Piedmont blues

Piedmont blues (also known as East Coast, or South- Davis.[4][5]

eastern blues) refers primarily to a guitar style, the Piedmont ngerstyle, which is characterized by a ngerpicking approach in which a regular, alternating thumb bass 2 Geography
string rhythmic pattern[1] supports a syncopated melody
using the treble strings generally picked with the forenger, occasionally others.[2] The result is comparable in The Piedmont blues was named after the Piedmont
plateau region, on the East Coast of the United States
sound to ragtime or stride piano styles.[2]
from about Richmond, Virginia to Atlanta, Georgia.
Blues researcher Peter B. Lowry coined the term, giving Piedmont blues musicians come from this area, as well
co-credit to fellow folklorist Bruce Bastin.[3] The Pied- as Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and
mont style is dierentiated from other styles, particu- northern Florida, western South Carolina, central North
larly the Mississippi Delta blues, by its ragtime-based Carolina, eastern Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama
rhythms.[1]
later the Northeastern cities such as Boston, Newark,
New Jersey, and New York.[2][6]

Origins
3 Recordings
Recording artists such as Blind Blake, Josh White, Buddy
Moss, and Blind Boy Fuller helped spread the style on
the strength of their sales throughout the region.[2] It was
nationally popular with the African-American audience
for about twenty years from the mid-1920s through to the
mid-1940s. Blind Boy Fuller's 1940 recording of "Step
It Up and Go" sold over half a million copies.

4 Post-World War II
As a form of Black American popular music, Piedmont
blues fell out of favor on a national basis after World War
II. By the late-1950s, it was being performed at US folk
music revivals and festivals initially by established Piedmont blues artists such as Josh White, Rev. Gary Davis,
and Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, as well as Cephas
& Wiggins, John Jackson in later years.[2][7]
While musicologists such as George Mitchell, Axel Kstner, Kip Lornell, Peter B. Lowry and Tim Duy collected
recordings by the aging community of Piedmont blues
players, younger musicians such as Stefan Grossman, Roy
Book Binder, Jorma Kaukonen, Paul Geremia, Keb Mo',
Michael Roach, Samuel James, Eric Bibb, Ry Cooder,
David Bromberg, Ernest Troost, and Guy Davis have carried on the Piedmont tradition, often having studied under some of the old Piedmont masters.[2] The Piedmont
style of guitar playing has also inuenced other popular
musicians such as Doc Watson, Paul Simon, Nick Drake,
Ralph McTell, and Mark Knoper.

Blind Willie McTell recording for John Lomax in an Atlanta hotel

room, 1940

The basis of the Piedmont style began with the older

frailing or framming guitar styles that may have been
universal throughout the South, and was also based, at
least to some extent, on formal parlor guitar techniques
as well as earlier banjo playing, string band, and ragtime.
What was particular to the Piedmont was that a generation of players adapted these older, ragtime-based
techniques to blues in a singular and popular fashion,
inuenced by guitarists such as Blind Blake and Gary
1

REFERENCES

Etta Baker
Ed Bell
Barbecue Bob
Blind Blake
Cephas & Wiggins
Elizabeth Cotten
Floyd Council
Reverend Gary Davis
Blind Boy Fuller
Peg Leg Howell
Luke Jordan
Carl Martin
Brownie McGhee
Blind Willie McTell
William Moore
Buddy Moss
Etta Baker with acoustic guitar. Photo taken in the front yard of
Bakers home in Morganton, North Carolina, 1995.

Bull City Red

Peg Leg Sam

Musicians

Lesley Riddle

Bumble Bee Slim

Drink Small
Baby Tate
Sonny Terry
Blind Willie Walker
Curley Weaver
Josh White

6 References
[1] UNC Asheville students (25 October 2005). East Coast
Piedmont Blues. Archived from the original on 8 February 2006. Retrieved 18 February 2014.

In the convict camp in Greene County, Georgia, 1941. Buddy

Moss is playing guitar; other men unidentied.

Main article: List of Piedmont blues musicians

Pink Anderson

[2] Du Noyer, Paul (2003). The Illustrated Encyclopedia of

Music (1st ed.). Fulham, London: Flame Tree Publishing.
p. 169. ISBN 1-904041-96-5.
[3] Harris, Je (6 September 2008). Some Ramblings On
Peter B. Lowry, Field Recording & The Trix Label. Big
Road Blues. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
[4] Lowry, Pete (1973). Some Cold, Rainy Day: Part 5
Robert and Charlie Hicks. Blues Unlimited (103): 15.

[5] Lowry, Pete (1972). Some Cold, Rainy Day: Part 2

Curley Weaver. Blues Unlimited (99): 1011.
[6] Bastin, Bruce (1986). Red River Blues: The Blues Tradition in the Southeast. University of Illinois Press.
[7] Bastin, Bruce (1993). Truckin' My Blues Away: East
Coast Piedmont Styles. In Cohn, Lawrence. Nothing
But The Blues: The Music and the Musicians. New York:
Abbeville Press.

Further reading
Bastin, Bruce (1971). Crying for the Carolines.
London: Studio Vista. ISBN 978-0-289-70209-3.
Bastin, Bruce (1995). Red River Blues: The Blues
Tradition in the Southeast. Urbana; Chicago: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-06521-7.
Cohen, Andrew M. (2008). The Hands of Blues
Guitarists. In Evans, David. Ramblin' on My Mind:
New Perspectives on the Blues. Urbana; Chicago:
University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-03203-9.
Lowry, Peter B. (1977). Atlanta Black Sound: A
Survey of Black music from Atlanta During the 20th
Century. The Atlanta Historical Bulletin II (2): 88
113.
Lowry, Peter B. (May 2003). Against the Wind:
Tim Duy and the Music Maker Relief Foundation. Rhythms (Melbourne) (130): 4850.
Lowry, Peter B. (June 2009). DIY Fieldwork:
George Mitchells Southern Trawlings. Rhythms
(Melbourne) (203): 26 27.
Welker, Gayle; Lowry, Peter B. (2006). Piedmont
Blues. In Komera, Edward. Routledge Encyclopedia of the Blues. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415-92699-8.

External links
Piedmont Blues Preservation Society

9 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

9.1

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9.2

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9.3

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