Origin Blues historians and historians of
African American music such as
Paul Oliver and
Samuel Charters have suggested that the essential elements of the blues originated in the
Sahel region of West Africa, brought over by Africans via the slave trade. Whereas the African slaves brought to
South America and the
Caribbean were largely from percussion based cultures in southern coastal west Africa (like southern Nigeria),
central Africa and Bantu speaking parts of Africa lacked many elements that created the blues. Many of the slaves brought to North America were from the Sahel region and more familiar with stringed instruments, basing the banjo on string instruments from the Sahel such as the
akonting. Charters found that many Sahelian slaves were from Muslim cultures and favored stringed, melodic, and solo
melismatic singing, which differed from the drum-based music of other African regions, who generally favoured drumming and group chants. These traditions, which were sometimes permitted by plantation owners who feared drums as tool of rebellion, thus evolved into the blues. The historian
Sylviane Diouf and
ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik identify
Islamic music as an influence on blues music. Diouf notes a striking resemblance between the
Islamic call to prayer (originating from
Bilal ibn Rabah, an
Abyssinian African Muslim in the early 7th century) and 19th-century
field holler music, noting that both have similar lyrics praising God, melody, note changes, "words that seem to quiver and shake" in the vocal chords, dramatic changes in
musical scales, and nasal
intonation. She attributes the origins of field holler music to
African Muslim slaves who accounted for an estimated 30% of African slaves in America. According to Kubik, "the vocal style of many blues singers using
melisma, wavy intonation, and so forth is a heritage of that large region of The Western Sahel that had been in contact with the
Islamic world via the Maghreb since the seventh and eighth centuries ". Many of the elements that characterise early blues such as the
blues scale,
polyrhythm, the blue notes, pitch instability declamatory and
homophonic melismatic vocals, can be found not just in the West African Sahel, but also in the eastern Sahel in
Sudanese music, suggesting cross fertilisation along the Sahel, The blues with its origin in the
American South has likely evolved as a fusion of an African just intonation scale with European 12-tone musical instruments and harmony. The result has been a uniquely American music which is still widely practiced in its original form and is at the foundation of another genre,
American jazz.
Blue note — a hallmark of blues music and
rhythm and blues characterised by flattened thirds, fifths, or sevenths — has deep roots in the musical traditions of the Sahel region of West Africa, making African American popular music like the blues having a Sahelian-based origin in contrast to the more percussion based
Afro-Brazilian music and
Afro-Cuban music music which have more of a southern coastal west African, Central African and Bantu influence; where the blue note is absent and non-Muslim slaves who generally favoured drums and group chants. The
Griot tradition of the Sahel also may have influenced
talking blues and by extension
hip-hop. The Griot tradition is also generally absent in Bantu speaking central, Eastern and Southern African cultures, again pointing to a Sahelian foundation (along with European 12-tone musical instruments and Harmony) of African American music.
Hart Wand's "
Dallas Blues" was published in 1912;
W.C. Handy's "
The Memphis Blues" followed in the same year. The first recording by an African-American singer was
Mamie Smith's 1920 rendition of
Perry Bradford's "
Crazy Blues". But the origins of the blues were some decades earlier, probably around 1890. This music is poorly documented, partly because of racial discrimination in U.S. society, including academic circles, and partly because of the low rate of literacy among rural African Americans at the time. Reports of blues music in
southern Texas and the
Deep South were written at the dawn of the 20th century. Charles Peabody mentioned the appearance of blues music at
Clarksdale, Mississippi, and Gate Thomas reported similar songs in southern Texas around 1901–1902. These observations coincide more or less with the recollections of
Jelly Roll Morton, who said he first heard blues music in
New Orleans in 1902;
Ma Rainey, who remembered first hearing the blues in the same year in
Missouri; and
W.C. Handy, who first heard the blues in
Tutwiler, Mississippi, in 1903. The first extensive research in the field was performed by
Howard W. Odum, who published an
anthology of folk songs from
Lafayette County, Mississippi, and
Newton County, Georgia, between 1905 and 1908. The first non-commercial recordings of blues music, termed
proto-blues by
Paul Oliver, were made by Odum for research purposes at the beginning of the 20th century. They are now lost. (left) shaking hands with musician
"Uncle" Rich Brown in
Sumterville, Alabama Other recordings that are still available were made in 1924 by
Lawrence Gellert. Later, several recordings were made by
Robert W. Gordon, who became head of the
Archive of American Folk Songs of the
Library of Congress. Gordon's successor at the library was
John Lomax. In the 1930s, Lomax and his son
Alan made a large number of non-commercial blues recordings that testify to the huge variety of proto-blues styles, such as
field hollers and
ring shouts. A record of blues music as it existed before 1920 can also be found in the recordings of artists such as
