1. The Blues Roots of Rock Music
Rock Music Styles
The Blues Roots of Rock Music

2. What is blues?
Blues is vocal or instrumental music based on characteristic blue notes and twelve-bar structure.
It emerged in the rural American-African communities combining various music traditions - African music which were brought to America by slaves, field hollers ‘work songs’, spirituals and rhymed English/Scottish popular ballads.

3. What is blues?
The main sources of blues were African traditional music but it is too difficult to pinpoint exactly which ones they were as slaves came from very different regions.

4. Country Blues The earliest form of blues, cir. the end of the 19th C.
Blues developed in the rural areas of the South.
Delta blues in Mississippi
Carolina blues in South Carolina

5. Country Blues CHARACTERISTICS Rough tone and emotional words
Songs are accompanied by guitar and blues harp (harmonica)
Bottle necks and slide guitar
Blue notes
The third and seventh notes in a major scale are slightly lowered.
In C major, E is between E and E♭ and B is between B and B ♭

6. Country Blues Verse structure
Combinations of three lines, the second of which is the repetition of the first.
“I got a kindhearted mama do anything in this world for me.” (A)
“I got a kindhearted mama do anything in this world for me.”(A’)
But these eveil-hearted women, man, they will not let me be.” (B)
“I love my baby, my baby don’t love me” (C)
“I love my baby, my baby don’t love me” (C’)
“I really love that woman, can’t stand to leave her be.” (D)

7. Country Blues Music Structure
Music is organized into four bar patterns.
(I got a kindhearted mama do anything in this world for me) Instrumental fill
C C C C / C C C C / C C C C / C C C C
F F F F / F F F F / C C C C / C C C C
(But these evil-hearted women, man, they will not let me be) Instrumental fill
G G G G / F F F F / C C C C / C C C C
Twelve-bar structure

8. Country Blues Robert Johnson (1911-38)
Hardly any records are left concerning his life and career.
‘The thing about Robert Johnson was that he existed on his records. He was a pure legend.’
Martin Scorsese

9. Country Blues
RJ was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi on the 8th of May, 1911 (No record) as the 11th son of Julia Major Dodds out of wedlock. His father unknown.
Charles Dodds, RJ’s stepfather was a relatively wealthy wicker furniture maker but was forced out of Hazlehurst by a lynch mob after an argument in the town. Lived in Memphis with his sons.

10. Country Blues
RJ moved in the household of Charles Dodds at the age of 14 and reputedly he was taught playing the guitar by one of his half-brothers.
RJ returned to Mississippi after his mother remarried. His new stepfather had no sympathy for music and RJ left home to join his musician friends.
No evidence that he attended school.
RJ married twice. His first wife died at her childbirth and his second wife had three children from her previous marriage.

11. Country Blues
RJ travelled around the Mississippi delta area by bus, hitchhiking and hopping trains. He played in the streets, in front of restaurants and barbershops. He lived on tips. He sang what he was asked to sing but as he picked up any tune at the first hearing, there was no problem to meet his customers’ requests.
RJ could reputedly be a husband or lover to any woman who did not mind having him whichever town or village he went to.

12. Country Blues
November, 1936 RJ attended a recording session held at a make-shift studio set up at Gunter Hotel, San Antonio, Texas. In three days session, he recorded 16 selections with an alternate take of each.
Further recording at a make-shift studio at Dallas, Texas.
Distributions and sale are extremely limited.
RJ died of drinking poisoned whisky. He was poised by the lover or husband of the woman with whom he flirted or the woman herself.

13. Country Blues
RJ’s blues is more improvisational based on the blues formula.
Not the exact repetition of the first line of text in the second line.
Added extra beats to bars or extra bars to phrases.
Use of more than one rhythm (poly-rhythm)

14. Country Blues RJ’s influence
His music was covered by Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton (Cream), Fleetwood Mac
Musicians heavily influenced by RJ include Led Zeppelin

15. Country Blues Memphis Minnie (1897-1973)
MM left her home town at the age of eight and lived with street musicians. Moved to Chicago where she established herself as a blues musician. She became one of the biggest names during the depression era and the First World War. She is also known as one of the first women who started using an electric guitar in 1942.

