BLUES.

A WRAP UP OF STYLES The Blues originated with African-American communities, primarily in the Deep South of the United States, towards the end of the nineteenth century. It grew out of Spirituals, Work Songs, shouts, chants and narrative ballads. It became associated with a form of music using a 12 bar chord progression (although it was always much more varied than just this form) and employing distinctive blue notes, slightly at odds with notation Western Classical Music. In the first half of the 20th century there was cross-fertilization with Jazz and Rhythm & Blues. Blues music continued to develop into a number of sub-genres, including Delta Blues, Piedmont, Jump-Blues and Chicago Blues. After World War II many artists, particularly in Chicago, moved to amplified Electric Blues, which was a major influence on Rock & Roll and later Blues Rock musicians and through them on Hard Rock and Heavy Metal music. Since then it has enjoyed a number of revivals Traditional Folk Music, also known as: Folk Music. Folk Music is music based on particular regional folk traditions. Traditional elements, influences and instruments are the primary backbone of composition, although contemporary features may be present as well. Sub-genres of Folk Music include genres deeply rooted in regional traditions, even if their modern incarnations may not be traditional as such. African Folk Music, also known as: African Traditional Music. Indigenous music of Africa that is passed down orally from generation to generation, the authors of the songs are usually unknown. African folk music can be played by common local people but in some societies ceremonial music was restricted to professional musicians. American Folk Music, also known as: American Roots Music, United States Folk, USA Folk Music. Regional folk music of the United States traces back through the history of European and West African settlement and migration to North America, including parts of northern Mexico and Canada in addition to the United States. The music is thus heavily influenced by European Folk Music, especially the styles brought across the Atlantic Ocean by Scottish, Irish, English, German, Polish, and French migrants. This music is often called American Roots Music, due to the fact that these regional styles would eventually develop into and strongly shape genres such as Blues, Rock, Jazz, Rhythm & Blues, and modern Country. Rather than remaining a mere copy of imported musical traditions, new forms of regional music evolved that blended European and West African styles and instrumentation, especially in the United States' southern region. While the recording industry and performing groups were largely segregated as these styles were popularized (often between black "race records" and white 'hillbilly records"), there was still a great deal of cross-fertilization between the music made by African and European-Americans. In the Appalachian and southern regions, Traditional Country grew out of the mixing of Anglo-Celtic ballads with influences from African-American minstrel shows, especially musical syncopation and instruments like the banjo. In the deep south, African-Americans crafted indigenous styles of music often using European instrumentation, such as Spirituals, Ragtime, Dixieland, and Country Blues styles. In Louisiana, Creole populations created Cajun genres such as Zydeco that mixed diverse French and African-American influences. A cappella a vocal music performed without instrumental accompaniment. Barbershop is a style of A cappella harmonized singing consisting of four vocal elements: the 'lead' (2nd tenor), the 1st tenor, the baritone, and the bass. These are often arranged into quartets, but entire barbershop choruses also perform. This style features an easily discernable melody, with each singer adjusting within their register to create balanced, symmetrical chords in major and minor scales. Barbershop groups can perform songs from any style of music once they have been arranged for it, but there is a set of 'traditional standards' that comprise their primary repertoire. Examples of these would be 'Sweet Adeline' and 'Alexander's Ragtime Band'. The performance aspect usually also includes recognizable vaudevillian garb, simple step routines, and the use of accessories like a hat or cane for embellishment. Sacred Harp Music, also known as: Sacred Harp Singing. A genre of sacred choral music originating in the Southern United States.