Lead Belly and
Henry Thomas. All these sources show the existence of many different structures distinct from
twelve-,
eight-, or
sixteen-bar. The social and economic reasons for the appearance of the blues are not fully known. The first appearance of the blues is usually dated after the
Emancipation Act of 1863, This period corresponds to the transition from slavery to
sharecropping, small-scale agricultural production, and the expansion of railroads in the southern United States. Several scholars characterize the development of blues music in the early 1900s as a move from group performance to individualized performance. They argue that the development of the blues is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the enslaved people. According to Lawrence Levine, "there was a direct relationship between the national ideological emphasis upon the individual, the popularity of
Booker T. Washington's teachings, and the rise of the blues." Levine stated that "psychologically, socially, and economically, African-Americans were being acculturated in a way that would have been impossible during slavery, and it is hardly surprising that their secular music reflected this as much as their religious music did." However, there are some characteristics that were present long before the creation of the modern blues. Call-and-response shouts were an early form of blues-like music; they were a "functional expression ... style without accompaniment or harmony and unbounded by the formality of any particular musical structure". A form of this pre-blues was heard in slave
ring shouts and
field hollers, expanded into "simple solo songs laden with emotional content". Blues has evolved from the unaccompanied vocal music and
oral traditions of slaves imported from West Africa and black Americans in rural areas into a wide variety of styles and subgenres, with regional variations across the United States. Although blues (as it is now known) can be seen as a musical style based on both European
harmonic structure and the African
call-and-response tradition that transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar, the blues form itself bears no resemblance to the melodic styles of the West African
griots. Additionally, there are theories that the four-beats-per-measure structure of the blues might have its origins in the Native American tradition of
pow wow drumming. Some scholars identify strong influences on the blues from the melodic structures of certain West African musical styles of the Savanna and Sahel.
Lucy Durran finds similarities with the melodies of the
Bambara people, and to a lesser degree, the
Soninke people and
Wolof people, but not as much of the
Mandinka people.
Gerard Kubik finds similarities to the melodic styles of both the west African savanna and central Africa, both of which were sources of enslaved people. No specific African musical form can be identified as the single direct ancestor of the blues. However the call-and-response format can be traced back to the
music of Africa. That blue notes predate their use in blues and have an African origin is attested to by "A Negro Love Song", by the English composer
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, from his
African Suite for Piano, written in 1898, which contains
blue third and
seventh notes. The
Diddley bow (a homemade one-stringed instrument found in parts of the
American South sometimes referred to as a
jitterbug or a
one-string in the early twentieth century) and the
banjo are African-derived instruments that may have helped in the transfer of African performance techniques into the early blues instrumental vocabulary. The banjo seems to be directly imported from West African music. It is similar to the musical instrument that griots and other Africans such as the
Igbo played (called
halam or
akonting by African peoples such as the
Wolof,
Fula and
Mandinka). However, in the 1920s, when country blues began to be recorded, the use of the banjo in blues music was quite marginal and limited to individuals such as
Papa Charlie Jackson and later
Gus Cannon. Blues music also adopted elements from the "Ethiopian airs",
minstrel shows and
Negro spirituals, including instrumental and harmonic accompaniment. The style also was closely related to
ragtime, which developed at about the same time, though the blues better preserved "the original melodic patterns of African music". The musical forms and styles that are now considered the blues as well as modern
country music arose in the same regions of the southern United States during the 19th century. Recorded blues and country music can be found as far back as the 1920s, when the record industry created the marketing categories "
race music" and "
hillbilly music" to sell music by blacks for blacks and by whites for whites, respectively. At the time, there was no clear musical division between "blues" and "country", except for the ethnicity of the performer, and even that was sometimes documented incorrectly by record companies. Though musicologists can now attempt to define the blues narrowly in terms of certain chord structures and lyric forms thought to have originated in West Africa, audiences originally heard the music in a far more general way: it was simply the music of the rural South, notably the
Mississippi Delta. Black and white musicians shared the same repertoire and thought of themselves as "
songsters" rather than blues musicians. The notion of blues as a separate genre arose during the
black migration from the countryside to urban areas in the 1920s and the simultaneous development of the recording industry.
