[^^ Up] - [jahsonic.com] - [Next >>]
Blues is about tradition and it's about personal expression. At its core, the blues has remained the same since its inception. Most blues feature simple, usually three chord, progressions and have simple structures that are open to endless improvisations, both lyrical and musical. The blues grew out of African spirituals and worksongs. In the late 1800s, southern African-Americans passed the songs down orally, and they collided with American folk and country from the Appalachians. New hybrids appeared by each region, but all of the recorded blues from the early 1900s are distinguished by simple, rural 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. However, most bluesmen followed Muddy Waters' lead and played the blues on electric instruments. From that point on, the blues continued to develop in new directions, particularly on electric instruments, or it has been preserved as an acoustic tradition.
The Delta Blues style comes from a region in the Southern part of Mississippi, a place romantically referred to as "the land where the blues were born." In its earliest form, the style became the first African American guitar-dominated music to make it onto phonograph records back in the late 1920s. Although many original Delta Blues performers worked in a string band context for live appearances, very few of them recorded in this manner. Consequently, the recordings from the late 1920s through mid 1930s consist primarily of performers working in a solo, self-accompanied context. Either way, Delta Blues form is dominated by fiery slide guitar and passionate vocalizing, with the deepest of feelings being applied directly to the music. Its lyrics are passionate as well and in some instances stand as the highest flowering of blues songwriting 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, both precursors to the modern-day blues band. ~ Cub Koda
If the Delta country blues has a convenient source point, it would probably be Charley Patton, its first great star. His hoarse, impassioned singing style, fluid guitar playing and unrelenting beat made him the original king of the Delta blues. Much more than your average itinerant musician, Patton was an acknowledged celebrity and a seminal influence on musicians throughout the Delta. Rather than bumming his way from town to town, Patton would be called up to play at plantation dances, juke joints and the like. He'd pack them in like sardines everywhere he went, and the emotional sway he held over his audiences caused him to be tossed off of more than one plantation by the ownership, simply because workers would leave crops unattended to listen to him play any time he picked up a guitar. He epitomized the image of a '20s "sport" blues singer; rakish, raffish, easy to provoke, capable of downing massive quantities of food and liquor, a woman on each arm with a flashy, expensive looking guitar fitted with a strap and kept in a traveling case by his side, only to be opened up when there was money or good times involved. His records -- especially his first and biggest hit, "Pony Blues" -- could be heard on phonographs throughout the South. Although he was certainly not the first Delta bluesman to record, he quickly became one of the genre's most popular. By late-'20s Mississippi plantation standards, Charley Patton was a star, a genuine celebrity.
The second Butterfield album had an even greater effect on music history, paving the way for experimentation that is still being explored today. This came in the form of an extended blues-rock solo (some 13 minutes) -- a real fusion of jazz and blues inspired by the Indian raga. This ground-breaking instrumental was the first of its kind and marks the root from which the acid rock tradition emerged
What is now referred to as the "classic Chicago style" was developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, taking Delta blues, amplifying it and putting it into a small-band context. Adding drums, bass, and piano (sometimes saxophones) to the basic string band and harmonica aggregation, the genre created the now standard blues band lineup. The form was (and is) flexible to accommodate singers, guitarists, pianists and harmonica players as the featured performer in front of the standard instrumentation. Later permutations of the style took place in the late 1950s and early 60s with new blood taking their cue from the lead guitar work of B.B.King and T-Bone Walker, creating the popular West Side sub genre which usually featured a horn section appended to the basic rhythm section. Although the form embraced rock beats and modern funk rhythms in the '80s and '90s, it has since generally stayed within the guidelines developed in the 1950s and early 60s. ~ Cub Koda