Ok, so this is the beginning of a small series of posts, on different styles of blues. Delta should obviously be first here, since it was one of the first kind of blues.
It originated on Mississippi Delta, that goes from Memphis, Tennessee to Vicksburgh, Mississippi. Mostly played with an acoustic guitar and harmonica, Delta Blues originated other styles, like Chicago Blues.
It is older than that, but unfortunately Delta Blues was only recorded by the 1920’s. On Mississippi Delta juke joints, blues had been played longer than that.
Now days, Delta Blues tradition is long gone, as it is old, outdated, poorly recorded, and more. Only some real fans still pay attention to this great style of blues.
5 Important Artists: Son House, Charlie Patton, Bukka White, Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf.
Blues is not Blues. The evolution of the Blues formed many different styles often named by the area where it was created, like Delta Blues, Chicago Blues or Texas Blues. They assimilated local music styles, changed the instrumentation, the chords and chord sequence, added special notes or modified scales.
The transitions between the styles are often unsharp, the same Blues can contain characteristics from different styles. Many artist can also be assigned to different styles, they moved from the Delta to Chicago and developed a new style like Muddy Waters or B.B. King, so Muddy Waters could appear as a Delta Blues artist, too. Same to the labels: many of them released different styles over the years.
Below is a brief comparison chart for the some popular Blues styles, consider this as as attempt to describe the main characteristics, not a scientific table for music theory. It is not complete, there are hundreds of (local) sub-genres like the Memphis style, the Detroit style, St. Louis Blues, Louisiana Blues, Kansas City Blues or New Orleans Blues. There are also hundreds of great Blues artists that are not listed. For detailed information search the web, look at the AMG site or read some of the books shown on this page.
http://www.12bar.de/styles.php
Hi. I agree it’s hard to set a specific definition on style of a certain song, and practically impossible to do so on an artist. Some artists are more “fond” to a certain style more to the other though, and there’s some perceiveble difference from John Lee Hooker to Son House, for instance. I think style denomination is important, and is not far from reality
Good chart, will definetely be handy for the next posts.