Spirituals. Religious folk songs of American origin, particularly associated with African-American Protestants of the southern United States. The African-American spiritual, characterized by syncopation, polyrhythmic structure, and the pentatonic scale of five whole tones, is, above all, a deeply emotional song. The words are most often related to biblical passages, but the predominant effect is of patient, profound melancholy. The spiritual is directly related to the sorrow songs that were the source material of the blues, and a number of more joyous spirituals influenced the content of gospel songs. Gospel. The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of gospel music varies according to culture and social context. Gospel music is composed and performed for many purposes, including aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, and as an entertainment product for the marketplace. Gospel music in general is characterized by dominant vocals (often with strong use of harmony) referencing lyrics of a Christian nature. Subgenres include contemporary gospel, urban contemporary gospel (sometimes referred to as "black gospel"), Southern gospel, and modern gospel music (now more commonly known as praise and worship music or contemporary Christian music). Several forms of gospel music utilize choirs, use piano or Hammond organ, drums, bass guitar and, increasingly, electric guitar. In comparison with hymns, which are generally of a statelier measure, the gospel song is expected to have a refrain and often a more syncopated rhythm. Jazz originated in the Southern United States at the beginning of the 20th century. It was largely influenced by Ragtime and Blues, and quickly developed into one of the more popular musical genres by the 1930s with the development of Swing. After World War II the sound began to change from the Big Band style to smaller groups that created the style of Bebop and Modal Jazz in the 50s. Soon Latin infused styles emerged, such as Afro-Cuban Jazz and Brazilian Music jazz. This was also how Latin Jazz was formed. Free Jazz started to develop in the late 1950s and with the popularity of Rock music becoming more prevalent in the 70s, Jazz Fusion and Jazz-Funk were born. By the 1990s Nu Jazz was becoming the more popular medium for new listeners in jazz. The sound of jazz has changed many times over the past 100 years but one element that is within most jazz is improvisation. Early blues was commonly structured around a repetitive call-and-response pattern and forms of folk music from the blacks in the rural areas was also highly improvisational. These are some features that are known to be fundamental in jazz. Jazz evolved into different styles: Acid Jazz, Afro-Jazz, Arabic Jazz, Avant-Garde Jazz, Bebop, Big Band, British Dance Band, Bulawayo Jazz, Cape Jazz, Chamber Jazz, Cool Jazz, Dark Jazz, Dixieland, ECM Style Jazz, Ethio-Jazz, Gypsy Jazz, Jazz-Funk, Jazz Fusion, Latin Jazz, Marabi,Modal Jazz, Samba-Jazz, Smooth Jazz, Soul Jazz, Stride, Swing, Third Stream, Vocal Jazz etc. Ragtime is a musical genre that enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of African American communities in St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published as popular sheet music for piano. Ernest Hogan was an innovator and key pioneer who helped develop the musical genre. Hogan is also credited for coining the term Ragtime. Ragtime was also a modification of the march made popular by John Philip Sousa, with additional polyrhythms coming from African music. The ragtime composer Scott Joplin became famous through the publication in 1899 of the "Maple Leaf Rag" and a string of ragtime hits that followed, although he was later forgotten by all but a small, dedicated community of ragtime aficionados until the major ragtime revival in the early 1970s. For at least 12 years after its publication, the "Maple Leaf Rag" heavily influenced subsequent ragtime composers with its melody lines, harmonic progressions or metric patterns. Cakewalk originally referred to a style of dance, developing from slaves parodying and mocking the social dances of their masters, but over time it became a specific musicial form as well. The music is in 2/4 time, and has a particular ooompah rhythm, owning to each bar having two alternate heavy beats. There were many recordings of cakewalks during the ragtime era, and it was also famously used by Impressionist composer Claude Debussy in his "Golliwog's Cakewalk"

