An Introduction to the Blues

Blues Overview
Delta Blues   Piedmont Blues   Jump Blues   Chicago Blues   Texas Blues

"The Blues is the roots. Everything else is the fruits"

 --Willie Dixon, legendary Blues musician, producer and songwriter.

The Blues is about tradition and personal expression. Most Blues feature simple chord progressions that are open to endless improvisations, both lyrically and musically.

The Blues grew out of African spirituals and work-songs. In the late 1800s, southern African-Americans passed the songs down orally, and they combined with European-American folk music from the Appalachian Mountains. New hybrids appeared in each region, but all of the recorded blues from the early 1900s are distinguished by acoustic guitars and pianos. After World War II, the Blues began to fragment, with some musicians holding on to acoustic traditions and others taking it to jazzier territory. Most Blues musicians followed Muddy Waters' lead and played the Blues on electric instruments. The Blues have continued to develop in new directions. The main classifications of the many styles of the Blues are Delta Blues, Piedmont Blues, Jump Blues, Chicago Blues and Texas Blues.

Delta Blues

The Delta Blues style comes from a region along the banks of the Mississippi River that is romantically referred to as "the land where the blues were born." The Delta Blues form is dominated by fiery slide guitar and passionate vocals, with the deepest of feelings being expressed through the music. Its lyrics are passionate and in the highest flowering of blues songwriting stand as stark poetry. The form continues to the present time with new performers working in the older solo artist traditions and style. It also embraces the now-familiar string-band/small-combo format, precursors of the modern-day blues band.

Piedmont Blues

Piedmont Blues describes the shared styles of musicians from Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia as well as others from Florida, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. The Piedmont guitar style is highly syncopated and employs a complex finger-picking method in which a regular bass pattern, played with the thumb, supports a melody on the treble strings. The Piedmont style is an extension of an earlier string-band tradition integrating ragtime, blues and country dance songs.

Jump Blues

Jump Blues is an up-tempo, jazz-tinged style of blues that came to prominence in the mid to late 1940s. Jumps Blues usually featured a vocalist in front of a large, horn-driven orchestra or a medium-sized combo with horns. The style is characterized by a driving rhythm, intensely shouted vocals, and honking tenor saxophone solos. The lyrics are almost always celebratory in nature, full of braggadocio and swagger. Jump Blues was the bridge between the older, guitar-based styles and the big band jazz sound of the 1940s.

Chicago Blues

The "classic Chicago style" was developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s by taking Delta blues, amplifying it and putting the basic string-band and harmonica group into a small-band context of drums, bass and piano and sometimes saxophones. This became the standard blues band lineup. The form is flexible enough to accommodate singers, guitarists, pianists and harmonica players as the featured performer.

Texas Blues

Texas Blues is characterized by a more relaxed, swinging feel than other styles of Blues. Its earliest incarnation occurred in the mid-1920s, featuring acoustic guitar-work that was almost an extension of the vocals rather than merely a strict accompaniment to them. The next stage of development in the region's sound came after World War II with a fully electric style that featured jazzy, single-string soloing over a horn section. The style stays current with a legion of regional performers working in small combos.

Now, for a look at some of the players & innovators who defined the sound known as the Blues:

Blues Masters

   Robert Johnson

guitarist, singer, songwriter

There may be no single Blues artist who is more well-known or more charismatic than Robert Johnson. Born in 1911, in Hazlehurst, Mississippi Robert was shuffled from one sad home to another. Ramblin' became his natural way of life.
 

At an early age, he fell under the spell and the rather reluctant tutelage of Blues legends Charley Patton, Willie Brown and Son House. Altogether Robert Johnson would record only 29 songs, most of them classics.
Songs: 'Dust My Broom' , 'Hellhound on My Trail' , 'Travelin' Riverside Blues' , 'Crossroad Blues' , 'Ramblin'  on My Mind' , 'Sweet Home Chicago'.

   Son House

guitarist, singer, songwriter

Eddie James House, Jr was born in Riverton MS in the early spring of 1902. Son House' s Blues experience was the inverse to many Blues-men who played the music until they found God and turned to preaching.