Blues became a code word for a record designed to sell to black listeners. The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of Afro-American community, the
spirituals. The origins of spirituals go back much further than the blues, usually dating back to the middle of the 18th century, when the slaves were Christianized and began to sing and play Christian
hymns, in particular those of
Isaac Watts, which were very popular. Before the blues gained its formal definition in terms of chord progressions, it was defined as the secular counterpart of spirituals. It was the low-down music played by rural blacks. Depending on the religious community a musician belonged to, it was more or less considered a sin to play this low-down music: blues was the devil's music. Musicians were therefore segregated into two categories: gospel singers and blues singers, guitar preachers and songsters. However, when rural black music began to be recorded in the 1920s, both categories of musicians used similar techniques: call-and-response patterns, blue notes, and slide guitars. Gospel music was nevertheless using musical forms that were compatible with Christian
hymns and therefore less marked by the blues form than its secular counterpart. " (1914) Handy was a formally trained musician, composer, and arranger who helped to popularize the blues by transcribing and orchestrating blues in an almost symphonic style, with bands and singers. He became a popular and prolific composer, and billed himself as the "Father of the Blues"; however, his compositions can be described as a fusion of blues with ragtime and jazz, a merger facilitated using the Cuban
habanera rhythm that had long been a part of ragtime; Handy's signature work was the "
Saint Louis Blues". In the 1920s, the blues became a major element of African-American and American popular music, also reaching white audiences via Handy's arrangements and the classic female blues performers. These female performers became perhaps the first African-American "superstars", and their recording sales demonstrated "a huge appetite for records made by and for black people." The blues evolved from informal performances in bars to entertainment in theaters. Blues performances were organized by the
Theater Owners Booking Association in
nightclubs such as the
Cotton Club and
juke joints such as the bars along
Beale Street in Memphis. Several record companies, such as the
American Record Corporation,
Okeh Records, and
Paramount Records, began to record African-American music. As the recording industry grew,
country blues performers like
Bo Carter,
Jimmie Rodgers,
Blind Lemon Jefferson,
Lonnie Johnson,
Tampa Red, and
Blind Blake became more popular in the African-American community. Kentucky-born
Sylvester Weaver was in 1923 the first to record the
slide guitar style, in which a guitar is fretted with a knife blade or the sawed-off neck of a bottle. The slide guitar became an important part of the
Delta blues. The first blues recordings from the 1920s are categorized as a traditional, rural country blues and a more polished city or urban blues. Country blues performers often improvised, either without accompaniment or with only a banjo or guitar. Regional styles of country blues varied widely in the early 20th century. The (Mississippi) Delta blues was a rootsy sparse style with passionate vocals accompanied by slide guitar. The little-recorded
Robert Johnson combined elements of urban and rural blues. In addition to Robert Johnson, influential performers of this style included his predecessors
Charley Patton and
Son House. Singers such as
Blind Willie McTell and
Blind Boy Fuller performed in the southeastern "delicate and lyrical"
Piedmont blues tradition, which used an elaborate ragtime-based
fingerpicking guitar technique. Georgia also had an early slide tradition, with
Curley Weaver,
Tampa Red,
"Barbecue Bob" Hicks and
James "Kokomo" Arnold as representatives of this style. The lively
Memphis blues style, which developed in the 1920s and 1930s near
Memphis, Tennessee, was influenced by
jug bands such as the
Memphis Jug Band or the
Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers. Performers such as
Frank Stokes,
Sleepy John Estes,
Robert Wilkins,
Kansas Joe McCoy,
Casey Bill Weldon, and
Memphis Minnie used a variety of unusual instruments such as
washboard,
fiddle,
kazoo or
mandolin. Memphis Minnie was famous for her
virtuoso guitar style. Pianist
Memphis Slim began his career in Memphis, but his distinct style was smoother and had some swing elements. Many blues musicians based in Memphis moved to Chicago in the late 1930s or early 1940s and became part of the urban blues movement.
Classic female urban and
vaudeville blues singers were popular in the 1920s, among them "the big three"—
Gertrude "Ma" Rainey,
Bessie Smith, and
Lucille Bogan.
