Minnesota Music Listening Contest

The Blues and its Heirs

 

It has been said that the Blues is the easiest thing to learn and the hardest thing to master.  It is easy because it consists of a simple form of chord progression and verses.  It is hard to master because it requires a deep-felt connection between the soul and the instrument or voice in order to express the emotion.   More than anything else, it is this feeling which is the essence of the Blues.

 

The Origins of the Blues

The short answer to the origin of the blues is that it came directly from African-American spirituals (congregational songs dedicated to God) and work songs (songs sung by workers doing manual labor).  Modern researchers have speculated, although it has not been proven, that the origin of the Blues is a little more complicated than that.  They argue that it stems from the blend of African modal melodies with the harmonic structure provided by instruments of European folk music such as that of the Irish.  The synthesis of these two cultures is plausible in that both worked side by side while doing manual labor in the late 19^th-century. 

 

Over generations, the Irish, as well as other ethnic European cultures, chose to shed their unique identities in order to assimilate to the established “white” society.  The first African-Americans on the other hand had no choice as they were robbed of their culture.  They were kidnapped from their homes in Africa, sold into slavery, and forbidden to practice their culturally unique customs.  Bigotry forced them into the homogenized category, “black” even though they too came from many unique cultures.

 

The Emergence of the Blues

The first known existence of what we call the blues appeared in the lower Mississippi River valley in the late 1890s.  These early musicians used guitar, banjo, harmonica, and piano.  Blues songs were passed from musician to musician, not in written notation, but by word of mouth, gradually developing a formal structure. 

 

The first person to successfully publish the blues in sheet music was W.C. Handy with his song “Memphis Blues” (1912).  The success of his early publications earned him the title, “Father of the Blues”.  Soon other composers jumped on the bandwagon and by the 1920s the blues was being played and arranged for large bands and singers.

 

The Blues (and the related genre of Jazz) influenced composers of European heritage both in the United States and abroad.  By the early 1950s it lost popularity in the U.S. as Rock and Roll and R&B began to dominate the airwaves.  It was then re-introduced to young white Americans in the 1960s when British bands like The Rolling Stones, Cream, and Led Zeppelin began performing songs written by the older generation of American blues musicians

 

The Blues has since retained its popularity in all parts of the United States and the World.

 

Textual Elements of the Blues

Blues lyrics usually describe the hardships and injustices of life.  In a twelve-bar blues (see below) the lyrics consist of three equal lines of text.  The second line repeats the first and the third line acts as a conclusion.

 

Musical Elements of the Blues

Blue notes are an identifying characteristic of the blues.  I define blue notes as an ambiguous pitch that spans a rough interval of a whole step.[1]  The three most common locations for blue notes (although they can occur anywhere) are the intervals of the flatted third and natural third; the tritone and the fifth; and the flatted seventh and the natural seventh. 

 

The human voice is the best place to listen for these ambiguities.  When blues notes are applied to instruments such as the piano and the guitar, adjustments have to be made.  It is a little easier on the guitar because a player may simply bend the string to alter the pitch.  The piano unfortunately can only play twelve exact pitches. 

 

Below is an example of a five-note (i.e. pentatonic) blues scale.  The standard five pitches are (C-E-F-G-Bb).  The first ambiguity is Eb and E.  A player can choose to play either pitch, or might briefly start on one and slide into the other.  Because of this, a blues song can sound both major and minor at the same time.

 

 

The second and sixth degrees are also used in blues, but do not occur as frequently.  The pentatonic blues scale is especially useful in the guitar-based blues to which Rock ’n Roll and Country are heirs. 

 

Below is a graphical representation (i.e. tablature) of the lowest four strings on a guitar. This is not essential to memorize, but the concept is important to understand.

 

 

Each block represents a fret on the guitar.  Frets are those metal bars on the neck which divide the string into half steps.  For example, the “missing blocks” on the low E string are C# and D.  If you stare it this long enough you might start noticing some geometric patterns.

 

Understanding these “geometrical” relationships is important because many of the early guitar players (even those great guitarists from the 1960s) did not read music.  They read patterns.  These patterns are idiomatic to the guitar and the bass and do not translate well to piano or wind instruments.  These idioms had an impact on the selection of pitches used for melodies.  It is from these idioms that much of modern pop music evolved.

 

Harmonic and Rhythmic Elements of the Blues

As I said at the beginning, Blues is essentially about conveying feeling.  It can therefore take on many structural forms.  The most basic form of blues is called a 12-bar blues.  A bar is the same thing as a measure.  Metrically, a 12-bar blues is generally felt in 4/ 4 meter.  Another variation is the blues shuffle which is best notated in 12 /8 (i.e. 4 /4 where the quarter notes are sub-divided into triplets).

 

The blues also uses 3 harmonic chords, the tonic (I), the sub-dominant (IV), and the dominant (V7).  The arrangement of these chords is shown below.

 

Bar number	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
chord	I	IV	I	I	IV	IV	I	I	V7	IV	I	V7

 

If this were to played in the key of C, the chords for each measure would be:

Bar number	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
chord	C	F	C	C	F	F	C	C	G7	F	C	G7

 

This of course only scratches the surface of the blues.  The following examples will identify some of the origins of the Blues and how it influenced Western Art Music, Jazz, and Rock n’ Roll.