The Blue

The Blues is a musical form and genre, which originated in South America within the African-American communities. It originated near the end of the 19th century, and was rooted from spirituals, work songs, field hollers (which are very similar to work songs, but some do not have lyrics), shouts and rhymes. The blues form in jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll; and each is characterised by a specific chord progression, the most common being the twelve bar blues. The blues notes, are played or sung flat or gradually bent (minor 3rd to major 3rd) in relation to the pitch of the major scale. Though the blues genre is heavily based upon the blues scale (blues form), there are other characteristics that they need to possess such as a specific lyric pattern, bass line and the use of certain instruments.There are many different types of blues, some of the most common being the Delta, Piedmont, Jump and the Chicago blues styles. There are many other different types of blues, ranging from country, to urban blues, some being more popular than others during different periods of the 20th century. It was during World War II, when blues was listened to by a much wider audience and marked the transition from acoustic blues to electric blues.

Along with its Jazz counterpart, Blues is the only true American music form and has deep roots in American history, particularly African-American history. The blues originated on the Southern plantations in the 19th Century. Its inventors were slaves, ex-slaves and the descendants of slaves. During their back-breaking work in the fields of the Southern plantations, black slaves developed a way of singing to make the pain of their enslavement more bearable. This way of singing was known as ‘call and response’, and began when one man with a strong voice would start a song, which all of the other workers seemed to know and would have a response back to the call. These "field hollers" served as a basis of all blues music that was to follow. The blues grew up in the Mississippi Delta just upriver from New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz. Blues and jazz have always influenced each other, and they still interact in countless ways today. Unlike jazz, the blues didn't spread out significantly from the South to the Midwest until the 1930s and '40s. Once the Delta blues made their way up the Mississippi to urban areas, the music evolved into electrified Chicago blues, other regional blues styles, and various jazz-blues hybrids. During the 1960’s and the 1970’s a hybrid form of blues evolved and became known as blues-rock.

The 12 bar blues is the most common form of blues. The term ’12 bar’ refers to the number of musical bars, or measures used to express the theme of a typical blues song. Most, nearly all, blues music is played to a 4/4 time signature, meaning there will be 4 beats to a bar or measure, and each quarter note is equivalent to one beat. The 12 bar blues is separated into 3 four bar segments, a standard blues progression would typically feature, 3 chords based upon the first (I), fourth (IV), and the fifth (V) notes of the eight note scale. The chord progression in the first four bars (the first segment) is, ‘I, I, I, I’ the chord progression in the second four bars (the second segment) is ‘IV, IV, I, I’ and the chord progression in the third four bars (the third segment) is ‘V, IV, I, V’. This is the usual progression of chords in 12 bar blues music, though there have been some variations over the years.

Blues music has used a wide range of instruments throughout history; some of the most common and typical instruments being the guitar, bass guitar, piano, harmonica, double bass, drums, saxophone, trumpet, trombone and vocals. The blues scale is based on the minor pentatonic scale; however, because blues notes have a different form, there can be no, one blues scale. The blues scale consists of six different notes; the five notes of the minor pentatonic scale plus one additional note – the diminished fifth. The semitone differences for a blues scale are 3-2-1-1-3-2; so for instance, the C blues scale would consist of the notes, C-Eb-F-F#-G-Bb-C.

The lyrics to a blues song are generally usually about life, to be more specific, the bad things in life. They can be about anything, traditional blues often being about the pain and cruelty of labour or broken relationships and the lines are often sung following a pattern closer to a rhythmic talk than to a melody.The lyrics of 12 bar blues music, follows the pattern ‘AAB’. The ‘A’ refers to the first and second verses and the ‘B’ refers to the third verse. In a 12 bar blues, generally, the first two lines are the same (repeated) and the third line is different, often a response to the first two lines, but also rhymes with the first line. In each 12-bar stanza, the third four-bar segment, serves to resolve the previous four-bar segments. The resolution may signal the end of the song or set up another verse. If the song continues, the transition to the next stanza is known as the turnaround.

The earliest form of blues are referred to as ‘country blues’ and was born in the American South in the late 19th Century. It has been known by many other names, some of which are, ‘old-time blues’, ‘acoustic blues’ and ‘deep blues’. This form of blues is generally driven by an acoustic guitar, hence its reference as the ‘acoustic blues’; but it generally consists of nothing more than a guitar and its player, though early piano based blues pieces would also fall under this category. One very famous country blues musician was Bukka White, and his music was around during the 1930’s onwards.

There are many different types of blues music, one of which is the Delta Blues. The Delta Blues, is named after its place of origin, the Mississippi delta; the Delta Blues is very similar to the country blues, in the sense that they are both an acoustically driven and guitar focused blues genre. But unlike the country blues, the delta blues doesn’t focus on the ‘rural’ sounding finger picking guitar sounds, but focuses more on the guitar slide, a powerful sound which creates more passion, which was a sound exclusive to the blues genre of that time. Some of the earliest blues recordings were delta blues music. Robert Johnson was among the many delta blues musicians, and was very famous for his music, then and now and his first recording of delta blues was in 1936.

The Chicago Blues was very different to both the country and delta blues. It was different in the sense that it brought change among the traditional blues music. In the 1940s when blues musicians moved to North America, they took the South American born blues music with them as well; and what started off as a genre for a guitar player and his guitar, changed in the clubs of the city, with additional instruments such as harmonica players, horn sections and drum line-ups. This band feature of blues was very important to all blues genres after it because it influenced many and was the foundations for what became rock music in the 1950s. A very famous blues musician was Charlie Musselwhite, who was a harpist who was musically active in the 1960s and helped to bring blues music to a young white audience.

Blues Rock is one of the most modern genres of blues, and originated in England. Blues Rock was formed when artists like Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton took their love of classic blues and combined it with the pop-rock sound of acts like The Beatles. Blues-rock places heavy emphasis on guitar riffs, and its guitar-centric sound helped influence 70s rock and eventually helped to create heavy metal.