At 15, Son was a Baptist preacher spreading the gospel, wandering from plantation to plantation. He didn' t pick up a guitar until he was 25.

In 1929, Charley Patton finagled a recording session with Paramount for Son. Son didn' t record again until 1941, when Alan Lomax lugged a 300-pound acetate-recording machine to Lake Cormorant, MS. In 1965, Son played Carnegie Hall and over a 3-day period in April of that year, made his last recordings.

Songs: 'Death Letter' , 'Delta Blues' , 'Walking Blues'

   Skip James

guitarist, pianist, singer, songwriter

Nehemiah Curtis 'Skip' James was born near the Whitehead Plantation (Woodbine Plantation) outside Bentonia, Mississippi, in 1902. Skip James showed signs of musical talent at an early age. He puttered around with the fiddle, the piano and organ. He took up the guitar at 15. Skip played an audition in 1931, for H.C. Speir, who also arranged for Son House' s recordings with Paramount Records.

He recorded 26 sides. Only eighteen have ever been found. Paramount paid him the sum of $40 for his time and his talent.

Songs: 'I'm So Glad' , 'Devil Got My Woman' , 'Hard Time Killing Floor' , 'Good Road Camp Blues'

   Muddy Waters

guitarist, singer, songwriter

King of the Chicago Blues. Muddy Waters was not his real name, of course. Born in 1915 in the tiny hamlet of Rolling Fork, Mississippi, he was christened 'McKinley Morganfield' . He was given the playful nickname, MuddyWaters, when he was a just a child living on the banks of the Mississippi River.

In 1943, he moved to Chicago and set the standard for a new style of music - Chicago Blues. Muddy Waters, recorded for Chess Records in Chicago.

Songs: 'Hootchie-Cootchie Man' , 'Rollin' Stone' , 'Got My Mojo Working' , 'I'm Ready' , 'I Just Want to Make Love to You'

   Howlin' Wolf

guitarist, singer, harmonica player, songwriter

Chester Burnett was a powerful man, 6' 3" in his stockin' feet and weighed in at close to 300 lbs.

A huge man, he would howl, growl, moan, crawl on all fours, pound on tables - do whatever it took to get his music across. But it was his voice that made the biggest impression and earned him the name of ' Howlin' Wolf '. The first time he recorded at Chess Records, the engineer thought the mike was broken. He said, "It sounded like he gargled with Drano."

Songs: 'Howlin' for My Darlin' , 'Spoonful' , 'Moanin' at Midnight' , 'Smokestack Lightin' , 'Little Red Rooster'

   Little Walter

harmonica player, singer, songwriter

'Blues Master' is Marion Walter Jacobs. 'Little Walter'. One of the two most influential Blues harpists in history. 'Little Walter' was a giant amongst giants playing with Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy & Willie Dixon. From 1952 to 1968, Little Walter recorded more than 100 sides for Chess Records. Most of them singles.

Songs: 'Mellow Down Easy' , 'Juke' , 'Blues with a Feeling' , 'Boom, Boom - Out Go the Lights'

   B.B. King

guitarist, singer

King of Blues - B.B. King.

Most noted for his exquisite guitar playing, B.B. is quoted as saying

"My ambition is to be one of the greatest blues singers there have ever been."

B.B. is one hard-working man. At 76 years of age, he averaged 250 concerts a year 'round the world. He has played in Taiwan twice. He calls his guitar, a black Gibson, 'Lucille'.

Songs: 'Every Day I Have the Blues' , 'You' ve Done Lost Your Good Thing Now' , 'How Blue Can You Get' , 'The Thrill Is Gone'

   Buddy Guy

guitarist, singer, songwriter

This week' s featured Blues guy has been at it for more than 45 years. "It's the blues that keeps you young", he once told Guitar Player magazine. "When you stretch that string, you're stretchin' your life" Born George Guy in Lettsworth, Louisiana in 1936, Buddy came to Chicago in 1957 after a brief stint in Baton Rouge. He met up with Otis Rush who introduced him to Eli Toscano of Cobra Records. He followed Otis Rush and Willie Dixon to 2120 S. Michigan Ave - the home of Chess Records.