Mamie Smith, more a vaudeville performer than a blues artist, was the first African American to record a blues song, in 1920; her second record, "Crazy Blues", sold 75,000 copies in its first month.
Ma Rainey, the "Mother of Blues", and
Bessie Smith each "[sang] around center tones, perhaps in order to project her voice more easily to the back of a room". Smith would "sing a song in an unusual key, and her artistry in bending and stretching notes with her beautiful, powerful contralto to accommodate her own interpretation was unsurpassed". In 1920, the vaudeville singer
Lucille Hegamin became the second black woman to record blues when she recorded "The Jazz Me Blues", and
Victoria Spivey, sometimes called Queen Victoria or Za Zu Girl, had a recording career that began in 1926 and spanned forty years. These recordings were typically labeled "
race records" to distinguish them from records sold to white audiences. Nonetheless, the recordings of some of the classic female blues singers were purchased by white buyers as well. These blueswomen's contributions to the genre included "increased improvisation on melodic lines, unusual phrasing which altered the emphasis and impact of the lyrics, and vocal dramatics using shouts, groans, moans, and wails. The blues women thus effected changes in other types of popular singing that had spin-offs in jazz,
Broadway musicals,
torch songs of the 1930s and 1940s,
gospel,
rhythm and blues, and eventually
rock and roll." Urban male performers included popular black musicians of the era, such as
Tampa Red,
Big Bill Broonzy and
Leroy Carr. An important label of this era was the Chicago-based
Bluebird Records. Before World War II, Tampa Red was sometimes referred to as "the Guitar Wizard". Carr accompanied himself on the piano with
Scrapper Blackwell on guitar, a format that continued well into the 1950s with artists such as
Charles Brown and even
Nat "King" Cole. Chicago boogie-woogie performers included
Clarence "Pine Top" Smith and
Earl Hines, who "linked the propulsive left-hand rhythms of the ragtime pianists with melodic figures similar to those of Armstrong's trumpet in the right hand". Dallas-born
T-Bone Walker, who is often associated with the
California blues style, performed a successful transition from the early urban blues à la
Lonnie Johnson and Leroy Carr to the jump blues style and dominated the blues-jazz scene at Los Angeles during the 1940s.
1950s The transition from country blues to urban blues that began in the 1920s was driven by the successive waves of economic crisis and booms that led many rural blacks to move to urban areas, in a movement known as the
Great Migration. The long
boom following World War II induced another massive migration of the African-American population, the
Second Great Migration, which was accompanied by a significant increase of the real income of the urban blacks. The new migrants constituted a new market for the music industry. The term
race record, initially used by the
music industry for
African-American music, was replaced by the term
rhythm and blues. This rapidly evolving market was mirrored by
Billboard magazine's
Rhythm & Blues chart. This marketing strategy reinforced trends in urban blues music such as the use of electric instruments and
amplification and the generalization of the blues beat, the
blues shuffle, which became ubiquitous in rhythm and blues (R&B). This commercial stream had important consequences for blues music, which, together with
jazz and
gospel music, became a component of R&B. After World War II, new styles of
electric blues became popular in cities such as
Chicago,
Memphis,
Detroit and
St. Louis. Electric blues used
electric guitars,
double bass (gradually replaced by
bass guitar),
drums, and
harmonica (or "blues harp") played through a microphone and a
PA system or an
overdriven guitar amplifier. Chicago became a center for electric blues from 1948 on, when
Muddy Waters recorded his first success, "I Can't Be Satisfied".
Chicago blues is influenced to a large extent by
Delta blues, because many performers had migrated from the
Mississippi region.
Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters,
Willie Dixon and
Jimmy Reed were all born in Mississippi and moved to Chicago during the Great Migration. Their style is characterized by the use of electric guitar, sometimes slide guitar, harmonica, and a rhythm section of bass and drums. The saxophonist
J. T. Brown played in bands led by
Elmore James and by
J. B. Lenoir, but the
saxophone was used as a backing instrument for rhythmic support more than as a lead instrument.
