Portal:Blues

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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 has 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.

Blues music 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 African-American community, the spirituals. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery, with the development of juke joints occurring later. 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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The London Muddy Waters Sessions is a studio album by Muddy Waters, released in 1972 on Chess Records. A follow-up to 1971's The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions, the concept was to combine American bluesmen with British and Irish blues/rock stars. The album was an attempt to capitalise on the increasing popularity of traditional blues music and blues artists in Britain.

The London Muddy Waters Sessions won the 1972 Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording; it marked the second of six times that Muddy Waters would win that award. (Full article...)

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Buddy Guy performing in Toronto, Canada

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Quotes

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Blues is really America's finest art form and most dominant art form of the 20th century.

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— Georgie Fame

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Blues is a natural fact, something that a fellow lives. If you don't live it, you don't have it.

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— Big Bill Broonzy

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The blues is a low-down achin' heart disease
Like consumption killing me by degrees.

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— Robert Johnson, "Preaching Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)"

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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.

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— Lead Belly

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The blues had a baby and they named it rock and roll.

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— Muddy Waters

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Eddie Jones (December 10, 1926 – February 7, 1959), known as Guitar Slim, was an American guitarist in the 1940s and 1950s, best known for the million-selling song "The Things That I Used to Do", for Specialty Records. It is listed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Slim had a major impact on rock and roll and experimented with distorted tones on the electric guitar a full decade before Jimi Hendrix. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various blues-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Detail from cover of The Celebrated Negro Melodies, as Sung by the Virginia Minstrels, 1843 (from Origins of the blues)
Image 2Robben Ford, 2007 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 3Ethel Waters, 1943 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 4Son Seals, 1977 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 5Cedric Burnside, 2018 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 6Eric Bibb, 2006 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 7Robert Cray, 2007 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 8Bobby "Blue" Bland (from List of blues musicians)
Image 9Louis Jordan in New York City, 1946 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 10Dexter Allen, 2004 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 11Susan Tedeschi, 2006 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 12Freddie King in Paris, 1975 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 13Pinetop Perkins in Paris, 1976 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 14Big Joe Turner, 1955 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 15Luther Allison (from List of blues musicians)
Image 16George "Harmonica" Smith, 1980 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 17Emancipation from Freedmen's viewpoint; illustration from Harper's Weekly 1865 (from Origins of the blues)
Image 18Mississippi Fred McDowell, 1972 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 19Koko Taylor, 2006 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 20Deborah Coleman, 2009 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 21B.B. King in Rome, 1984 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 22Lead Belly (from List of blues musicians)
Image 23A watercolor painting of a camp meeting circa 1839 (New Bedford Whaling Museum). (from Origins of the blues)
Image 24Curley Weaver (from List of blues musicians)
Image 25Hubert Sumlin in Montreux, 1978 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 26Roy Rogers, 2014 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 27Corey Harris, 2006 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 28Lucky Peterson (from List of blues musicians)
Image 29Jimmy Rogers, 1991 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 30Lowell Fulson in Paris, 1980 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 31Chris Thomas King, 2005 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 32Eric Clapton, 2006 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 33Junior Wells, 1983 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 34Eddie Clearwater in Montreux, 1978 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 35Muddy Waters with James Cotton, 1971 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 36Jimmy Burns, 2012 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 37Willie Dixon at Monterey Jazz Festival, 1981 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 38Ma Rainey (from List of blues musicians)
Image 39John Lee Hooker in Toronto, 1978 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 40Master Kora maker Alieu Suso in the Gambia (from Origins of the blues)
Image 41Henry Townsend, 1983 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 42Son House (from List of blues musicians)
Image 43Charlie Musselwhite, 2003 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 44Jimmy Witherspoon, 1974 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 45Shemekia Copeland, 2019 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 46Robert Jr. Lockwood, 1982 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 47"Sweet Home Chicago" performed at the White House with Barack Obama joining B.B. King on the chorus (from List of blues standards)
Image 48Keb' Mo', 2012 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 49Jimmy Rushing, 1946 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 50Joe Louis Walker, 2007 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 51Mississippi John Hurt, 1964 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 52Memphis Minnie, 1930 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 53Bessie Smith, 1936 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 54Kenny Neal, 2012 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 55RonnieEarl, 1996 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 56Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, 1999 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 57Big Joe Williams, 1971 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 58Buddy Moss in Georgia prison camp, 1941 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 59Debbie Davies, 2019 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 60Otis Rush, 1997 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 61Alvin Youngblood Hart, 2009 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 62T-Bone Walker at American Folk Blues Festival, Hamburg, 1972 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 63Eddie Shaw, 2015 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 64Billy Boy Arnold (from List of blues musicians)
Image 65Mamie Smith (from List of blues musicians)
Image 66Albert Collins at Long Beach Blues Festival, 1990 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 67An 1890s photo of the tourist steamer Okahumke'e on the Ocklawaha River, with black guitarists on board (from Origins of the blues)
Image 68Luther Tucker, 1964 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 69Blind Lemon Jefferson (from List of blues musicians)
Image 70Kenny Wayne Shepherd, 2010 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 71Sara Martin and Sylvester Weaver (from List of blues musicians)
Image 72Lonnie Johnson, 1941 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 73Paul Butterfield at Woodstock Reunion, 1979 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 74Albert King in Paris, 1978 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 75Jay McShann in Edinburgh, c.1995 (from List of blues musicians)
Image 76Buddy Guy, 2008 (from List of blues musicians)