blues genres

contributed by clair delune

Griots
The griots, or singer/storytellers, of the African tribes were both historians and entertainers.  Revered and somewhat feared, the griots were admired much like rock stars today but were segregated... when dead, they were “buried” in a hollow log away from the tribe.

Work songs/field hollers/Spirituals
This set of genres developed from the griots songs/stories and were a way for the slaves to keep their family histories as intact as possible.  The tribes were not kept together, nor were families, so the songs became a mixture of the total slave experience, reflecting the shared miseries and hopes of a people as they worked in the fields, adopted and merged old religions with the Christianity of the plantation masters, and often, once slavery was abolished, served time on prison chain gangs.  For the field hollers, the key was slow easy rhythms that made time pass more easily; however, the cadence was of utmost import for the work songs, and the hope and secret messages, coded to keep slave masters from understanding them, were the key to the spirituals, many of which were eventually amended into blues songs.

Classic Blues singers
The ’20s fostered the advent of recorded music and opera was a popular entertainment medium.  The early blues was merged by women singers into a strange mixture... blues songs delivered by extravagantly dressed women.  Topics ranged from death, prostitution, thwarted love, cheating men, and allusions to lesbianism.    The heyday of the Classic Blues singers, notably that of singers such as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Clara Smith and Ida Cox, ran for a little over a decade and met its demise with the advent of the depression and moving pictures.

Itinerant singers
Lone bluesmen, toting portable and cheap instruments such as harmonicas and guitars, took center stage away from the Classic Blues Women.  People didn’t want to hear the laments of the women singers who drew out notes and flaunted expensive gowns and had large entourages.  Cheap and solo was the way of the ’30s, with musicians hopping freights, catching rides from town to town or just walking to their next gig, which might be playing a house party, a jook joint or a street corner for tips. Early blues influences became regionally noticeable, influenced and defined by travelers as well as those from the region.

Delta Blues
Often considered the only “true” blues, Delta Blues sprung from the Mississippi Delta, not truly a delta, but an affluvial plain that is known as “the birthplace of the blues.”  Artists from this region include Tommy Johnson (who bragged that he sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads), Charley Patton (a known trouble maker and showstopper who is the first documented musician to play his guitar behind his head -- sorry, Jimi!), Son House (who struggled all his life between secular and spiritual music and finally chose blues for the lure of whiskey and women), and Robert Johnson (who pitty-patted as a young boy behind these seminal bluesmen, sometimes crawling underneath the jooks to watch them through the floorboards if he was not allowed in; and who denied the rumor attributed to him about a crossroads deal with the devil).  The list of Delta blues artists is “as long as your right arm” and today boasts Honeyboy Edwards and Robert Jr. Lockwood (Robert Johnson’s stepson from his common law marriage) as its helmsmen.

Piedmont Blues
The barrier of the Appalachian Mountains geographically set the Piedmont region off from the Delta blues region.  The arrival of immigrants from Europe added more harmonics and took away from the pentatonic throbbing, which is Afro-centric, found in the Delta.  Piedmont blues involves more upbeat strumming and picking, which is often called “raggy” or “ragtime.”  The messages and songs were less droning and often contained humorous references.  North Carolina’s Blind Boy Fuller, and South Carolina’s own Blind Gary Davis and Pink Anderson are well-known Piedmont Bluesmen.  You can experience Piedmont Blues authentically replicated by the New Legacy Duo.

Jug Bands
Jug bands were a short-lived phenomenon in most cities except for Memphis, which had the most in number and in lifespan.  Homemade instruments were a primary feature of this type of blues, with the top billing going to the jugs.  Gus Cannon and the Memphis Jug Band are two good examples of this vaudeville based blues.

Logging Camps and Barrelhouses
Pianos were not portable, and they were expensive, so the four places that featured pianos were churches, houses of ill-repute (to entertain customers when not otherwise “engaged”), barrelhouses and logging camp meeting houses - and only three of those were likely to play blues.  Players worked on a rotating basis and traveled without instruments.  Barrelhouses were named for their trademark of offering one price admission (usually five cents with your own cup) for all the prohibition whiskey you could dip out of the barrel.  

Ho kum
Ribald, double-entrendre blues with a humorous aspect was very popular in the ’30s and is still popular today.  Bo Carter, one of the Chatmon family of musicians, was a prime purveyor of hokum blues, with hits such as “Banana in Your Fruit Basket” and “Please Warm My Weiner” bringing two quite different interpretations to mind.

Country Blues
Simple instruments, lyrics and chord progressions mark the country blues, which is found all over the southeast.  Usually one or two players, not bands, used this style as a form of entertainment prior to the advent of TV and AC.  Sometimes called Front Porch Blues.