16. Urban Blues
Urban blues are more complicated and larger in scale than country blues.
Most urban blues include a group of instrumentalists
Bass, drums, guitar and/or piano (rhythm section)
Saxophone or other wind instruments (instrumental section)
Electric guitar

17. Urban Blues
B.B. King ( )
‘King’ of blues; arguably the greatest urban blues musician
Great sophistication and power

18. Chicago Blues
Blues developed in Chicago, adding electric guitar, bass guitar, piano, drums and instruments to guitar/harmonica Delta blues.
Blues’ traditional hexatonic scale:
C Eb F F# G Bb
More notes from major scale are added

19. Migration - a large number of blacks moved to more economically prosperous north in the early 20th century including musicians.
Musicians from the south came to touch with those from the north.
Chess Records
Chicago Blues

20. Chicago Blues
Phil Chess and Leonard Chess, Polish emigrées gave black musicians to record their music.
Chess brothers gave blues musicians backup musicians and equipments.

21. Chicago Blues John Lee Hooker (1917 - 2001)
Came from Mississippi and learned music from his stepfather, a local blues musician in Louisiana.
JLH is known for his spoken style and free rhythm.

22. Chicago Blues Muddy Waters (1913 - 1983)
A father of Chicago blues was also from Mississippi.
In his early career, he emulated Delta (acoustic) guitarists but turned to electric guitar in Chicago.

23. Chicago Blues Sonny Boy Williamson II (1899-1965) Mississippi
Blues harmonica player, singer and song writer

24. Classic (Female) Blues
Blues sang by female soloists in jazz and blues bands.
Those soloists sang being backed by piano, horns, and drums.
They played in vaudeville tours but were the first black musicians that were recorded.

25. Classic (Female) Blues
Ma Rainey ( )
Georgia or Alabama
Mother of the blues
Recorded also with great jazz musicians such as Coleman Hawkins and Louis Armstrong
(Erotic?) moaning, dramatic pauses, heightened blue notes

26. Classic (Female) Blues
Bessie Smith ( ) Tennessee
Expressive blue notes
Use of dramatic expressions.
BS also recorded with Hawkins, Armstrong and Benny Goodman

27. Rhythm and Blues
R&B is a marketing term invented by Jerry Wexler for Billboard magazine in 1947, replacing the existing term, ‘race music.’
R&B is ‘… a catchall term referring to any music made by and for black Americans.’
Robert Palmer
Later R&B became a blanket term covering also Soul and Funk.

28. Rhythm and Blues
Some of the early R&Bs accented the second and the fourth beats of each bar.
As it is more common to accent the first and third beats in each bar, the R&B rhythm came to be called ‘off-beat’ or ‘back-beat.’
/ / / Normal rhythm
/ / / ‘Back-beat’
R&B was first dance music and developed in ghettoes of large cities with suggestive lyrics.

29. Rhythm and Blues Bo Diddley (1928 - ) Mississippi
Singer, song writer and guitarist
Generally considered as an important musician who bridged R&B and rock’n roll.
He is known for using his guitar as if drums.
He introduced insistent, driving rhythm through his guitar.
Rhythm and Blues

30. The Birth of Rock’n Roll and Black Musicians
A significant change in the American music scene.
Music by African Americans had never been popular among the white audience. In the 50s some white musicians whose background was country music or pops started ‘covering’ R&B.
The popularity of blues and R&B arose and many African American musicians came to receive more attention.

31. The Birth of Rock’n Roll and Black Musicians
Professor Longhair
( ) Louisiana
New Orleans blues musician and R&B pianist
Known for boogie-woogie piano playing style (fast, repeated note patterns with two notes played in a single beat.)

32. The Birth of Rock’n Roll and Black Musicians
Fats Domino ( )
New Orleans
R&B musician, Rock’n Roll singer, song writer and pianist.
FD combined bluesy style, stride (jazz style) and boogie-woogie.

33. The Birth of Rock’n Roll and Black Musicians
Little Richard ( )
Singer, song writer and pianist, who was an important figure in the transition from R&B to Rock’n Roll.
Studied piano in his church and was influenced by gospel.
Pounding piano and suggestive lyrics

34. The Birth of Rock’n Roll and Black Musicians
Chuck Berry ( )
Singer, song writer and guitarist
CB’s music rooted in blues and R&B but he is a classic Rock’n Roller, combining his black roots with Country and Western.
Father of Rock’n Roll Guitar