Blues Guitars and Modern Music

Anybody interested in modern music sooner or later asks the question, “Where did it all begin?” Well, if you leave blues guitar music out, you’ll be at a loss for an answer. Take a look at where the blues came from, where it went and who it met on the way. We will also look at the “blues guitar sound” and how it has its unique effect on our feelings.

The blues as a musical phenomenon began around 1911 when W.C. Handy published popular songs, notably “Memphis Blues” and “St Louis Blues”, which affected the hearts and souls of the black people everywhere. By the nineteen twenties the general populations were beginning to hear this new music through its influence on jazz. Early blues singers like Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday sang with jazz bands while others played with “jug bands” accompanied by fiddle, kazoo and washboard.

Then there were people like W. C. Handy who were brought up singing in church, so the piano naturally the instrumental accompanying their songs. Because the guitar is portable and has always been popular it had to have a place in blues and jazz. Blues guitar players like twelve string guitarists Leadbelly and future electric guitar player B.B. King were making sure the guitar would be an integral part of the blues. Other blues guitarists made their living in smoky saloons playing slide guitar using a bottle neck or the blade of a knife to fret the notes.

After the Second World War young artists like Elvis Presley and Bill Haley were moving the blues in a new arena called “rock’n'roll” and the players of the electric blues guitar like B.B. King were heralding the arrival of the lead guitar, soon to be a great attraction for both musicians and audiences. Throughout the evolution of the blues the guitar had always taken its turn for solos in jazz bands but now it was getting as much attention as the singer by the audience.

Blues guitar can be played in any key and comes in three basic forms: eight bars, for example “Heartbreak Hotel”, sixteen bars like “Saint James Infirmary” and twelve bars like “St. Louis Blues”. For some reason the twelve bar blues form is way more singer-friendly and popular with audiences than the other two, and it’s the basis of many great songs outside the blues.

If you go snooping around the internet you’ll find out the blues scales are just your garden variety major and minor scales except that the third, fifth and seventh notes are played flat. They learned to sing and play from their families and friends just as many of the blues players of the nineteen sixties learned from imitating the artists they heard on records.

And this is where the blues guitar takes another direction. After years of imitating their idols something fascinating happened to the white blues guitar players in Britain and the USA. They developed their own original styles. The older blues players even began using the new arrangements of classic songs and adopting some of the unbluesy musical innovations introduced by young white guitarists like Eric Clapton. In the end, a foreign culture influences American popular music and in turn gets fresh input from a new generation of guitar players from all over the world.