The Blues

• "blue" notes & lament lyrics
  
• harmonic structure for the12-bar blues:
  
  
  
• "bottleneck" guitar style ("Preaching Blues")
• predictable lyric structure: aab (e.g., "Me & the Devil")
• sing first phrase
• repeat first phrase (repetition)
• sing contrasting phrase (contrast)

For example, examine this excerpt from "Me & the Devil" ...
(a)	Early this mornin, when you knocked upon my door,
(a)		 Early this mornin, when you knocked upon my door,
(b)	And I said, “Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go.

Early this mornin, when you knocked upon my door,
	 Early this mornin, when you knocked upon my door,
And I said, “Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go.

Me and the Devil was walkin' side by side,
	 Me and the Devil was walkin' side by side,
I'm goin' to beat my woman until I get satisfied.

She say you don't see why that I will dog her 'round,
	 She say you don't see why that I will dog her 'round,
It must-a be that old evil spirit so deep down in the ground.

You may bury my body down by the highway side,
	 You may bury my body down by the highway side,
So my old evil spirit can get a Greyhound bus and ride. 

Interactive Listening Guides

To help you in identifying important musical forms and other essential elements of music, I have created listening guides. For example, below you will find an example of a listening guide for Robert Johnson's "Me and the Devil Blues."

You will find dozens of the interactive listening guides for songs in 12-bar blues form on he 12-bar Blues page of this website. In addition, there are similar resources for other musical forms as they become familiar to you in this course: AABA form, the I-vi-IV-V progression, and strophic form.

Other recordings by Robert Johnson:

Kindhearted Woman Blues

Listen to one chorus of a 12-bar blues (Presley's version of "Hound Dog")
Listen carefully to the background vocals
to hear when the chords change.

"Big Joe" Turner (commentary)

• late 20s—singing bartender in Kansas City
• teamed up with boogie-woogie pianist, Pete Johnson
• 1938—John Hammond (Columbia) brought Turner & Johnson to NYC to appear at Carnegie Hall concert that sparked the "boogie woogie" craze

Piney Brown Blues

Roll 'em Pete

Jazz Influence

New Orleans Dixieland

• simultaneous improvisation
• beginnings of jazz (e.g. Cotton Club in Harlem) leading to swing

Swing

Urban Blues

T-Bone Walker's "Call It Stormy Monday
(But Tuesday's Just As Bad)"

• learned music in the church
  • "moaning & trembling"
• 1941—recorded by Alan Lomax
• 1943—moved to Chicago
• 1944—bought first electric guitar
  • amplification became necessary, because often acoustic music couldn't be heard over the audience
  • reflected the tension, volume, & confusion of the big-city streets (blues with "pep")
• c. 1947—signed with Aristocrat Records owned by Leonard & Phil Chess (later became Chess Records)
  (comments from Mick Jagger)
  
• *band in the early 50s:
  • Otis Spann, piano
  • Little Walter, harmonica
  • Leroy "Baby Face" Foster, drums