and eventually Chicago and all along the way became the staples of upscale clubs beginning in the 1940’s. Although the black blues master/musician was not recognized as a legitimate artist because of prejudice and segregation, the record companies recognized a market and began at first marketing the music as “race record” music and immediately found an audience (a white audience). This audience grew in the 50’s to include people like Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and other teens in Europe listening to American music for the first time who cite “the Blues” as their primary musical influence and personal favorites. Early rock grandfathers like Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and others took music from legendary blues masters like Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Muddy Waters, and turned up the tempo and created “Rock and Roll”. Early country pioneers like Hank Williams, Carl Perkins, and Hank Snow all cite “the Blues” as a dominant influence in their Country Music… and it’s influence can be easily heard in Jazz, R&B and other types of music if you only listen …
You probably know the rest of the history of what happened to the Blues from there….Today artists like Eric Clapton, BB King, John Lee Hooker, and Steve Ray Vaughn have made the blues a mainstream staple, music enjoyed and appreciated around the world, all born from the prejudice and hard times of the post-Civil War south.

So take the time to look at the rest of this little story… “About the Building”, the “Blues Family Tree”, “About Barbecue”, and the other stuff we have packed into this small building. Enjoy your meal and the music!

 

[IllmaticDelta]

the origin of the blues scale, the blues has exerted a profound influence on many styles of music. Many jazz, folk or rock performers, such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, have performed significant blues recordings. The blues scale frequently is found in non-blues musical forms, such as popular songs like Harold Arlen's "Blues in the Night", blues ballads like "Since I Fell for You", and even orchestral works like George Gershwin's. Indeed, the blues scale is ubiquitous in modern popular music and informs many modal frames, especially the ladder of thirds as in "A Hard Day's Night". The first great country music star Jimmie Rodgers was a blues performer. Guitarist/vocalist Tracy Chapman's hit "Give Me One Reason" was a 12-bar blues

The influence of both the twelve-bar structure and the blues scale on rock-and-roll music was so profound that rock and roll can properly be classified as an outgrowth of blues, or even "blues with a back beat". Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog", with its unmodified twelve-bar structure is a blues song transformed to a new genre by rhythm and sheer energy. One can hardly find a major song from rock-and-roll's revolutionary period that is not, at its roots, a blues composition transformed by rhythm: "Johnny B. Goode", "Blue Suede Shoes", "Whole Lotta' Shakin' Going On", "Tutti-Frutti", "Shake, Rattle, and Roll", "What'd I Say", and "Long Tall Sally". The early African American rock musicians retained the frank sexual themes of blues. "Got a gal named Sue, knows just what to do" or "See the girl with the red dress on, she knows how to do it all night long" are hard to mistake. Even the subject matter of "Hound Dog" contains well-hidden sexual double entendre. More sanitized early "white" rock borrowed both the structure and harmonics of blues, although minimizing harmonic creativity and sexual nuance, such as Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock". Many white musicians who covered black rock songs would go so far as to change the words; possibly the most famous example was Pat Boone's cover of "Tutti Frutti", which originally started "Tutti frutti, loose booty . . . a wop bop a lu bop, a good Goddamn." In addition the blues had an influence on jazz, the big bands ,the rythme and blues, rock and roll, hard rock, country music ,pop music, and also classic music

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Look Back At Blues History


Blues originated in African-American communities of the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, with rhymed simple narrative ballads and response back. Early blues frequently took this form of loose narratives. The singer voiced his or her personal woes in a world of harsh reality and got a musical instrument response back. Although the blues gained an association with misery and oppression, the lyrics could also be humorous relieving conditions with the expression of song.

he first published blues song was Hart Wand’s “Dallas Blues” (1912), followed by W.C. Handy’s “The Memphis Blues” (1912), and Baby F. Seals “Baby Seals Blues” (1912) the same year. W.C. Handy first heard the blues in Tutwiler, Mississippi in 1903 and could not imagine what kind of sound he was hearing. Mythology played a part in early blues, citing Robert Johnson’s “Cross Road Blues”, where he traded his soul for the blues to the orisha in charge of the cross roads. Christian influence of the blues was perhaps far more obvious by spiritual blues artist’s such as Charley Patton, Skip James, Reverend Gary Davis, and Blind Willie Johnson, all who are examples of blues musicians with clear spiritual lyrics. Before the blues gained its formal definition, it was defined as the secular counterpart to spirituals and considered low-down music: the devils music! This began to seperate musicians into two categories gospel or blues. Both categories of musicians used the same techniques, call and response patterns, blues notes, and slide guitars
Many blues musicians based in Memphis moved to Chicago in the late 1930′s and early 1940′s and became part of the urban music scene, which blended country music, boogie-woogie, big band, and electric blues. Urban blues styles demanded a more elaborate performance, this was no longer the local, immediate community. Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith, Tampa Red, and Leroy Carr were some of the first urban blues musicians. Mamie Smith sold over 75,000 copies of “Crazy Blues” in the first month. Blues music was on it’s way to becoming commercially popular with a variety of listeners.
In the 1950′s new styles of electric blues became popular. Sounds of Muddy Waters known for his slide guitar, “Hoochie Coochie Man” and “I Just Want To Make Love To You”. Howlin’ Wolf known for his deep “graveled” voice, “Wang Dang Doodle” and “Back Door Man”. During the 1950′s the dominating Chicago record labels were challenged by Sun Records Company in Memphis, which recorded B.B. King and Howlin’ Wolf before he moved to Chicago. The record industry was now beginning to take off with new blues sounds and recordings.