White Country Blues
The Appalachian Mountains formed a great divide between the Delta and the Piedmont.  From its protected vantage point the descendants of Scottish and Irish immigrants in the mountains and eastward took blues-based songs and merged them with instruments no longer popular in blues such as the banjo, combined the blues lament with higher pitches, shorter sustains and the yodel -- the European version of the holler -- and out came White Country Blues.  Some artists, whose pictures had not been seen, were so reminiscent of black performers they were considered bluesmen (and at times their recordings were mistakenly released on what were called “Race labels”) but most were clearly pivotal in the development of a new evolution of blues.  Out of this has come country music, with Jimmie Rodgers at the helm, and bluegrass, with shy West Virginian Dock Boggs having led the way playing his clawhammer banjo.

U rban Blues
Urban blues found its roots in the cities when the great migration took place.  Lonnie Johnson is considered the father of urban blues, and used clean picking and faster rhythms to underpin the “citified” lyrics of urban blues.  St. Louis, Kansas City, and New York City were the triumvirate of early urban blues.

Midwest blues of St . Louis and Kansas City
Another style of urbanized blues, although much less jazzy than the Kansas City blues style, St. Louis Blues featured artists such as Lonnie Johnson, Roosevelt Sykes (“The Honey Dripper”), “Little Alice” Moore and Peetie Wheatstraw (“The Devil’s Son-in-Law”; “The High Sheriff of Hell”) and was heavily barrelhouse-based.  Kansas City blues often featured larger combos and the jazzier/swingier/jump stylings used by Jay McShann and Wynonie Harris.  Kansas City Blues was quite similar to New York City Blues and both cities featured Big Joe Turner.  KC Blues was strongly influenced the evolution of West Coast Blues.

Memphis
Soul City USA is also home to Memphis Blues and the infamous Beale Street.  Just north of the Mississippi Delta, it was often one of the first stops for sharecroppers leaving the harsh work of the cotton fields with a dream of playing music for a living.  Memphis blues is often tinged with the soul-based sounds of horn sections, but a good portion of Memphis blues was recorded by Sun Records musical visionary, Sam Phillips, who recorded the early tunes of Chicago greats such as Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters (then Chester Burnett and McKinley Morganfield), along with Memphis legends such as Furry Lewis, and yes, Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, who started with Arthur Crudup’s blues tune, “That’s All Right (Mama).”

Soul Blues
Marrying horns and the soul beat to a blues tune marries them into what is called Soul Blues.  Ann Peebles, Irma Thomas, Bobby Blue Bland, Johnny Taylor and the latest entry, Robert Cray are excellent at this format.

Jump/Swing/Boogie-Woogie
Where blues, rock and roll, rhythm and blues and jazz intersected, out sprang the styles of Jump and Swing and Boogie-Woogie.  Although often used to group the genres, Jump, Swing and Boogie-Woogie are three separate genres with their own distinctions.  Jump is the most blues-based of the three and is closely associated with the roots of Rock’n’Roll.  Perhaps the best example of a great Jump artist is Louis Jordan, who was one of the top Blues Shouters (having a voice that could clearly be heard over a large, loud orchestra without amplification).   His Saturday Night Fish Fry is a classic Jump tune.  Early Swing is different from the term as it applies to today’s music (the term “swing” now encompasses the three genres as a whole, ironically with the least emphasis from the older Swing tunes).  The Swing of the ’30s and ’40s had some Jump aspect to it, but the term Swing came from the slower, dreamy, swingy melodies associated with Glenn Miller, and not as much with artists like Cab Calloway, whose recordings were more upbeat and frantic than most Swing.  Boogie Woogie came into its own as it evolved from Barrelhouse boogie piano stylings into one of the main tributaries to the birth of Rhythm and Blues (original definition - NOT today’s concept of R&B music) then eventually into Rock’n’Roll.  One of the seminal boogie woogie based tunes is Jackie Brenston’s (w/ Ike Turner)Rocket 88, arguably one of the world’s first R&R songs.   Carolina boasts its own King of Jump Blues, Nappy Brown, one of the finest blues shouters of the last half-century!

LOUSIANNA
Swamp Music
As dark as the deepest swamps, this style of music reflects the Louisiana topography.  Excello has compiled some wonderful examples of the genre on it’s four volume collection featuring numerous artists and songs you may not have heard of and some you have, such as Slim Harpo’s Baby Scratch My Back.

New Orleans Blues
Professor Longhair and James Booker rolling those 88 keys in a rollicking way that keeps one rocking were the inspiration for latter day Nawlins greats such as Dr. John.    Fird “Blind” “Snooks” Eaglin is another example who plays with the New Orleans influence, but is closer to traditional blues.  Irma Thomas “The Crescent City Queen” provides a good example of Nawlins predilection for beautifully mixing a bit of soul into the blues stew.  Find a recording from the original Goldband label and you will get exposed to this wonderful style that generated great dance beats in the ’50s.

