Blues is a genre I’m just opening up to on Pandora. I noticed several categories (Chicago, Delta, Electric, etc.) and am wondering if any experts here have a cliff notes version on what the difference are between them?
Thanks!
I could use a tutorial myself. But let me plug my favorite podcast, The Roadhouse. It’s a little light on “big” names, but it delivers an hour of bluesy goodness every week!
There’s nothing wrong with the Roadhouse but if you want a bite sized sampling then I’d suggest the Indiefeed: Blues podcast. A usually weekly, single song sample with lots of artist background info.
For a Pandora station, try The Blues Brothers. It gives you a nice mix of the blues.
Check out some Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. BB King aint bad either.
I like using the allmusic guides to different genres. From the blues page, you can click through to any of the 20-odd subgenres they have listed, and on each of those pages listen to “clear case” examples distinguishing that subgenre from others. But first you should understand at least the basics, the blue note, blue scale and basic blues chord progression, which you can learn about and listen to here. Then I suggest investing in one box set to introduce you to the best examples of the early blues, and you can do no better than hunting down this OOP box set from the Smithsonian Institute.
In general, Chicago Blues uses electrically amplified instruments while Delta blues is acoustic. The Delta blues musicians moved to Chicago in the 30s and 40s and had trouble being heard in the clubs without amplification. This is shown quite nicely in the movie Cadillac Records, a look at the blues greats of the 1950s.
Other differentiations in the genre are arbitrary. Electric blues is probably Chicago blues, but by musicians who weren’t based there. British blues is the same thing. There are some regional variations, but they are minor, usually because of a different mix of instruments.
I do agree that The Roadhouse and Indiefeed are good samplers. LivinBlues.com had a great historical overview of the big names, with samples (though their definition of “blues” is pretty liberal).
Seeing live performances is the way to go, IMHO. Most cities have a blues festival in the summer. 
Negative Lite & RealityChuck,
Thank you very much for that insight! And thank you everyone else for your input and suggestions. Very helpful!
LH
Delta Blues - Robert Johnson, Son House, many, many others - acoustic guitar, little instrumentation, simple song structures and chords
Country Blues - Charley Patton, David Bromberg and many, many others - a more complex, fingerpicked acoustic blues, blending a bit of rag and country/Appalachia in the style - Big Bill Broonzy, the Rev Gary Davis and Blind Blake are all technique monsters in this area…
Chicago/Electric Blues - Chess Records, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy and others - at first it was electrified Delta Blues but morphed into proto-rock, but skipped the rockabilly origins of rock and went straight to British Blues
Jump Blues - Louis Jordan, T-Bone Walker (link to my article on him in teemings), etc. - Blues-structured songs played by a fully-orchestrated swing band, with more complex chording.
British Blues / Rock - John Mayall, Clapton, Peter Green all the way through Classic Rock - combines Electric Blues with British Invasion and Rock “streams” into the canon of Led Zep and countless other bands…
There are plenty of other ways to cut it, but at first blush, this is how I tend to break it down - until somebody points out something I missed…
“Delta blues” refers to blues from the Mississippi Delta, which does not in this case mean the actual geographical delta of the river, but rather the entire area around the lower part of the river, which used to experience regular floods and therefore was prime farmland. It was a region of sharecroppers around the turn of the 20th century, which is when the Delta blues is considered to have begun. Delta blues probably arose from field hollers (songs that slaves and sharecroppers would sing to provide rhythmic accompaniment to their work); it is rural and often archaic-sounding, with varied structures and irregular line lengths. It typically features only vocals and acoustic guitar.
“Piedmont blues” is another early, rural style from the East Coast. It is characterized by fingerpicking rather than strumming, and has a sort of ragtime feel. (I particularly like this style because it’s catchy.)
One individual who was influential in shaping what we now think of as the blues was W.C. Handy, sometimes referred to as “The Father of the Blues”. Around the turn of the century he began writing and publishing blues songs (many of which were probably mostly just revised versions of songs he had heard played by others).
“Classic blues” is a genre dating from approximately the 1920s which owed its existence largely to the emergence of phonograph recordings. Classic blues typically featured female singers with piano accompaniment, and the songs are often not strictly blues in form.
During the early part of the 20th century, many Delta blues musicians went north to cities such as Memphis, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Chicago. Each of those cities developed a thriving blues scene. Because the music was now being played in clubs, it tends to feature full bands, typically with guitar, bass, piano, drums, and harmonica, and sometimes horn sections, and the musicians moved to amplified instruments as they became available. “Chicago blues” is a term sometimes applied to the stereotypical 12-bar electric blues.
