Blues Music

Blues is the musical genre for a vocal and instrumental form that emerged from African-American communities sometime in the 1890s, in Southern plantations where black slaves and sharecroppers toiled in cotton fields and invented a passionate work song form to serve as field hollers and to convey general feelings of loneliness. Blues music is based on the use of notes sung or played for expressive purposes at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scales, and makes use of call-and-response patterns prominent in African tradition. The genre has influenced the growth of derivative forms such as R&B, jazz, and rock and roll. Well-known blues artists, from the time it was invented to the evolved and diversified blues genre that we have today, include B.B. King, W.C. Handy, Willie Dixon, Big Bill Broonzy, Son House, Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Albert King, Roy Buchanan, and Eric Clapton, among many others.

What Does Blues Sound Like?

Blues music features simple three-chord progressions that allow, above all, personal expression. Also, having evolved from the African call-and-response tradition, blues can often come with the interplay of voice and guitar (acoustic or electric), more a rhythmic talk than a melody and which is meant to communicate emotion more intensely than does any other genre. But the characteristic that is perhaps most definitive of the blues genre is the utilization of a series of notes called the “blue notes” – which are said to be the flattened third, flattened fifth, and flattened seventh scale degrees, all of these at a lower pitch than the notes found in the major scale.

A Brief History of Blues Music

Blues music is deeply rooted in African-American slave history, having evolved from African spirituals, chants, hymns, work songs, field hollers, dance tunes, and rural fife and drum music that workers used as a functional musical expression and which they transmitted orally. It was specifically in North Mississippi Delta, following the Civil War that the origins of the genre can be traced; there, singers engaged in a call and response with his guitar; he would sing a line, and then a guitar would answer. W.C. Handy, who had heard music resembling the earliest blues from a street guitarist at a Tutwiler, Mississippi train station, then popularized the form from about 1911 to 1914.

Throughout the 1920s, blues music made its way to urban areas, evolving into electrified Chicago blues, regional blues styles, and jazz-blues hybrids which traveling blues artists usually performed for juke joint audiences. The genre also rose in popularity in New Orleans, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Detroit, Cleveland and New York. While blues records during this period are distinguished by rural acoustic guitars and pianos, the time also saw the incorporation of blues into a wide repertoire that included folk songs, vaudeville music, and minstrel tunes. Proponents of this growth include Mamie Smith, Son House, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Leadbelly, Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson.

Post-War and Modern Blues Music

After World War II and in the 1950s, electric blues – that which used amplified electric guitars, electric bass, drums, and harmonica played through a microphone – became popular in northern cities like Chicago, Detroit, and St. Louis. Blues artists and blues guitarists such as John Lee Hooker, Willie Dixon, Elmore James, Tampa Red, Buddy Guy, Etta James, and Howlin’ Wolf followed the lead of Muddy Waters, who is described as “the guiding light of the modern blues school”.

Simultaneously, T-Bone Walker in Houston and B.B. King pioneered a guitar-playing style that took blues to jazzier territories; in the United Kingdom, the British blues movement developed through the efforts of Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers, The Rolling Stones, and The Yardbirds, who all performed songs in the tradition of Delta and Chicago blues.

Contemporary Blues Music

From the 1970s and 80s onwards, blues continued to develop in various directions, with contemporary blues artists and bands drawing a new generation of listeners to the genre. Bobby Rush, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Sean Costello, John Mayer, Jonny Lang, Albert Collins, Robert Cray, Keb’ Mo’, Fabulous Thunderbirds, Lonnie Brooks, and Son Seals are only a few of the artists from the last two decades who have explored the many aspects of blues.

Blues Music Record Labels

Record labels that are commonly associated with the blues music genre include JSP Records, whose top-seller includes works by Buddy Guy, Jimmy Yancey, and Leadbelly; Bullseye, whose top artists are Roomful Of Blues, Otis Clay, and Ronnie Earl; and Alligator Records, which carry works by Michael Burks, Albert Collins, and Son Seals.

Blues Records and Blues CDs

Feeling the blues? Find the best and widest selection of blues music online only at Music Stack. B.B. King CDs, W.C. Handy CDs, Willie Dixon CDs, Big Bill Broonzy CDs, Son House CDs, Charley Patton CDs, Robert Johnson CDs, Blind Lemon Jefferson CDs, Muddy Waters CDs, John Lee Hooker CDs, Buddy Guy CDs, Etta James CDs, Stevie Ray Vaughan CDs, Eric Clapton CDs, and Sean Costello CDs, among other blues records and blues CDs featuring artists and bands from early blues to contemporary blues, are all available, as are blues vinyl LPs.

Blues Records and Blues CDs

Find all kinds of rare, hard to find and out-of-print Blues records and Blues CDs on MusicStack.

B.B. King
Etta James
Robert Johnson
Buddy Guy
Eric Clapton
Muddy Waters
Blind Lemon Jefferson
Son House
Albert Collins
John Lee Hooker

Blues Websites

Blues on Wikipedia Blues Music page on Wikipedia
Blues music Blues music at Lala.com
Blues at About.com Information on Blues from About.com