Coon Songs were a style of popular music in the United States from around 1880 to 1920. Typically presenting a racist and highly stereotyped image of African Americans, Coon Songs combined the sound of Ragtime with vocals and lyrics that aimed to be humorous. Due to the immense popularity at the time, with certain songs selling millions of copies, many white composers took advantage of the craze by adding themes associated with Coon Songs to already popular songs and rags. With social change and increased racial sensitivity during the 1920s and beyond, however, the genre quickly fell from popularity. Ironically, the popularity and downfall of the Coon Song contributed to the later acceptance of authentic African American music. Novelty Piano (or Novelty Ragtime) was a form of piano music popular in the 1920s. A result of Ragtime being overtaken by Jazz in mainstream American appeal, Novelty Piano sought to apply new technology to the former genre and therefore produce a more elaborate, performanceorientated style of rag. One of the most notable Novelty Piano composers was Zez Confrey, whose 1921 release Kitten on the Keys helped popularise the genre. Stride is a style of early piano music that evolved from Ragtime. Often faster and more complex than Ragtime, Stride Piano can also be seen as one of the most popular early forms of Jazz, developing its style later on to include improvisation, blue notes, and more advanced swing rhythms. James P. Johnson is known as the Father of Stride Piano. Piano Blues. The piano and the guitar are among the most suitable instruments for playing without additional instrumental accompaniment. Both instruments enable the musician to play full, rich chords. Chords are playable on both the banjo and the mandolin, but neither instrument has much of a bass register. Therefore mandolin and banjo players usually need other musicians to perform with them. In the early days of the blues, from 1890 to 1920, there was not much money to be made playing music, so this was an economic inconvenience. The piano, with 88 keys, gives the player more musical range than any other instrument but the organ. And because the player cannot carry it, he or she can travel without worrying about caring for an instrument. But pianists must sometimes have to cope with playing pianos that are out of tune or those that have been so badly treated that some of the keys stick and make no sound. A group of pianists known as the Santa Fe School traveled to many of the towns served by the Santa Fe Railroad, usually bumming rides by hopping freight trains. These towns included Shreveport, Louisiana, and the Texas towns of Dallas, Abilene, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Houston, and Beaumont. The musicians would get off the trains and find the nearest place that had a piano to play, though it was usually an old piano in poor condition. Another group of pianists played in the rough lumber and turpentine camps of southern Mississippi and southeast Louisiana, during the 1920s.The Santa Fe School musicians and the lumber camp players are obscure figures today, mostly known through the reminiscences of the few people whose careers brought them more notoriety, like Eurreal "Little Brother" Montgomery and Roosevelt Sykes. Both these musicians had extensive recording careers, but most of the other pianists either recorded only a few sides or never recorded at all. The names of a few of these obscure figures convey the atmosphere in which they must have worked. A few of the players lost in musical history are Big Boy Knox, Black Ivory King, and Pinetop Burks. Many of these players had only a rudimentary technique, using devices like major chords with only occasionally added sixths and sevenths of the chord. Many used a walking bass line, a series of bass notes, usually a quarter note in length. Another common device was to omit the third, or middle, note of a chord; that is, a C chord would be played with only the notes C and G, omitting the E. Pianists who sang often used the piano in a way similar to singing guitarists. They would play very simply during the vocals and use melodic decorations or answers to the vocal between the vocal phrases. Other players used a left-hand pattern that alternated between a single note and a chord. Sometimes the piano player would change the sound of the piano by mechanical means, rather than his own technique; for example, tacks might be placed in the piano or newspapers placed behind the piano strings. Triplets were often played with the left hand. (Triplets occur when three notes are played in the time allowed for two.) Piano keys cannot be bent to get pitches between the notes, so instead piano players sometimes play rapid combinations of two adjacent notes, like E and E-flat in the key of C. When the notes are repeatedly played rapidly back and forth, the effect is almost like bending a guitar string. Pianists also use tremolo effects that mirror what mandolin players do playing one or two notes repeatedly in rapid succession. It is a characteristic for the left hand to keep a steady rhythm and for the right hand to wander in front of and behind the beat, producing

