The birth of the blues is shrouded in mystery and uncertainty, the music thought to have developed gradually over the course of several decades at the end of the 19th century. Amateur historians and academics alike agree that the blues is an amalgam of various musical styles, from West African Griots and the work songs and field hollers sung by primarily African slaves to Appalachian folk music, ragtime, and early jug band music.
American songwriter and jazz/blues great W.C. Handy is said to have heard music closely resembling the blues as early as 1892, and Handy wrote several blues songs like "Memphis Blues" and "St. Louis Blues" that would become jazz, rather than blues standards. The blues experienced its "coming out" party in 1920 with what is widely considered to be the first true blues song recorded, Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues."
The Piedmont Blues Style
Throughout the 1920s and '30s, the blues were defined as an art form through the efforts of traveling musicians like Charley Patton, Son House, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and others who were the sons of sharecroppers and the grandsons of slaves. Early blues artists were typically educated in a wide range of musical styles, capable of performing raucous blues music for juke joint audiences, but also being well-versed in traditional folk and popular music for when the occasion merited such performances.
The Piedmont blues style originated in the region on the eastern coast of the United States, ranging from the state of Virginia south to the northern tip of Florida (including the Carolinas) and west to Georgia and eastern Tennessee. Portions of northeastern Alabama and even southern Maryland are often considered to be part of the Piedmont plateau where the style was performed. Characterized by a finger-picked style of playing an acoustic guitar, Piedmont blues features a syncopated rhythm played by the thumb on the bass strings of the instrument while the fingers pick out a melody on the treble strings. Heavily influenced by ragtime music, Piedmont style blues are generally up-tempo in sound and were extremely popular as dance music with African-American audiences during the 1930s and '40s. Considered a form of "country blues," Piedmont blues were influential with late-1950s/early-60s folk singers and with some rockabilly musicians.
Regional Derivatives
Country blues, which is also known as "folk blues," is a primarily an acoustic guitar-oriented type of blues from which many other styles are derived. It often incorporated elements of gospel, ragtime, hillbilly, and Dixieland jazz. The popularity and hit records of original country blues artists like Mississippi's Charley Patton, or Blind Lemon Jefferson from Texas would subsequently influence scores of musicians across the Southern United States. Each regional derivative of country blues has placed its own distinct imprint on the unique acoustic blues sound. In the Carolinas and Georgia, artists like Blind Boy Fuller and Brownie McGhee added a fingerpicking guitar technique to create the Piedmont blues style. The Memphis acoustic blues sound developed out of the city's jugband and vaudeville traditions, and was defined by artists like Furry Lewis and Will Shade.
Delta Blues Tradition
Perhaps the most influential of the many styles of blues music, Mississippi Delta blues (also called "Delta blues") rose out of the fertile agricultural triangle located between Vicksburg, Mississippi to the south and Memphis, Tennessee to the north, and bordered by the Mississippi River to the west and the Yazoo River to the east. In this region, where cotton was the primary cash crop, much of the property was owned by white plantation owners and worked by black sharecroppers. Poverty was rife throughout the Delta, and working conditions were harsh. Traditional blues songs were handed down by word-of-mouth from one performer to another, and many times an artist would add new lyrics to an old song and make it their own. The guitar and the harmonica were the primary tool of the Delta bluesman, mostly due to the ease of carrying them around, and many of the musicians of the Early Blues era (1910-1950) were sharecroppers, or worked on one of the many plantations that were located across the Mississippi Delta. The Delta blues are typically identified by the music's highly rhythmic structure, sometimes featuring clashing rhythms, accompanied by strong vocals. Although the lyrics of Delta blues are often simple, with repeated lines a trademark of the style, they also tend to be highly personal and reflective of the hard life of the African-American farmer in the South. An acoustic guitar is the instrument of choice in playing Delta blues, although several artists adopted the National Resonator guitar (one brand of which is known as a "Dobro") for its louder sound. The harmonica is also widely used, albeit as a secondary instrument. Delta blues is one of the many forms of what is called "country blues."
Country Comes To Chicago
Chicago was originally a hotbed of country blues, as first generation artists like Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy, and Memphis Minnie brought their acoustic style to the big city before the popularity of amplified instrumentation transformed the sound of the city into what today we consider the "classic" Chicago blues sound. Chicago's country blues relied heavily on what is called the "hokum" style, a lighthearted sound that often included double-entendre lyrics. Ragtime and Dixieland jazz also influenced the early Chicago blues sound. When American became embroiled in World War II, it served to increase the exodus of African-Americans from the Southern states northward to cities like St. Louis, Detroit, and Chicago. Former sharecroppers were moving out of the rural areas of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia to find jobs in the growing industrial sector and provide better opportunities for their families. Along with the many agricultural workers who came to Chicago in search of jobs, there were a number of blues musicians that made the trip as well. Arriving in Chicago, they began mixing with the first generation of immigrants, taking on an urban sophistication in place of their rural roots. The blues music made by these newcomers took on a new sheen as well, as musicians replaced their acoustic instruments with amplified versions and the basic guitar/harmonica duo of Delta blues and Piedmont blues was expanded into a full band with bass guitar, drums, and sometimes saxophone.
The Chicago blues sounded more full-bodied than its country cousin as well, the music pulling from broader musical possibilities, reaching beyond the standard six-note blues scale to incorporate major scale notes. While the "south side" blues sound was often more raw and raucous, the "west side" Chicago blues sound was characterized by a more fluid, jazz-influenced style of guitar playing and a full-blown horn section.
Original Texas Country Blues
In Texas during the 1920s and '30s, acoustic bluesmen were developing a style that offered rich, more complex guitar parts, the beginnings of a blues trend towards separating lead guitar from rhythm playing. Texas acoustic blues relied more on the use of slide, and artists like Lightnin' Hopkins and Blind Willie Johnson are considered masters of slide guitar. Other local and regional blues scenes - from New Orleans to Atlanta, from St. Louis to Detroit - also left their mark on the acoustic blues sound.
When African-American musical tastes began to change in the early-1960s, moving towards soul and rhythm & blues music, country blues found renewed popularity as the "folk blues" and was sold to a primarily white, college-age audience. Traditional artists like Big Bill Broonzy and Sonny Boy Williamson reinvented themselves as folk blues artists, while Piedmont bluesmen like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee found great success on the folk festival circuit.