Songs: 'This is the End' , 'I Sit and Cry and Sing the Blues' , 'I Got My Eyes on You'

   Elmore James

guitarist, singer, songwriter

Elmore James was, hands down, the most influential slide-guitarist of the post-war period. His re-working of Robert Johnson' s 'Dust My Broom' became his trade-mark and every slide player since 1951 has tried to duplicate the sound and feel of Elmore James.

James was born in 1918 in Richland, MS and learned to play bottleneck on a home-made contraption fashioned from broomstick and a lard can. By 14, he was playing weekend gigs at country suppers and juke joints. He played with the likes of Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson on the King Biscuit Time radio show. A radio-repairman by trade, Elmore tinkered with his guitar amplifiers and got them to produce a raw, distorted sound which wasn' t heard again until the late '60's.

Songs: 'Blues Before Sunrise' , 'The Sun is Shining' , 'Whose Muddy Shoes' , 'Dust My Broom'

   John Lee Hooker

guitarist, singer, songwriter
Original 'Boogie Man' Born in grim poverty on August 22, 1917 in Mississippi' s Coa-homa County - one of 11 children. At the age of 12 he started playing the guitar, learning from his stepfather the basis for his hypnotic, one-chord drone. "You' re not going to mistake John Lee Hooker for anybody else." Said Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, "It was so dark and swampy."

Songs: 'I' m in the Mood' , 'Boogie Chillun' , 'Crawlin' Kingsnake' , 'Worried Life Blues'

   Etta James

singer, songwriter

Born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles in 1938, her foster-parents had her singing at the age of 5 in the youth choir at St. Paul' s Baptist Church. She was introduced to Leonard Chess of Chess Records in 1960. Her big break came when she recorded a duet, 'If I Can' t Have You'.

Songs: 'I' d Rather Go Blind' , 'If I Can' t Have You' , 'At Last' , 'Something' s Got a Hold on Me'

   T-Bone Walker

guitarist, singer, songwriter

Aaron Thibeaux Walker, better knows as T-Bone Walker revolutionized Blues guitar playing in 1940 by plugging it in. His style of modern electric Blues guitar has left virtually every guitar player since then is in his debt.

BB King said "He was the first electric guitar player I heard on record. He made me so that I just had to go out and get an electric guitar. That was the best sound I ever heard."

Walker was born in Linden, Texas in 1910. He took up the guitar at 13 and joined his uncles in regular jam sessions which sometimes included legendary Texas Blues great 'Blind Lemon Jefferson'.

Songs: 'Stormy Monday' , 'Tell Me What' s the Reason' , 'She' s My Old-Time Used to Be' , 'Cold, Cold Feeling'.

   Sonny Boy Williamson II

harmonica player, singer, songwriter

Rice Miller, better known as Sonny Boy Williamson II is, in many ways, the ultimate Blues Legend.
He had played with Robert Johnson at the start of his career, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Robbie Robertson at the end of it, and Elmore James, Robert Jr Lockwood, the Yardbirds, and just about everybody else in between by the time of his death in 1965.

In 1941, he and Robert Jr Lockwood broadcasted the first King Biscuit radio show from Helena, Arkansas. The first live Blues radio show.

Songs: 'Don' t Start Me Talking' , 'One Way out' , 'Help Me' , 'Keep Your Hands Out of My Pocket' 

   Big Bill Broonzy

guitarist, singer, songwriter

Born William Lee Conley Broonzy in Scott, Mississippi in the last years of the 19th Century, one of 17 children born to ex-slaves. His career spanned more than 30 years and he wrote more than 300 songs. Some, like 'Key to the Highway' have become classics.

Big Bill found his way to Chicago's burgeoning Blues scene in the '20's to mix with the likes of Tampa Red, Big Maceo and John Lee 'Sonny Boy' Williamson. It wasn' t long before he became one of the most sought-after and respected artists in Chicago.

In 1939, he became the first African-American to perform in Carnegie Hall replacing Robert Johnson in John Hammond' s 'Spirituals to Swing' concert series.

Songs: 'Worryin' You Off My Mind' , 'I Believe I' ll go Back Home' , 'Baby, Please Don' t Go' , 'Feelin' Lowdown'