an attractive musical tension for the listener, who begins to wonder if the two hands will ever get back together on the beat. Piano players also often use grace notes, played with the right hand. Grace notes are notes of such short duration that no musical length is assigned to them in printed music. Although the piano is also capable of sustaining notes for long periods by using the foot pedals, most blues players used this device sparingly if at all. The reason for this may have been that the sort of abused pianos found in barrelhouses and rough saloons often had malfunctioning pedals. Although there are dozens of blues guitar transcriptions of even the most obscure blues guitarists of the 1920s and 1930s, there are relatively few piano transcriptions of the blues pianists. Similarly, although a number of blues piano recordings have been reissued on CD, the number pales compared with the massive number of available guitar recordings. The piano does not seem to have captured the imagination of blues fans in the same way as the guitar. Just as certain cities became gathering places for particular guitaristsAtlanta and Durham North Carolina, for the Piedmont players, for examplepianist seemed to have settled around certain cities. Many of these musicians were migrants, like the guitarists who left the Deep South. Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit were the main cities where they went. In Detroit's AfricanAmerican enclave of Hastings Street were piano players Tupelo Slim, "Fishtail," James Hemingway, Rufus (Speckled Red) Perryman, Charley Spand, and Will Ezell. St. Louis seemed to offer musicians who played guitar and piano with almost equal facility. Among them were veteran Henry Townsend, and William Bunch (better known as Peetie Wheatstraw "The Devil's Son-in-Law", also known as "the High Sheriff from Hell"). Other piano players included Wesley Wallace, St. Louis Henry, Barrelhouse Buck McFarland, and the colorful Cripple Clarence Lofton. The influential Roosevelt Sykes commuted between Chicago and St. Louis; in addition to his own recordings, he played piano for the popular blues singer Walter Davis. Davis soon picked up a simplified version of Sykes's piano work and began to play on his own records. Chicago has always been a mecca for blues artists, and the resident piano players includedBlind John Davis, Black Bob, Joshua Altheimer, who often performed with guitarist Big Bill Broonzy, Eurreal "Little Brother" Montgomery, Jimmy Blythe, Big Maceo (Merriweather), and Memphis Slim. T. A. Dorsey ("Georgia Tom") was an important figure, until he abandoned the blues for gospel music. Sykes was often on the scene, and so was Pinetop Smith, one of the fathers of boogie-woogie piano. Doug Suggs and the much better-known Jimmy Yancey both worked at the Chicago White Sox park during the day and played piano at night and on weekends. Yancey was a particularly influential blues and boogie pianist, adept at playing soulfully at slow tempos. Just as Memphis Minnie proved that women were perfectly capable of playing excellent blues guitar, Lovie Austin (Cora Calhoun) was an accomplished jazz and blues pianist who accompanied many blues singers, including Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Ethel Waters, and Alberta Hunter. Austin had studied music in college and had her own jazz band. During the 1920s she worked with such outstanding jazz musicians as Louis Armstrong and Johnny Dodds. Austin also cowrote the song "Downhearted Blues" with Hunter. It became Bessie Smith's biggest hit. By the mid-1920s Austin was a session player for Paramount Records who functioned in much the same way that Willie Dixon did for Chess Records 30 years later. She often supervised the musical arrangements for blues singers. Memphis Slim (Peter Chatman) was another important Chicago player, who often teamed up with Dixon. He left Chicago in 1962 to move to Paris. Indianapolis was an important blues town from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s. The major figure was Leroy Carr, who had a tremendous influence with his lighter-textured vocals, and his own piano work teamed with the tasteful single-string guitar playing of Scrapper Blackwell.Carr was enormously popular during the mid-1930s, his music striking a chord with a more sophisticated urban audience. Arthur Taylor was another Indianapolis blues piano artist. Despite the extensive northward migration of blues artists, a number of piano players never left the South. Birmingham, Alabama, was the original home of Pine Top Smith, but other local musicians include Walter Roland, who played for blues singers Lucille Bogan and Josh White, and Robert McCoy, who recorded again during the 1960s. Jelly Roll Morton, who playedragtime and blues and was a great jazz bandleader, held forth in his native New Orleans, which was also the home of composer-pianist Richard M. Jones and Eurreal "Little Brother," Montgomery. Morton mentioned other early New Orleans players Rip Top, Papa Lord God, and No Leg Kenny, who literally had no legs. Later New Orleans piano players like Professor Longhair, James Booker, and Allen Toussaint were major figures in early R&B music, and their influence carries on in the music of white blues revivalists Dr. John and Marcia Ball. Morton, who recorded a series of albums for Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress that included an extensive history of his musical roots, mentioned another group of pianists who played in such Gulf Coast cities as Mobile, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida. In Dallas, Whistling Alex Moore, George W. Thomas, and his younger

