Blues

Blues is a music genre and musical form that began in African American communities in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 1800s. It grew out of spirituals, work songs, field hollers, and rhymed narrative ballads (rock.fandom.com, n.d.). At its core, the blues has stayed remarkably stable since it started. Think of it like a well worn recipe passed down through a family. The basic ingredients rarely change, but every cook adds their own touch.

The defining feature of blues is its structure. Most blues songs use simple three chord progressions, most often the 12-bar blues, where a repeating 12-measure pattern gives each verse its shape (Twelve-bar Blues, n.d.). That pattern acts like a set of train tracks. The chords stay fixed, but the singer and the musicians are free to improvise the "cargo," meaning the melody and the lyrics, within that fixed frame. Blues also relies on "blue notes," notes bent slightly flat for emotional effect, and a call and response pattern between voice and instrument (rock.fandom.com, n.d.).

In the late 1800s, southern African Americans passed these songs down by ear, and they mixed with American folk and country music from the Appalachian region. This produced regional styles across the South (AllMusic, n.d.-b). Early recorded blues from the early 1900s featured mostly acoustic guitar and piano. After World War II, the genre split in two directions. Some musicians kept the acoustic tradition alive, while others, following the lead of Muddy Waters, moved to electric instruments and built a louder, urban sound (AllMusic, n.d.-b).

Blues did not stay contained to its own genre either. Its chord progressions and vocal phrasing became the backbone of jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll (rock.fandom.com, n.d.). It is a bit like a root system underneath a forest. You may not see the blues directly in a rock song, but the roots are there feeding the whole tree.

Sources:

AllMusic. (n.d.-b). Blues music genre overview. https://www.allmusic.com/genre/blues-ma0000002467
Twelve-bar blues. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-bar_blues
Blues. (n.d.). In Rock Music Wiki. https://rock.fandom.com/wiki/Blues