Blues Scale

Blues Styles and Genres

Vaudeville Blues – A popular style of blues in the 1930′s. Vaudeville refers to a theatrical genre of entertainment in the United States in the 1930′s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Bessie Smith was a very popular Vaudeville blues signer and is known as the “Empress of the Blues”

Boogie-Woogie
Boogie-woogie refers to a particular style of jazz/blues piano, typically played at a rapid tempo, in which the left hand maintains a repeated rhythmic and melodic pattern in the bass and the right hand handles improvised variations in the treble. Gaining its name for posterity with the 1928 recording “Pinetop’s Boogie-Woogie,” by Clarence “Pine Top” Smith. Through the 1930s and 1940s, elements of boogie-woogie, particularly its repetitive blues bass lines, became integral components of big-band jazz, and would in later years form an important foundation of jump blues and early rock ‘n’ roll.

Gospel Blues – A style of blues that combines gospel music and blues. Churches often refered to blues as the devils music so many church goers would not want to be seen playing blues by their fellow church members.

British Blues – More than a geographical distinction, the British blues of the late 1950s and early 1960s paid strict adherence to replicating American blues genres. But by the time of the blues revival of the mid-1960s, British guitarists-mainly led by Eric Clapton-were starting to bend the form to create their own amalgam. Wedding the string-bending fervor of the BB, Albert, and Freddie King styles to the extreme volume produced by large amplifiers, British blues largely coalesced into blues-rock, with formerly traditional blues artists like the Rolling Stones and Clapton becoming rock stars.

Chicago Blues – Chicago blues style was developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, taking Delta blues, fully amplifying it, and putting it into a small-band context. Adding drums, bass, and piano (and sometimes saxophones) to the basic string band and harmonica aggregation, the style created the now standard blues band lineup. The form was (and is) flexible to accommodate singers, guitarists, pianists, and harmonica players as featured performers in front of the standard instrumentation.

Country Blues – Country blues is a catchall term that delineates the depth and breadth of the first flowering of guitar-driven blues, embracing solo, duo, and string band performers. The term also provides a convenient general heading for all the multiple regional styles and variations (Piedmont, Atlanta, Memphis, Texas, acoustic Chicago, Delta, ragtime, folk, songster, etc.) of the form.

Louisiana Blues – A looser, more laid-back, and percussive version of the Jimmy Reed side of the Chicago sound, Louisiana blues has several distinctive stylistic elements to distinguish it from other genres. The guitar work is simple but effective, heavily influenced by the boogie patterns used on Jimmy Reed singles, with liberal doses of Lightnin’ Hopkins and Muddy Waters thrown in for good measure. Unlike the heavy backbeat of the Chicago style, its rhythm can be best described as “plodding,” making even up-tempo tunes sound like slow blues simply played a bit faster.

New Orleans Blues - Primarily piano and horn-driven, New Orleans blues is enlivened by Caribbean rhythms, an unrelenting party atmosphere, and the “second-line” strut of the Dixieland music so indigenous to the area. There’s a cheerful, friendly element to the style that infuses the music with a good-time feel, no matter how somber the lyrical text. The music itself uses a distinctively “lazy” feel, with all of its somewhat complex rhythms falling just a hair behind the beat. But the vocals can run the full emotional gamut from laid-back crooning to full-throated gospel shouting, making for some interesting juxtapositions, both in style and execution.

Memphis Blues – A strain of country blues all its own, Memphis blues gives the rise of two distinct forms: the jug band (playing and singing a humorous, jazz-style of blues played on homemade instruments) and the beginnings of assigning parts to guitarists for solo (lead) and rhythm, a tradition that is now part and parcel of all modern day blues-and rock ‘n’ roll-bands. The earliest version of the genre was heavily tied to the local medicine show and vaudeville traditions, lasting well into the late 1930s.

Electric Blues – Electric blues is an eclectic genre that embraces just about every kind of blues that can be played on an amplified instrument. Its principal component is that of the electric guitar, but its amplified aspect can extend to the bass (usually a solid body Fender type model, but sometimes merely an old “slappin”’ acoustic with a pickup attached), harmonica, and keyboard instruments. Stylistically, the form is a wide-open field, accessible to just about every permutation possible— embracing the old, the new, and sometimes the futuristic. Some forms of it copy the older styles of urban blues (primarily the Chicago, Texas, and Louisiana variants), usually in a small-combo format, while others head into funk and soul territory. Yet electric blues is elastic enough to include artists who pay homage to those vintage styles of playing while simultaneously recasting them in contemporary fashion.

Texas Blues – A geographical subgenre earmarked by a more relaxed, swinging feel than other styles of blues, Texas blues encompasses a number of style variations and has a long, distinguished history. Its earliest incarnation occurred in the mid-1920s, featuring acoustic guitar work rich in filigree patterns-almost an extension of the vocals rather than merely a strict accompaniment to it. This version of Texas blues embraced both the songster and country-blues traditions, with its lyrics relying less on affairs of the heart than other forms. Stevie Ray Vaughn would be considered a Texas Blues Player.

Delta Blues – The Delta blues style comes from a region in the southern part of Mississippi, a place romantically referred to as “the land where the blues was born.” In its earliest form, the style became the first black guitar-dominated music to make it onto phonograph records back in the late 1920s. Although many original Delta blues performers worked in a string-band context for live appearances, very few of them recorded in this manner. Consequently, the recordings from the late 1920s through mid-1930s consist primarily of performers working in a solo, self-accompanied context.

West Coast Blues – More piano-based and jazz-influenced than anything else, West Coast blues is in actualy California style, with all of the genre’s main practitioners coming to prominence there, if not actual natives of the state.