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Blues is a music genre and musical form which was originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s by African-Americans from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs, and spirituals. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll, 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, 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.
William James Dixon was an American blues musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger and record producer. He was proficient in playing both the upright bass and the guitar, and sang with a distinctive voice, but he is perhaps best known as one of the most prolific songwriters of his time. Next to Muddy Waters, Dixon is recognized as the most influential person in shaping the post–World War II sound of the Chicago blues.
Gertrude "Ma" Rainey was one of the earliest African-American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of blues singers to record. The "Mother of the Blues", she bridged earlier vaudeville and the authentic expression of southern blues, influencing a generation of blues singers.
Electric blues refers to any type of blues music distinguished by the use of electric amplification for musical instruments. The guitar was the first instrument to be popularly amplified and used by early pioneers T-Bone Walker in the late 1930s and John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters in the 1940s. Their styles developed into West Coast blues, Detroit blues, and post-World War II Chicago blues, which differed from earlier, predominantly acoustic-style blues. By the early 1950s, Little Walter was a featured soloist on blues harmonica using a small hand-held microphone fed into a guitar amplifier. Although it took a little longer, the electric bass guitar gradually replaced the stand-up bass by the early 1960s. Electric organs and especially keyboards later became widely used in electric blues.
Okeh Records is an American record label founded by the Otto Heinemann Phonograph Corporation, a phonograph supplier established in 1916, which branched out into phonograph records in 1918. The name was spelled "OkeH" from the initials of Otto K. E. Heinemann but later changed to "OKeh". Since 1926, Okeh has been a subsidiary of Columbia Records, a subsidiary of Sony Music. Okeh is a Jazz imprint distributed by Sony Masterworks, a specialty label of Columbia.
Mamie Smith was an American vaudeville singer, dancer, pianist, and actress. As a vaudeville singer she performed in various styles, including jazz and blues. In 1920, she entered blues history as the first African-American artist to make vocal blues recordings. Willie "The Lion" Smith described the background of that recording in his autobiography, Music on My Mind (1964).
James Edward "Snooky" Pryor was an American Chicago blues harmonica player. He claimed to have pioneered the now-common method of playing amplified harmonica by cupping a small microphone in his hands along with the harmonica, although on his earliest records, in the late 1940s, he did not use this method.
Homesick James was an American blues musician known for his mastery of the slide guitar. He recorded covers of "Stones in My Passway" and "Homesick". He worked with his cousin, Elmore James, and with Sonny Boy Williamson II. His birth name is variously reported as John William Henderson, James Williams, or James Williamson.
Alligator Records is an American, Chicago-based independent blues record label founded by Bruce Iglauer in 1971. Iglauer was also one of the founders of the Living Blues magazine in Chicago in 1970.
Fat Possum Records is an American independent record label based in Water Valley and Oxford, Mississippi. At first Fat Possum focused almost entirely on recording previously unknown Mississippi blues artists. Recently, Fat Possum has signed younger rock acts to its roster. The label has been featured in The New York Times, New Yorker, The Observer, a Sundance Channel production, features on NPR, and a 2004 documentary, You See Me Laughin. Fat Possum also distributes the Hi Records catalog.
William Arthur Gaither, sometimes known as "Little Bill" Gaither or Leroy's Buddy, was an American blues guitarist and singer.
Bob Margolin is an American electric blues guitarist. His nickname is "Steady Rollin'".
"Comin' Home Baby" is a song originally written as an instrumental by Ben Tucker and first recorded by the Dave Bailey Quintet in 1961, and shortly thereafter by Herbie Mann. Lyrics were added by Bob Dorough, and the vocal version became a US Top 40 hit for American jazz singer Mel Tormé in 1962. The song has since been covered numerous times.
Detroit, Michigan is a major center in the United States for the creation and performance of music, and is best known for three developments: Motown, early punk rock, and techno.
Annie Laurie was an American jump blues and rhythm and blues singer. She is most associated with the bandleader and songwriter, Paul Gayten, although she also registered hit singles in her own name. Laurie first recorded in the mid-1940s and her professional career lasted until the early 1960s. Appraisal of her qualities appear to vary between Dinah Washington stating that Laurie was her favorite singer, to Irma Thomas, who opined - "Annie Laurie? She was okay."
Ed Bell was an American Piedmont blues and country blues singer, guitarist and songwriter whose identity has only recently been verified by historians. Some of his records were released under the pseudonyms Sluefoot Joe and Barefoot Bill from Alabama. His best-remembered recording is "Mamlish Blues".
References
- ↑ "Bob Koester". Blues Access. Retrieved 2013-07-12.
- ↑ Komara, Edward M. Encyclopedia of the Blues. ISBN 0-415-92699-8.
- ↑ Herzhaft, Gιrard (1992). Encyclopedia of the Blues (2nd ed.). Retrieved 2013-07-12.
- ↑ Ford, Robert (2007). A Blues Bibliography . Retrieved 2013-07-12.