(The main road north out of the Delta was U.S. Route 61 – hence the title of Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited”. The intersection of Routes 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, is said to be the “crossroads” where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil.)
Jazz has also contained a strong element of the blues throughout its history. Many of the classic recordings by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five/Hot Seven are blues recordings. A bluesy type of jazz called “barrelhouse”, developed in the early 20th century bordellos of New Orleans, features piano and vocal (since the bordellos had pianos in the parlor). Barrelhouse gave rise to stride piano (so called because the left hand, playing the bass figures, moves in a “walking” motion), and boogie-woogie. Billie Holiday was a jazz singer influenced by classic blues.
“Boogie” is a modified form of boogie-woogie that is associated with John Lee Hooker.
Some artists:
Delta – Robert Johnson, Son House
Piedmont – Rev. Gary Davis
Classic blues – Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith
Chicago blues – Muddy Waters (started out as a Delta bluesman), Howlin’ Wolf
Barrelhouse – Jelly Roll Morton
Stride – Fats Waller
Boogie-woogie – Pinetop Perkins
Is Debbie Davies Chicago or Country Blues?
And when Cassandra Wilson covers Hellhound on My Trail is it Blues or Jazz?
One thing I forgot to mention is that a certain amount of early country music is just the blues played by hillbillies. See Jimmie Rodgers. Later on, country got another infusion of the blues (this time, electric blues and jump blues) and produced rockabilly. (I’ve always been kind of bemused by the fact that the first white cats to really pick up on what was about to become rock & roll were, of all people, hillbillies.)
I have a slightly different interpretation. It was, IMO, the merging of hillbilly music and the blues, which are very similar in structure (lots of I-IV-V, for example), typical keys, and approach, that created rock n’ roll. The hillbillies didn’t swipe the blues. They had their own blues, or something very much like it, and the two styles were incredibly compatible with each other.
Yes - if you add the influence of urban R&B, some gospel and some pop.
Everything I would have to add has already been said, except this: Try working backwards, it’s easier. At least it was for me. When I was a young kid, I had heard about lots of early blues players, and heard some of their songs. The production, timing and phrasing of the early delta players was alien enough that it did not appeal to me then. I think it wasn’t as accessible as the English players (Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green, The Bluesbreakers) that I actually did start listening to at that age. Now, I am not sure that I ever pull out those records when I want to listen to blues, but that’s probably because I’ve just about got them memorized.
I had a friend who’s dad summed it up as “The best players of American Blues are English Hippies on Drugs”. I agreed with him at the time, but don’t now. They did make it easier to play on the radio, and it’s a good place to start.
When I was visiting Turkey, we were on a tour at some famous landmark. I was wearing a Pink Floyd shirt and an Australian kid asked me, “so you like the blues?” I told him I did, although I don’t really consider Pink Floyd to be a blues group. Lots of bands and songs are bluesy but not necessarily The Blues.
Good a dvice on working backwards though, I started out listening to Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin, then Eric Clapton before trying out some of the real blues stuff.
Black string bands were influencing white musicians even before “the Blues” was a specific style. Of course, influences went both ways. Even in the segregated South, people heard each other play & sometimes played together. Check it out.
My personal Blues Teachers were Lightnin’ Hopkins, Houston’s ruling bluesman, and Mance Lipscomb, a proponent of the older, more rural, “songster” tradition who could raise goosebumps when he used his slide & sang “Motherless Children.” And I’ll include Clifton Chenier, who added blues & R&B to Louisiana’s Creole music to create Zydeco. I heard all of these gentlemen play numerous times in my “misspent” youth. (These are links to Arhoolie Records–a good base for learning about many rootsy styles. There are samples of many CD’s.)
There are many great suggestions in this thread.
Also, don’t forget Hill Country Blues. This is a primarily electric style that evolved in the juke joints of north Mississippi. It’s characterized by rolling, driving guitar riffs, and is primarily dance music. It can be pretty out there, almost psychedelic. Listen to some R.L. Burnside, T Model Ford and Junior Kimbrough for good examples. I wish ellele would stop by this thread, since she’s an absolute authority on the Blues, having known and worked with Burnside, Kimbrough, and many others.
And a bit more about Chicago blues…
Amplified harmonica comes from the south side of Chicago.
Electric guitar in the blues comes from the west side.
Jaw-dropping.