Little Walter,
Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) and
Sonny Terry are well known harmonica (called "
harp" by blues musicians) players of the early Chicago blues scene. Other harp players such as
Big Walter Horton were also influential. Muddy Waters and Elmore James were known for their innovative use of slide electric guitar. Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters were known for their deep, "gravelly" voices. The bassist and prolific songwriter and composer
Willie Dixon played a major role on the Chicago blues scene. He composed and wrote many
standard blues songs of the period, such as "
Hoochie Coochie Man", "
I Just Want to Make Love to You" (both penned for Muddy Waters), and "
Wang Dang Doodle" and "
Back Door Man" for Howlin' Wolf. Most artists of the Chicago blues style recorded for the Chicago-based
Chess Records and
Checker Records labels. Smaller blues labels of this era included
Vee-Jay Records and
J.O.B. Records. During the early 1950s, the dominating Chicago labels were challenged by
Sam Phillips'
Sun Records company in Memphis, which recorded
B. B. King and Howlin' Wolf before he moved to Chicago in 1960. After Phillips discovered
Elvis Presley in 1954, the Sun label turned to the rapidly expanding white audience and started recording mostly
rock 'n' roll. In the 1950s, blues had a huge influence on mainstream American
popular music. While popular musicians like
Bo Diddley both recording for Chess, were influenced by the Chicago blues, their enthusiastic playing styles departed from the melancholy aspects of blues. Chicago blues also influenced
Louisiana's
zydeco music, with
Clifton Chenier using blues accents. Zydeco musicians used electric solo guitar and
cajun arrangements of blues standards. In England, electric blues took root there during a much acclaimed Muddy Waters tour in 1958. Waters, unsuspecting of his audience's tendency towards
skiffle, an acoustic, softer brand of blues, turned up his amp and started to play his Chicago brand of electric blues. Although the audience was largely jolted by the performance, the performance influenced local musicians such as
Alexis Korner and
Cyril Davies to emulate this louder style, inspiring the
British Invasion of the
Rolling Stones and the
Yardbirds. In the late 1950s, a new blues style emerged on Chicago's
West Side pioneered by
Magic Sam,
Buddy Guy, and
Otis Rush on
Cobra Records. The "West Side sound" had strong rhythmic support from a rhythm guitar, bass guitar, and drums and as perfected by Guy,
Freddie King,
Magic Slim, and
Luther Allison, was dominated by amplified electric lead guitar. Expressive
guitar solos were a key feature of this music. Other blues artists, such as
John Lee Hooker, had influences not directly related to the Chicago style. John Lee Hooker's blues is more "personal", based on Hooker's deep rough voice accompanied by a single electric guitar. Though not directly influenced by boogie-woogie, his "groovy" style is sometimes called "guitar boogie". His first hit, "
Boogie Chillen", reached number 1 on the R&B charts in 1949. By the late 1950s, the
swamp blues genre developed near
Baton Rouge, with performers such as
Lightnin' Slim,
Slim Harpo,
Sam Myers and
Jerry McCain around the producer
J. D. "Jay" Miller and the
Excello label. Strongly influenced by
Jimmy Reed, swamp blues has a slower pace and a simpler use of the harmonica than the Chicago blues style performers such as Little Walter or Muddy Waters. Songs from this genre include "Scratch my Back," "She's Tough," and "
I'm a King Bee".
Alan Lomax's recordings of
Mississippi Fred McDowell would eventually bring him wider attention on both the blues and
folk circuit, with McDowell's droning style influencing
North Mississippi hill country blues musicians.
1960s and 1970s with his guitar, "
Lucille" By the beginning of the 1960s, genres influenced by
African American music such as
rock and roll and
soul were part of mainstream popular music. White performers such as
the Rolling Stones and
the Beatles had brought African-American music to new audiences, within the U.S. and abroad. However, the blues wave that brought artists such as Muddy Waters to the foreground had stopped. Bluesmen such as
Big Bill Broonzy and
Willie Dixon started looking for new markets in Europe.
Dick Waterman and the blues festivals he organized in Europe played a major role in propagating blues music abroad. In the UK, bands emulated U.S. blues legends, and UK blues rock-based bands had an influential role throughout the 1960s. Blues performers such as
John Lee Hooker and
Muddy Waters continued to perform to enthusiastic audiences, inspiring new artists steeped in traditional blues, such as New York–born
Taj Mahal.
John Lee Hooker blended his blues style with rock elements and playing with younger white musicians, creating a musical style that can be heard on the 1971 album
Endless Boogie.
