The Best Blues Music Titles

It’s hard to beat the classics when it comes to the best blues music. Here are ten essential titles that any fan of the genre should have in their collection.

The Birth of the Blues

The blues is a genre of music that originated in the African-American communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term “blues” refers to the blue notes which are used in the music. The blues has been a major influence on other genres of music, such as jazz and rock and roll.

The origins of the blues

The blues is a genre of music that is born out of the hardships and experiences of African Americans living in the south during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The blues is characterized by its soulful, mournful sound, and often features lyrics about heartbreak, poverty, and difficult life experiences. The blues has had a profound impact on American culture, influencing everything from jazz to rock and roll. The blues is still alive and thriving today, with many modern artists taking inspiration from its rich history.

The early blues pioneers

The earliest recorded blues song was “Crazy Blues,” by Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds, which was released in 1920. But the genre actually began to take shape in the late 1800s in the American South, when work songs, spirituals, hollers, field hollers, shouts and chants migrated from the fields and plantations to the cities and became secularized. These new urban blues were performed by professional musicians in juke joints and barrelhouses for predominantly black audiences. The performers used guitar, piano, harmonica and sometimes washboard to accompanied their singing. The 12-bar blues chord progression emerged as the most common form during this period.

The Golden Age of the Blues

The 1920s saw the rise of the blues in America. This was a time when the music was popularized by black musicians in the South. The golden age of the blues is often considered to be the period from the 1920s to the 1940s.

The classic blues singers

The classic blues singers were the stars of the first golden age of the blues, from 1920 to 1950. They were the men and women who took the raw sounds of the Delta and the Piedmont and created a new music that expressed their own lives and experiences.

The classic blues singers were influenced by the greatDelta bluesmen, such as Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, but they also incorporated elements of gospel, jazz, and pop into their music. They wrote songs about love and heartbreak, poverty and oppression, good times and bad times. And they sang with a passion and power that could move an audience to tears or to their feet.

Some of the greatest classic blues singers were Mahalia Jackson, Bessie Smith, Big Bill Broonzy, Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson, T-Bone Walker, and Memphis Minnie. They left behind a legacy of music that has inspired generations of musicians and continues to touch the hearts of everyone who hears it.

The rise of the electric blues

The electric blues started to gain popularity in the mid-1940s, with artists such as Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson II andHowlin’ Wolf leading the way. The electric sound allowed for a more forceful, driving style of blues that was perfect for dancing. It also allowed the blues to be heard by a wider audience, as the amplified sound could fill a room or hall much better than an acoustic guitar or harmonica.

The electric blues continued to grow in popularity throughout the 1950s and 1960s, with artists such as B.B. King, John Lee Hooker and Freddie King becoming international stars. The British Invasion of the 1960s saw a new wave of British blues bands, including The Rolling Stones and The Animals, bringing the electric blues to a whole new audience.

The Modern Blues

The contemporary blues scene

The contemporary blues scene is considerable in scope, with numerous different subgenres that have developed over the past few decades. Here are some of the most popular contemporary blues styles:

· Delta Blues: This style is characterized by its use of slide guitar and unique chord progressions. It typically has a slow tempo and a mournful feeling.

· Chicago Blues: This style developed in the urban setting of Chicago, Illinois. It is often faster paced than Delta blues and features electric instruments such as the guitar, bass, and harmonica.

· Piedmont Blues: Piedmont blues is similar to Delta blues but originates from the Piedmont region of the United States. This style is known for its intricate fingerpicking guitar technique.

· swing blues: Swing blues combines elements of jazz and blues to create a lively, danceable sound. This style became popular in the 1930s and 1940s and was often associated with artists such as Louis Jordan and Ella Fitzgerald.

The blues in popular culture

The blues has been a major influence on later American and Western popular music, finding its way into jazz, big band, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, country music, and folk music. Like jazz, pop music was often “created or enriched by the Negro experience in America,” wrote James Lincoln Collier in The making of Jazz (1980). In the early 20th century W.C. Handy became known as “the Father of the Blues”; his composition “Beale Street Blues” (1916) was one of the first blues songs to achieve widespread popularity. Other early popularizers were Ma Rainey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Bessie Smith, and Jelly Roll Morton. Bessie Smith’s “Downhearted Blues” (1923) was a huge commercial success; it sold over a million copies and helped define both the style and the topic of classic blues songs. Although few women were successful as recording artists before 1933, many became popular performers during the 1930s Great Depression era, among them Victoria Spivey (“Organ Grinder’s Swing”), Clara Smith (“Moanin’ Low”), Big Mama Thornton (“Hound Dog”), Lucille Bogan (“Shave ‘Em Dry”), Trixie Smith (“My Baby Rocks Me with One Steady Roll”), Ida Cox (“Four Day Creep”), Memphis Minnie (“Me and My Chauffeur”), Champion Jack Dupree (“Junker’s Blues”) and Peetie Wheatstraw (aka The Devil’s Son-in-Law) with his “Signifying Monkey” routine.