Rock Music Styles
The Blues Roots of Rock Music
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.
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.
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
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 ♭
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)
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
(I got a kindhearted mama do anything in this world for me)
Instrumental fill
• 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
Country Blues
Robert Johnson (191138)
• 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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
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.
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
Urban Blues
B.B. King (1925 - )
• ‘King’ of blues; arguably the greatest urban
blues musician
• Great sophistication and power
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
Chicago Blues
• 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
• Phil Chess and Leonard Chess, Polish emigrées
gave black musicians to record their music.
• Chess brothers gave blues musicians backup
musicians and equipments.
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.
Chicago Blues
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.
Chicago Blues
Sonny Boy Williamson
II (1899-1965)
Mississippi
• Blues harmonica
player, singer and
song writer
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.
Classic (Female) Blues
Ma Rainey (1886-1939)
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
Classic (Female) Blues
• Bessie Smith (18941937) Tennessee
• Expressive blue notes
• Use of dramatic
expressions.
• BS also recorded with
Hawkins, Armstrong
and Benny Goodman
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.
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.’
• 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 Normal rhythm
• 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 ‘Back-beat’
• R&B was first dance music and developed in
ghettoes of large cities with suggestive lyrics.
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.
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.
The Birth of Rock’n Roll and Black Musicians
Professor Longhair
(1918-1980) Louisiana
• New Orleans blues
musician and R&B
pianist
• Known for boogiewoogie piano playing
style (fast, repeated
note patterns with two
notes played in a
single beat.)
The Birth of Rock’n Roll and Black Musicians
Fats Domino (1928 - )
New Orleans
• R&B musician,
Rock’n Roll singer,
song writer and
pianist.
• FD combined bluesy
style, stride (jazz
style) and boogiewoogie.
The Birth of Rock’n Roll and Black Musicians
Little Richard (1932 - )
• 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
The Birth of Rock’n Roll and Black Musicians
• Chuck Berry (1926 - )
• 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