brother Hersal, K. D. Johnson, and Willie Tyson were on the scene, and in Houston Rob Cooper and Andy Boy were in residence. Regional styles reflected either local preferences or the influence of one or more musicians on other players. The Texas players tended to be more interested in chords and played a bit more softly than the barrelhouse players. Curtis Jones went from Dallas to Chicago, then like Memphis Slim moved to Europe in 1962. Another later group of Texas players, including Ivory Joe Hunter, Charles Brown, and Amos Milburn, moved to Los Angeles and were important figures in the early years of rhythm and blues music. New York was home to pianists Montana Taylor, Dan Burley, Romeo Nelson, and "Mr. Freddie" Shayne. A school of extremely sophisticated blues-jazz players also developed, including Willie "The Lion" Smith, Lucky Roberts, James P. Johnson, and Thomas "Fats" Waller. These monster piano players delighted in lengthy "cutting contests," where each person would play until the various contestants finally admitted defeat. All these musicians were composers and jazz musicians, as well as playing on many recording sessions featuring blues singers. Waller was also renowned as a singer of happy-go-lucky, amusing songs, of which he recorded dozens.Eubie Blake was a great ragtime and pop player, and Fletcher Henderson was a jazz musician and arranger who also played piano on many blues singers' records. Clarence Williams was a songwriter and musical entrepreneur who played piano on some of Bessie Smith's records, and always seemed to be hustling some sort of record deal for someone. Perry Bradford, who was responsible for Mamie Smith's recording debut, was a similar personalitya composer, arranger, producer, pianist, and musical entrepreneur. The electric piano is most common in the arsenal of blues-rock musicians. The early electric pianos were particularly troublesome to traditional pianists, because the touch of the keyboard was so different from the feel of the acoustic keyboard. Over the years electric keyboards have greatly improved, and it is possible to find electric pianos with a touch much closer to the acoustic instrument. The main advantage of electric pianos is that they do not have to be tuned, so that the musician can travel with an instrument that is reliable and consistently in tune. These days the term "keyboard" generally refers to an electric piano, and these instruments are often equipped with all sorts of gear that resemble guitar effects. One example is a device called pitch bend. By pulling this lever, the pianist can bend notes in the same way that a guitarist can accomplish this feat. Most modern keyboards are also equipped with MIDI attachments, devices that control two or three keyboards simultaneously from a single keyboard, enabling the musician to get organ effects, for example, out of one keyboard, and piano effects out of the other. This is why one may see two or three keyboards piled on top of one another at a performance of a rock-blues band. It is also possible to simulate bass lines on the keyboard, removing the need for a bass player. Other on-board effects enable the keyboard to imitate the sounds of strings, horns, and percussion. Many rock bands utilize players like Chuck Leavell or the late Ian Stewart, talented piano players who can make the instrument sound like an entire orchestra. Edgar Winter is one of the rock-blues artists whose main instrument is keyboards, and Greg Allman is another. Electronic keyboards do not lend themselves as well as acoustic pianos to the work of solo blues artists or traditionally-oriented blues bands. But they have the virtue of being able to use the many colorful effects that keyboards feature, plus the ability to play at high volumes through the use of amplifiers. The player can also rest secure in the thought that the keyboard will have a consistent sound from one job to another and will always play in tune, assuming no electrical glitches develop and the piano is not damaged during its travels. In rock blues bands, electronic keyboards can blend better than acoustic pianos with electric guitars. This is partly because comparable volumes can be achieved through the