1. By Shaquana White The blues are made up of 3 different parts. The parts are called the chords, the melody line and the scale. The chords are the base of the blues it can also help keep the timing. They are played with the notes C,F,G. The melody line is played with the notes G,C3,D,D#. The melody line also has a very important silence. In the silence the scale is played. The scale can be improvised using the notes C3,D#,F,F#,G,A#C4. The blues were important to slaves because it was a way to get messages to other people and get their feelings heard without anybody knowing.

2. Ray Charles is one of the many famous blues singers. He was born in September 23 rd 1930 and died on June 10 th 2004. he was the first African American musician to be granted artistic control. He started to loose is sight at the around about the age of four or five and went completely blind at the age of seven due to glaucoma. He attended school at the Florida school for the death and blind in St. Augustine were he studied music. Some of his best hits were Hit the road jack, I got a woman and Confession Blues was his first single.

3. Riley B. King is a famous blues singer, songwriter and guitarist but goes by the name B.B. King. He was born on September 16 th 1925 in Itta Bena, Mississippi. After serving in world war II he became a disc jockey in Memphis, Tennessee, were he was dubbed “the Beale Street Blues Boy.” The nickname shortened to “B.B.”. A guitarist cut his first record in 1949. he played more than 300 sows a year. Some of his most famous songs are The Thrill Is Gone, Blues Boys Tune, How Blue Can You Get and Everyday I Have the Blues.

4. Slavery started in the 19 th and 18 th centuries. White Americans took black people from Africa to north America to work for them. They would do jobs like pick cotton, harvest sugar cane, harvest tobacco and growing and harvesting coffee were just a few examples of the many jobs that slaves did. They travelled by ship but many people died on the journey. Music was important to slaves because it was a way to communicate to others without the people that they were working for to know what they were saying. So this meant that people could tell others they were going to escape through the songs they were singing.