History Of Delta Guitar

A single source of blues music cannot be traced, but Ma Rainey is rightfully credited with introducing it to the world. Hence the reason she was dubbed as “The Mother of the Blues”. During an interview in the 1930s, Ma told musicologist John Work, that she heard what would be called blues, for the first time around 1902. She was in a small town in Missouri working a show at the time, and one morning a local girl came into the tent singing about a man whom had left her. This new style of soulful music drew in Ma Rainey so much she later had the girl teach her the song. Rainey performed the song as an encore in a show soon after, earning a special place in the show, and marking the start of her career (Jas Obrecht Archive).

Playing the guitar in ways never seen before, Clapton was hailed as a god, and the genre of blues was re-instated into the music industry. Clapton then went on to form the first ‘super group’. In 1966, Cream were formed, and by combining Clapton’s bluesy styles with the more rocky style of Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, Cream created a new genre of blues rock. Zepplin could also be credited for pioneering this genre. It was this genre that got Cream and Zeppelin noticed in the US.

At the heart of jazz, the blues was a creation of former black slaves who adapted their African musical heritage to the American environment. The blues is a 12-bar musical form with a call-and-response format between the singer and his guitar dealing with themes of personal adversity, overcoming hard luck, and other emotional turmoil.

Have you ever just heard a song and while listening to this song you go thru this world-wind of emotions. This music just touches you, makes you sad, makes you think, makes you happy, makes you want more. The voicing in this music is just so heart cutting and the tempo is as if it was a roller coaster, fast, than slow, slow, than fast to all of sudden the solo ends with the drummer hitting his drum kit with so much impact and the band proceeds to this slow tempo where the artist Gary Clark Jr Voice cuts through the mix like a bird in the morning sky. When you think blues guitarist you don't think of their voice, but more so of the way they play guitar. But Gary Clark Jr voice can actually stand alone as a pure vocalist, but what makes Gary Clark Jr so special?

The blues is a musical style of feeling, a style about playing what comes from your heart. It came from work songs, field chants, spirituals, field hollers and revivalist hymns from the African American communities. Blues is associated with the sad times

Mississippi history is a sad history of slavery and oppression. It is a history of racism and refusal to let go of segregationist ideals. Mississippi history is enough to give many the blues. In fact, the Blues style music originated in Mississippi and gravitated outward from there. .Mississippi history and Blues history are intertwined. Delta Blues is a blues style that originated in the Mississippi Delta and influenced many musicians. Another musical art form, Jazz may be considered an offspring from the Blues and also started in the South. There are many Blues musicians and singers that come from Mississippi or have become linked to Mississippi for various reasons. Bessie Smith, Charley Patton, Muddy Waters, and Cassandra Wilson have

     The Blues musical move was prominent during the 1920s and '30s, a time known as the Harlem Renaissance. Blues music characteristically told the story of

“When first entering in America, British folk music was distinguished by three-chord tunes, sparse instrumentation (with some fiddlers), mostly male performers, improvisation, the singers’ sporadic shouts (Scottish “yips”), Christian themes served up in hundreds of hymns, and a secular collection of songs that told stories, generally about love and lost love, using metaphor and symbol to tell those stories” (Allen 101). By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, British music changed and became Americanized. Vocal harmonizing slowly evolved, and fiddlers were accompanied by those who played banjo, an African American opening. “Tambourines and “bones” (tapping out rhythms using pork rib bones) were a minstrel show contribution” (Allen 102). When African Americans were forced into slavery and brought to North America in the 1600s, they brought their own musical traditions and sounds. Slaves who were on the Mississippi River Valley delta soil developed what will later be introduced as blues music. On the plantations, slaves greatly changed British American hymn singing. They took non-religious British American songs and turned it into their own forms of music that followed their culture and taste of music. Blues emerged in the early twentieth century at the same time country music became settled from its folk roots. Blues music talked about the indifferences African American slaves were going through at that time. “The blues voiced human

Blues began in the south and slowly made its way into the great cities of the North. As

In contrast, Blues music originated from southern Mississippi and was first recorded in the 1920s. Blues music is further differentiated from Jazz as it was originally played as a solo using a slide guitar. This is not the case today as it has been modified and adapted by practising artists and utilises complex bands.

Eddie James “Son” House, Jr., an American blues singer and guitarist once stated, "People keep asking me where the blues started and all I can say is that when I was a boy we always was singing in the fields. Not real singing, you know, just hollerin', but we made up our songs about things that was happening to us at the time, and I think that's where the blues started (Cohn, 1993).”

BB King is undoubtedly one of the greatest blues musicians, and an equally unparalleled pioneer of guitar music. Brought up in the midst of poverty, strife, and struggle of the rural Mississippi Delta, King experienced great hardships from a young age, and used this as a source of inspiration for much of his later music (King & Ritz, 1996).

The blues, a uniquely American art form, was born on the dusty street corners of the Deep South in the late 1800s. An evolution of West African music brought to the United States by slaves, created the blues which was a way for black people in the south

“Rock and roll is a type of popular dance music originating in the 1950s, characterized by a heavy beat and simple melodies. Rock and roll was an amalgam of black rhythm and blues and white country music, usually based on a twelve-bar structure and an instrumentation of guitar, bass, and drums.” (Kamien, 2015, p.378) The popular music was first called rock and then rock and roll then back to simply rock. Rock and roll music contains many diverse styles. Genres that influenced rock and roll music included jazz, gospel, blues, country and western, classical music, and folk music. Rock and roll music has a raw sound that gets the crowd hyped in a special way. The most important instrument used in rock and roll music is the electric guitar. The electric guitar is the reason for the amplified sound in rock and roll music. “Rock-and-roll guitarist Chuck Berry established a style of

Looking back at the history of Blues music, one can see the influence of the African-American community, tradition, and culture very apparent in it. The Blues music genre came into being from the songs