|
Wow! That's a tough question to answer concisely, but we'll give it the old Yahoo! try. The blues originally grew out of African spirituals and worksongs, featuring simple three-chord song structures that left plenty of room for vocal and instrumental improvisation. It has since grown into a huge, diverse, and distinctively American style of music. The Delta Blues, the first magnetically recorded style of blues, comes from northwestern Mississippi. Most of these recordings, from the late '20s through mid-'30s, feature solo performers (who were often plantation workers) playing slide guitars. This is stripped down music with feeling,
as anyone listening to the hair-raising work of Charley Patton, Skip James (recently featured on the Ghost World soundtrack), or Robert Johnson can attest. The Chicago Blues of the late 1940s and early 1950s added electric guitars, drums, and keyboards to the Delta blues DNA. Most of the blues you hear in television ads or radio shows is Chicago blues.
This is the music that famously gave birth to rock and roll. Check out Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, or Little Walter -- Keith Richards certainly did. You'll find plenty of essays, artist biographies, and recommended blues recordings at the invaluable AllMusic site.
|