Zydeco and Cajun music
A common misconception is that Zydeco and Cajun styles are interchangeable.  Similar, yes, but they are quite distinctly different.  As blues is to country music, Zydeco (which is played by Creoles) is to Cajun (which is played by Acadians).  Stanley Dural (Buckwheat Zydeco) has a rider in his contract that insists he will not play if he is referred to as a Cajun artist.  He says “they are from two nationalities, a white and a black nationality, speaking the same language, playing the same instruments, but different types of music from different parts of the world.  And I think that's wonderful." 

Creole originally referred to Louisiana-born people of French or Spanish parentage. The slave trade of the late-1700s changed the definition of Creole to mean slaves born in the colonies (esclavos Criollos), as opposed to those from Africa (esclavos Africanos).  Cajun is a derivative of Acadian; the group is mainly comprised of descendants of relocated French settlers expelled from Nova Scotia in 1755 by the British.  Cajun music is associated with the fiddle but Zydeco features the washboard and the accordion.

Regardless, both styles are predominantly swingy and upbeat, with Zydeco getting downright festively frenetic at times, and both feature French lyrics and make it difficult to keep still or remain in a bad mood.  Although Clifton Chenier, whose son C.J. Chenier is currently on tour, is often referred to as the father of Zydeco, some give that honor to Amedé Ardoin.

Texas
Although often ascribed to Muddy Waters in Chicago, the first guitarist to “plug in” to the electric scene was Aaron Thibeaux (T-Bone) Walker from the Oak Cliff section of Dallas.  Texas blues is an amalgam of styles and influences, with country blues as popularized by Blind Lemon Jefferson; swamp blues, R&B and a little rock getting mixed together.  The saying that “everything is bigger in Texas” accounts for the big sound of Texas blues, where the competition is fierce and the showmanship is grand.  From early country bluesmen such as Henry Thomas, who played the panpipes with very little deviation from the original style found on the African savannas (check out his Bull Doze Blues, covered in the ’60s by Canned Heat as Going Up the Country) to Victoria Spivey, a singer and composer of the ’20s and ’30s who owned her own label and wrote Blind Lemon Jefferson’s signature tune, to the Blues Rock explosion created by groups like the Fabulous Thunderbirds and the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, Texas blues is as big as Texas itself.  For good roadhouse Texas blues with a little Mexican flavor, dish up some Long John Hunter.

Chicago
The Big Four of Chicago Blues have long since passed on, but their influence is often what people think of first when blues is mentioned.  The standard blues progression with walking bass lines and a strong bottom end is a staple of many current musical genres, most notably Rock.  Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson (II) were the kingpins of legendary Chess Records Company.  Electric blues driven by strong guitar leads and powerful harmonica riffs, overlaid by growling, gruff vocals about life, love and misery led to one of the biggest musical scenes in American Music.  Chicago is still known for its blues scene which includes an almost endless list of greats, now deceased.  The current blues scene is led now by Chicago’s reigning blues king, Buddy Guy.

Detroit
Three words:  John Lee Hooker

British Blues
What had died out in America, or been killed by its own offspring (note: see B.B. King’s Blues Had a Baby and They Named it Rock ‘n’Roll), was rediscovered and revitalized in the early ’60s by British musicians, notably John Mayall and everyone he played with and influenced.  Others found inspiration digging through their parents record collections for swing numbers, such as Ray Davies of the Kinks who became inspired to mimic R&B stylings by Big Bill Broonzy’s recordings.  This brought the blues/rock influence full circle, with artists like the Rolling Stones, in the height of Rock frenzy, paying homage to their idols by appearing on television with artists such as Howlin’ Wolf.  The British Invasion owes much of its ammunition to the stores of blues 78s these artists were snapping up and covering on their early records.  Alexis Korner and John Mayall and his Bluesbreakers were a revolving door for unknown players, such as Eric Clapton, who gained huge fame in the Rock world in later years.  Later just the influences would remain.  What evolved from Blues to R&B, to Rock’n’Roll to just Rock overtook the AM and FM stations in the late ’60s and early ’70s.  Bands such as Savoy Brown, who are to appear at the 2001 Columbia Blues Festival,  stayed true to the blues roots while deepening the rock aspects, eventually influencing the development of Heavy Metal.

West Coast
The jump scene rose and never died in California and swing is where it is at.  Until July 2001, it was also the adopted home of John Lee Hooker, the King of Boogie.  The beat is central to this style of music, which is usually very danceable.  The 1950s is the decade most associated with this style of music, and the bands often adopt the clothing and hairstyles of that time along with its heartbeat and verve.  Charles Brown (composer of “Merry Christmas, Baby” and “Black Night”) called the West Coast home, and had a gentler, albeit swingy style.  Johnny Otis, ostensibly the only Greek Bluesman, brought a more upbeat style to the Coast.  Currently, hot players and bands such as Mitch Woods and his Rocket 88’s have been joined by award winning-bands like Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers, Rusty Zinn and other young hawks.