use of electronics and partly because of the similarity of the tone colors of the sound. It takes negotiation for guitarist and pianist to play well together. A mediocre pianist is apt to add all sorts of extra notes to chords. For the two instruments to function well together, it is necessary for the piano player to simplify the piano parts, or for the guitar to develop a good knowledge of chord inversions. This difficult task for guitarists involves developing a thorough knowledge of the guitar fingerboard. Barrelhouse is an illicit commercial establishment in the South, serving as an all-purpose tavern, gambling den, dance hall and often brothel. Piano was an often used instrument: Barrelhouse piano. The term can be found in the work of Hambone Willie Newbern, Leroy Carr, Kid Bailey, Lucille Bogan, Charlie Spand, Teddy Darby among others. Boogie woogie is one of the first Blues styles that appeared in the end of the 19th century. It was played through different names and probably appeared in the 1870s in camps of Afroamerican workers at Marshall County and Harrison County in Texas, then through the big

industrial cities' barrel houses. Boogie woogie is played by piano (solo or as the main instrument). The musical structure consists of a repetive eight note bass line played ostinato by left hand (eight-to-the-bar) while the right hand plays soloing and improvising blues harmonic lines. The tempo is usually faster than other traditional blues styles. Boogie woogie was well popular during the 1930s and 1940s and became popular worldwide during 1940s. It is associated with the eponymous dance possessing lyrics dealing with instructions to dancers. This genre was often played by Big Band in this period. It was a strong basis and influence to numerous very popular genres such as Jump-Blues, Piano Blues, Rhythm & Blues, Jazz in particular Swing and big band, as well as Rock & Roll. The first official record is supposed to be The Rocks by George W. Thomas in 1923 and the first explicit use of the name boogie woogie dates back to 1929 through Pine Top's Boogie Woogie / Pine Top Blues release of Clarence "Pinetop" Smith. Other prominent artists include Jimmy Yancey, Charles Avery, Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, Meade Lux Lewis, Count Basie, Harry "The Hipster" Gibson, etc. Jump-Blues, also known as: Swing blues. Jump-blues is a style of Blues that emerged in the 1940s from an important blues orientation of Big Band and Swing performed by artists like Lionel Hampton, Lucky Millinder, Count Basie and their several bands. Jump-blues was very popular during 1940s and 1950s through compositions and performances of Louis Jordan, Wynonie Harris, T-Bone Walker, Big Joe Turner or Roy Brown. Characteristics of jump-blues are an uptempo, a middle size of musical ensemble between usual blues and big band ones, as well as an emphasis on saxophones and brass instruments. Jump-blues will have been a major precursor musical genre for Rhythm & Blues as well as for Rock & Roll later.Jug Band music originated in Louisville, Kentucky at the beginning of the 20th century and stayed popular in the southern states of the U.S. until the 1930s. It usually features a jug as the bass instrument as well as other homemade or easily affordable instruments, such as kazoos and washboards. Jug Band enjoyed a rebirth during the 1960s Folk Revival, spawning many new Jug Bands. Traditional Cajun. The earliest and most "pure" form of Cajun music, Traditional Cajun was first developed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. While later forms of the style would incorporate elements of blues, country, and even rock, Traditional Cajun stays true to the roots of the music, employing basic rhythms and frequent fiddle double stops. It rarely includes instruments beyond the traditional accordion, fiddle, and triangle setup. Zydeco is an uptempo dance music that mixes the traditional folk styles of southwest Louisiana with the sounds of early, African-American Rhythm & Blues, Blues, Jazz, and Gospel performers. The first recordings were in the late 1920s, but the style gained popularity in the 50s with Clifton Chenier and Boozoo Chavis. As in Cajun music, the dominant instrument is the accordion, but Zydeco often adds bass guitar, horns, and keyboards to the mix. By the 1940s, the use of rubboards (aka "washboards" or "frottoirs") had become a popular part of the Zydeco sound and the instrument is ubiquitous in modern Zydeco bands. New Orleans Blues is a type of blues that appears in Louisiana (more precisely around New Orleans) in the 1940s. It become popular in the 1950s and 1960s with artists like Professor Longhair and Guitar Slim. It takes influences from Jazz and Creole music, with strong use of saxophone and piano. Country Blues is the collective noun for all Blues genres originating from the (mostly southern) rural