Blues Music Begins To Progress

In the 1960′s and 1970′s blues music began to progress in the U.S., it was a concert tour overseas to England by Muddy Waters with guitar amps turned up, that electrified the overseas musicians, not so much the crowd. The performance influenced local musicians such as Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies to emulate the louder style, inspiring the British invasion of The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds. The West coast soon jumped on the bandwagon with greats like Buddy Guy, Magic Sam, Freddie King, Luther Allison and Ottis Rush turning up the amps and dominating the blues sound with guitar. By the 1960′s and 1970′s blues music influenced from African-American roots blended in with rock & roll and soul played overseas by the British blues movement. Paul Butterfield Blues Band, The Animals, Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall and The Heartbreakers, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, Creme, Rory Gallagher, many hits by Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton were part of the main stream music being played. Carlos Santana Band also experimented with Latin influenced blues about this time.
In the 1980′s and 1990′s ‘the Texas rock-blues emerged on the scene which was strongly influenced by the British rock-blues movement creative blues sound emerged from major artist’s like Johnny Winter, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and ZZ Top. The revival of Johnny Lee Hooker “The Healer” and Eric Clapton “Unplugged” takes place in the 1990′s.
The evolution of blues music has gone full circle from it’s roots in the south to overseas and back again. This truly is a sign that blues music will continue to evolve. There are more and more blues publications, blues societies, outdoor blues festivals, blues clubs and a fan base that continues to grow from the roots of blues today

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Martin Scorsese Presents: The Blues - A Musical Journey - Trailer





...the thread is for posting any type of subgenre of blues to blues influenced musics that exhibit clear blues influences

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Delta Blues by Ted Gioia

The blues grew out of the plantations and prisons, the swampy marshes and fertile cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta. With original research and keen insights, Ted Gioia, the author of a landmark study of West Coast jazz and the critically acclaimed The History of Jazz brings to life the stirring music of the Delta, evoking the legendary figures who shaped its sound and ethos: Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, B. B. King, and others. Tracing the history of the Delta blues from the field hollers and plantation music of the nineteenth century to the exploits of modern-day musicians in the Delta tradition, Delta Blues tells the full story of this timeless and unforgettable music. No cultural force boasts such humble origins or such world-conquering reverberations. In this evocative rags-to-riches tale, Gioia shows how the sounds of the Delta altered the course of popular music in America and in the world beyond.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

African Origins of the Blues

a look at the origins of Blues music through the different instruments and sounds found in West Africa

 

[IllmaticDelta]

 

[IDFWU]

 

[Dr. Narcisse]

 

[Dr. Narcisse]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

The Blues form is so elastic, you can almost compose any kind of music to it

 

[IllmaticDelta]

The Twelve Bar, Thirteen Bar, Fourteen Bar Blues

Ask the dictionary about the blues and inevitably you’ll hear about the twelve bars, as if every blues had the same structure, the same length, the same three chords and had the same bad trouble with the same evil woman or man. There are many blues that begin there, but such a description hides more truth than it shows.
Which is just one more reason not to go learning about the blues from your Shorter Oxford.

What about that twelve bar structure? That was just a later simplification. When the blues evolved—on disc at least—from being mostly just a single artist playing his guitar over to a full band shuffling it out, then the earlier, more individualistic, more eccentric approaches to the blues had to give way. The original blues was never necessarily that simple or easy to define. For instance, take a listen to Charlie Patton singing Pony Blues




Patton, known as the Father of the Delta Blues, was a master, of course, a step and a half above most other musicians in any genre, but his 1929 recording of Pony Blues shows what the blues could do when not fenced in by definitions. There are seven melodic strands. The first verse is fourteen bars; the second thirteen bars; and the fourth sixteen and a half bars. And the whole is a remarkable, utterly unduplicable, rhythmic masterpiece.