Blues

Blues -- Vocal and instrumental musical form, originally derived from African American work songs. Blues music has been a major influence on American popular music, finding expression in jazz, big bands, rhythm and blues, rock and roll and country music as well as conventional pop songs and even classical music.

Early forms of the blues evolved in the southern parts of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, using simple instruments such as acoustic guitar, piano, and harmonica. Songs came with many different forms of structure, although the twelve or eight bar structure based on tonic, subdominant and dominant chords became predominant. Melodically, blues music is marked by the use of the flattened third and dominant seventh (so called blue notes) of the associated major scale. The blues scale is frequently used in non-blues musical forms.

W.C. Handy was one of the first trained musicians to take blues tunes and styles and present them in modern style with bands and singers. He also wrote some of the most important blues, notably the St. Louis Blues.

Lyrically, verses of early blues songs tended to consist a single line repeated two or three times before, such as:

Woke up this morning with the blues down in my soul

My baby gone and left me, got a heart as black as coal

The subject matter of the lyrics was often the hardships and injustices of life, giving the blues an undeserved reputation for misery, whereas blues lyrics are often joyous, raunchy and funny.

Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me,

It may be sending you baby, but it's worrying the hell out of me.

The 20s and 30s brought the rise of the recording industry and led to the increased popularity of country blues singers and guitarists like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake who recorded for Paramount Records and Lonnie Johnson who recorded for OKeh Records. These recordings came to be known as "race" records since they were targeted almost exclusively to an African American audience. In addition, women blues singers were extremely popular in the 20s, among them Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Victoria Spivey.

In the 40s and 50s, increased urbanization and the use of amplification led to electric blues music, popular in cities such as Chicago and best exemplified by such artists as Howling Wolf and Muddy Waters. Electric blues would eventually give rise to rock and roll.

In the 60s and 70s artists such as Eric Clapton, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix influenced by both early and electric blues musicians brought the blues to a new, younger audience. Through these artists and others, Blues music was strongly influential in the development of Rock and Roll.

Since then blues has continued to thrive in both traditional and new forms through the work of Robert Cray, Bonnie Raitt and others.

Other important blues artists:

Early Country Blues

Kansas City Blues

Chicago Blues

Modern Blues (post 1950's)

Blues in conventional pop music

Harold Arlen, "Blues in the Night"
George Gershwin, "Porgy and Bess"
DeSylva, Brown, and Henderson, "Birth of the Blues"

Blues in Country Music

Blues influence in classical music

George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Concerto in F"
Honegger's "Pacific 231", the "train song" as concerto.