areas of the United States of America. Most Country Blues is acoustic in nature, since it developed before the invention of the electric guitar. Note: Country Blues should not be interpreted as a genre blending country music with blues music. In Traditional Country music styles are: Bluegrass, Close Harmony, Country Boogie, Country Gospel, Country Yodeling, Cowboy, Old-Time Acoustic Texas Blues is a genre of blues that, although named after the geographic location of its origin, is not bound to that region. Roughly, Acoustic Texas Blues was born in the 1880s and grew to its heyday during the 1920s with such artists as Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lightnin' Hopkins. Like many other blues genres, Acoustic Texas Blues underwent a major development with the invention of the electric guitar, giving birth to Electric Texas Blues during the 1940s. Some characteristics that distinguish Acoustic Texas Blues from other genres, are the focus on

laid back swing rhythms and the function of the guitar as an extension or ornamentation of the vocals, a feature which later developed into extensive guitar soloing. This is opposed to other acoustic styles such as Delta Blues, in which the guitar primarly has the function of a rhythmic accompaniment to the vocals. Piedmont blues developed from guitarists in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina, South Carolina, and upper Georgia who specialised in a more elaborate finger-picking style of guitar playing than bluesmen of the Mississippi Delta. The best examples of Piedmont Blues players are Barbecue Bob, Blind Willie McTell, and Rev. Gary Davis, but there are many more. Delta Blues. Perhaps the most influential of the many styles of blues music, Mississippi Delta blues (also called "Delta blues") rose out of tradition. 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, as also Acoustic Texas Blues and Piedmont Blues, is one of the many forms of what is called "country blues. Charley Patton is generally considered to be the first Delta blues star, and he traveled widely throughout the region, often with fellow bluesman Son House. Ishman Bracey, Tommy Johnson, Willie Brown, Tommy McClennan, Skip James and Robert Johnson are generally considered to be the most creative and influential of the Delta blues artists. Although best-known for their work in Chicago or Detroit, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and John Lee Hooker all came out of the Mississippi Delta. Acoustic Chicago Blues, also known as: Pre-electric Chicago Blues. Before electric Chicago blues came into fruition, Chicago still maintained a major blues output. Containing a more citylike, jazz influenced sound than blues from the delta region, the term acoustic Chicago blues is used to describe unplugged blues music in Chicago primarily during the 1930s and 1940s. However, certain albums like Folk Singer by Muddy Waters, released in 1964, still hold true to the genre's regional and acoustic qualities. Notable artists from this style include Big Bill Broonzy, John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, Tampa Red and Willie Dixon. Electric Texas blues is a genre of blues that, although named after the geographic location of its origin, is not bound to that region. It has its roots in Acoustic Texas Blues, from which it developed since the invention of the electric guitar. Notable Electric Texas Blues artists are TBone Walker and Freddie King. Some characteristics that distinguish it from other genres are the notable jazz-influences such as swing rhythms, extensive single string guitarsoloing and often the addition of a horn section to the group. Swamp blues (electric) originated in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the 1950s. It takes influences from Zydeco and Cajun, and has a laid-back, relaxed rhythm inspired by Jimmy Reed & Lightnin' Hopkins. Slim Harpo and Lightnin' Slim were the most well-known musicians of this genre, and the sound is readily apparent in Creedence Clearwater Revival. Electric Chicago Blues. It was the exodus of African-Americans from the Southern states northward to cities like St. Louis, Detroit, and Chicago that brougt the delta music to the big urban environments. 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. 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. What we consider to be the "classic" Chicago blues sound today developed during the 1940s and '50s. Talents like Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy, and Memphis Minnie were among the first generation of Chicago blues artists, and they paved the way (and often lent valuable support) for newcomers like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, and Willie Dixon. During the decade of the 1950s, Chicago blues ruled the R&B charts, and the style has heavily influenced soul, rhythm & blues, and rock music to this day.