The Development of Blues Music

The blues is a genre of music that originated in the African-American communities of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs, spirituals, and the folk music of white Americans of European heritage.

Origins

The first appearance of the blues is often dated back to the year 1908, when W.C. Handy published his famous “Memphis Blues” composition. However, the blues form can be traced back even further, to the field hollers and work songs of slavery.

African American work songs

African American work songs were some of the first blues songs. These songs were created to help pass the time while doing repetitive tasks, like field work. The songs were often improvised, and they often had a call-and-response format, with one person singing the lead and the others joining in on the chorus. Many of these work songs were later adapted by blues and jazz musicians.

Spirituals, gospel, and hymns

The young people who created the blues were mostly poor, uneducated, rural blacks who worked long hours in the cotton fields. At night and on weekends, they congregated in juke joints, where they socialized, danced, and sang. The music they played and sang was a blend of African musical traditions and European folk music.

The blues was originally a vocal style accompanied by guitar or banjo (and later by piano). The most common form was the 12-bar blues, which consisted of three four-bar phrases. The first phrase repeated itself after the second and third phrases were sung. This AAB pattern was similar to the pattern found in many African songs and spirituals.

The lyrics of early blues songs were almost always about personal experiences such as work, love, loss, good times, and bad times. These simple songs expressed the feelings of people who had little else to comfort them.

Development

The blues is a genre of music that originated in the African-American community in the United States around the end of the 19th century. The style of music developed organically from the spirituals, work songs, field hollers, and other forms of African-American music.

Early performers and recordings

The first commercially successful blues recordings were made in the 1920s, when record companies such as the Victor Talking Machine Company and Columbia Records began to record and release racing records by performers such as Mamie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Jackson. These records were popular with African American audiences, but they were also criticized by some because they featured stage acts that included exaggerated sexual behavior and violence.

The spread of the blues

The blues traveled up the Mississippi River during the early 1900s, carried by both black and white performers who had been exposed to the music in their formative years. One of the first blues songs to become a hit outside the South was W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” (1914), which was adopted by many jazz bands of the day. The migration of southern blacks to northern industrial cities during the ’20s and ’30s played a significant role in the spread of the blues, as did radio broadcasts of live performances and recordings by such artists as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Blind Lemon Jefferson.

The influence of the blues

The blues had a significant impact on the development of other genres of music, including jazz, rock and roll and country. The bitter sadness and hardships associated with the blues led to its popularity among African Americans in the early 20th century. The blues also influenced the genre of music known as gospel, which was created by African American Christians in the late 19th century.

The blues has been described as “the soul of black America.” It is a form of music that expresses the hard-lived experiences of African Americans in the United States. The blues evolved from Afro-American folk music, which was brought over from West Africa by slaves who were brought to the American South.

The original form of the blues was a solo vocal form performed by an individual with only a guitar or piano for accompaniment. The lyrics were typically about love, loss, heartache and despair. As the genre developed, other instruments were added, including bass, drums and horns. The influences of jazz and swing music can be heard in early blues recordings.

Modern performers

In the early twentieth century, black musicians in the American south began playing a new kind of music, which came to be known as blues. The blues evolved out of earlier musical traditions, including work songs, spirituals, and folk music. The first blues performers were not professional musicians; they were ordinary people who played music for their own enjoyment.

The British blues boom

The British blues boom was a period between the late 1950s and early 1970s when there was a resurgence of interest in British blues music. The first British blues bands were inspired by the music of such American artists as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Willie Dixon, as well as SOCM artists like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. By the early 1960s, a number of British bands began to mix their own interpretations of the American genre with other musical styles, resulting in the creation of what is now known as “blues rock.”

The British blues boom had a significant impact on the development of rock music. Many of the leading exponents of blues rock, such as Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin, were products of the British blues boom. The genre also served as a major inspiration for the formation of rhythm and blues (R&B) and disco.

Electric blues

The electric guitar was a particularly important innovation in the development of blues music. With the introduction of electric guitars, performers were able to produce a loud, consistent sound, which allowed them to be heard over the noise of a crowded bar or dance hall. Electric guitars also gave performers a greater degree of control over the timbre and volume of their sound. This allowed for a wide range of new sounds and playing styles, which had a profound impact on the sound of blues music.

The first electric blues recordings were made in the late 1920s, but it was not until the 1950s that electric blues became widespread. In the 1950s, Chicago became a major center for electric blues, thanks to artists such as Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon. These artists helped to popularize electric blues and bring it to a wider audiences. The sound of electric blues would go on to have a profound influence on other genres of music, including rock and roll.

Chicago blues

Chicago blues is a form of blues music developed in Chicago, Illinois, in the 1950s and 1960s. It is based on earlier forms of blues including Delta blues and urban Midwest blues, as well as jazz. Chicago blues is characterized by its use of electric guitars, amplified harmonicas, and sometimes saxophones or pianos. often features multiple guitarists playing in unison or octaves.