History Of Delta Guitar

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.

When you think of a blues guitarist you think of the 12 bar blues with a simple one, four, five progression or major chords over a shuffle blues on the rhythmic side. But when you

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).

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

After the emancipation movement, Blues expanded to lots of states. Each states blended their own culture with the blues and then they created their own specific blues genres. Some of them Mississippi Delta Blues and Urban (Chicago) Blues.

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

“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

Originating from the African-American community in the southern United States, blues music is a temporal folk tradition that possesses lyrics remarking life. Blues music emphasizes the emotions of individuals; the performers express their various feelings of sorrow, anger, joy, or lust through music and words. The realistic perspective on fundamental emotions of all human beings delivered by blues music produces the appeal of blues around the world. There is a variety of blues music; however, the subgenres in this discussion will be classic delta blues, Texas blues, Soul blues, Chicago blues, and British Blues Based Rock.

Robert Johnson performed it as a solo piece with his vocal and acoustic slide guitar in the Delta style (as did Joe Dunn with his Flying-V). The song tells the story of Johnson being down on his knees at the crossroads (which was a place that you normally would not want to be at night), trying to get mercy from the lord himself. There is a legend that says that Robert Johnson was a man who was from Mississippi, and who met the Devil at the crossroads. He sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for being the King of the Delta Bluesmen, and to obtain knowledge of blues music. (Shmoop Editorial Team). Eric Clapton with his band of the time, “Cream,” varied the song and made it as popular as it is now, and titled it "Crossroads.” This song can be found on “Cream’s” album “Wheels of Fire.” The band’s blues-rock interpretation inspired many other blues and rock artists. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame named this song (by Clapton) to be mentioned on the list of "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll" (500 Songs That Shaped

“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

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).”

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

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