Portal:Blues
Portal:Blues
Portal maintenance status: (May 2020)
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The Blues Portal
Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated amongst African-Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.
"The Blues" is characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the AAB pattern, consisting of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer concluding line over the last bars. Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the racial discrimination and other challenges experienced by African-Americans.
Many elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa. The origins of the blues are also closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community, the spirituals. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery. Later, the development of juke joints. It is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century. The first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a wide variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues and West Coast blues. World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a hybrid form called blues rock developed, which blended blues styles with rock music. (Full article...)
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Quotes
“ | Blues is really America's finest art form and most dominant art form of the 20th century. | ” |
— Georgie Fame |
“ | Blues is a natural fact, something that a fellow lives. If you don't live it, you don't have it. | ” |
— Big Bill Broonzy |
“ | The blues is a low-down achin' heart disease Like consumption killing me by degrees. |
” |
— Robert Johnson, "Preaching Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)" |
“ | When you lay down at night, turning from one side of the bed to the other and can't sleep, what's the matter? Blues got you. | ” |
— Lead Belly |
“ | The blues had a baby and they named it rock and roll. | ” |
— Muddy Waters |
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Edward James "Son" House Jr. (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988) was an American Delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.
After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also working as a church pastor, he turned to blues performance at the age of 25. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. In a short career interrupted by a spell in Parchman Farm penitentiary, he developed his musicianship to the point that Charley Patton, the foremost blues artist of the Mississippi Delta region, invited him to share engagements and to accompany him to a 1930 recording session for Paramount Records. (Full article...)General images - load new batch
- Image 1Sara Martin and Sylvester Weaver (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 2Willie Dixon at Monterey Jazz Festival, 1981 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 3Jay McShann in Edinburgh, c.1995 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 4Corey Harris, 2006 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 5Eric Clapton, 2006 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 6Louis Jordan in New York City, 1946 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 7Jimmy Rogers, 1991 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 8Lead Belly (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 9Henry Townsend, 1983 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 10Joe Louis Walker, 2007 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 11Buddy Moss in Georgia prison camp, 1941 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 12Bobby "Blue" Bland (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 13Albert King in Paris, 1978 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 14Eric Bibb, 2006 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 15Blind Lemon Jefferson (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 16Keb' Mo', 2012 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 17Robben Ford, 2007 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 18Cedric Burnside, 2018 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 19Jimmy Rushing, 1946 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 20Ma Rainey (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 21Koko Taylor, 2006 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 22Freddie King in Paris, 1975 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 23Alvin Youngblood Hart, 2009 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 24Curley Weaver (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 25Muddy Waters with James Cotton, 1971 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 26Albert Collins at Long Beach Blues Festival, 1990 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 27An 1890s photo of the tourist steamer Okahumke'e on the Ocklawaha River, with black guitarists on board (from Origins of the blues)
- Image 28Mississippi Fred McDowell, 1972 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 29B.B. King in Rome, 1984 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 30Luther Tucker, 1964 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 31Buddy Guy, 2008 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 32Otis Rush, 1997 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 33Lonnie Johnson, 1941 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 34Memphis Minnie, 1930 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 35RonnieEarl, 1996 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 36Shemekia Copeland, 2019 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 37Detail from cover of The Celebrated Negro Melodies, as Sung by the Virginia Minstrels, 1843 (from Origins of the blues)
- Image 38Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, 1999 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 39Big Joe Williams, 1971 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 40Deborah Coleman, 2009 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 41Mamie Smith (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 42Chris Thomas King, 2005 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 43Kenny Wayne Shepherd, 2010 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 44Lucky Peterson (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 45George "Harmonica" Smith, 1980 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 46Debbie Davies, 2019 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 47Charlie Musselwhite, 2003 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 48Paul Butterfield at Woodstock Reunion, 1979 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 49Lowell Fulson in Paris, 1980 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 50Kenny Neal, 2012 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 51Son Seals, 1977 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 52John Lee Hooker in Toronto, 1978 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 53Ethel Waters, 1943 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 54Jimmy Witherspoon, 1974 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 55T-Bone Walker at American Folk Blues Festival, Hamburg, 1972 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 56A watercolor painting of a camp meeting circa 1839 (New Bedford Whaling Museum). (from Origins of the blues)
- Image 57Luther Allison (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 58Pinetop Perkins in Paris, 1976 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 59"Sweet Home Chicago" performed at the White House with Barack Obama joining B.B. King on the chorus (from List of blues standards)
- Image 60Mississippi John Hurt, 1964 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 61Bessie Smith, 1936 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 62Eddie Shaw, 2015 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 63Emancipation from Freedmen's viewpoint; illustration from Harper's Weekly 1865 (from Origins of the blues)
- Image 64Roy Rogers, 2014 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 66Jimmy Burns, 2012 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 67Eddie Clearwater in Montreux, 1978 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 68Billy Boy Arnold (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 69Big Joe Turner, 1955 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 70Susan Tedeschi, 2006 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 71Son House (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 72Hubert Sumlin in Montreux, 1978 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 73Junior Wells, 1983 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 74Dexter Allen, 2004 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 75Robert Jr. Lockwood, 1982 (from List of blues musicians)
- Image 76Robert Cray, 2007 (from List of blues musicians)
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