B. B. King's singing and virtuoso guitar technique earned him the eponymous title "king of the blues". King introduced a sophisticated style of
guitar soloing based on fluid
string bending and shimmering
vibrato that influenced many later electric blues guitarists. In contrast to the Chicago style, King's band used strong brass support from a saxophone, trumpet, and trombone, instead of using slide guitar or harp.
Tennessee-born
Bobby "Blue" Bland, like B. B. King, also straddled the blues and R&B genres. During this period,
Freddie King and
Albert King often played with rock and
soul musicians (
Eric Clapton and
Booker T & the MGs) and had a major influence on those styles of music. , known as the "Queen of the Blues," was well known for her raspy, strong vocals. The music of the
civil rights movement and
Free Speech Movement in the U.S. prompted a
resurgence of interest in American roots music and early African-American music. As well, festivals such as the
Newport Folk Festival brought traditional blues to a new audience, which helped to revive interest in prewar acoustic blues and performers such as
Son House,
Mississippi John Hurt,
Skip James, and
Reverend Gary Davis. commented on political issues such as
racism or
Vietnam War issues, which was unusual for this period. His album
Alabama Blues contained a song with the following lyric: , 1983 White audiences' interest in the blues during the 1960s increased due to the Chicago-based
Paul Butterfield Blues Band, featuring guitarist
Michael Bloomfield and singer/songwriter
Nick Gravenites, and the
British blues movement. The style of
British blues developed in the UK, when musicians such as
Cyril Davies,
Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated,
Fleetwood Mac,
John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, the
Rolling Stones,
Animals, the
Yardbirds,
Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation,
Chicken Shack, early
Jethro Tull,
Cream, and the Irish musician
Rory Gallagher performed classic blues songs from the
Delta or
Chicago blues traditions. In 1963,
Amiri Baraka, then known as LeRoi Jones, was the first to write a book on the social history of the blues in
Blues People: The Negro Music in White America. The British and blues musicians of the early 1960s inspired a number of American
blues rock performers, including
Canned Heat,
Janis Joplin,
Johnny Winter,
the J. Geils Band,
Ry Cooder, and the
Allman Brothers Band. One blues rock performer,
Jimi Hendrix, was a rarity in his field at the time: a black man who played
psychedelic rock. Hendrix was a skilled guitarist, and a pioneer in the innovative use of
distortion and
audio feedback in his music. Through these artists and others, blues music influenced the development of
rock music. Later in the 1960s, British singer
Jo Ann Kelly started her recording career. In the US, from the 1970s, female singers
Bonnie Raitt and
Phoebe Snow performed blues. In the early 1970s, the
Texas rock-blues style emerged, which used guitars in both solo and rhythm roles. In contrast with the West Side blues, the Texas style is strongly influenced by the British rock-blues movement. Major artists of the Texas style are
Johnny Winter,
Stevie Ray Vaughan, the
Fabulous Thunderbirds (led by
harmonica player and singer-songwriter
Kim Wilson), and
ZZ Top. These artists all began their musical careers in the 1970s but they did not achieve international success until the next decade.
1980s to the present is credited as the "Father of Italian Blues", and is among the few European blues artists who still enjoy international success. Since the 1980s, there has been a resurgence of interest in the blues among a certain part of the African-American population, particularly around
Jackson, Mississippi, and other
deep South regions. Often termed "
soul blues" or "
Southern soul", the music at the heart of this movement was given new life by the unexpected success of two particular recordings on the Jackson-based
Malaco label:
Z. Z. Hill's
Down Home Blues (1982) and
Little Milton's
The Blues is Alright (1984). Contemporary African-American performers who work in this style of the blues include
Bobby Rush,
Denise LaSalle,
Sir Charles Jones,
Bettye LaVette,
Marvin Sease,
Peggy Scott-Adams,
Clarence Carter,
Charles Bradley,
Trudy Lynn,
Roy C,
Barbara Carr,
Willie Clayton, and
Shirley Brown, among others. During the 1980s, blues also continued in both traditional and new forms. In 1986, the album
Strong Persuader announced
Robert Cray as a major blues artist. The first
Stevie Ray Vaughan recording
Texas Flood was released in 1983, and the Texas-based guitarist exploded onto the international stage.
John Lee Hooker's popularity was revived with the album
The Healer in 1989.
Eric Clapton, known for his performances with
the Blues Breakers and
Cream, made a comeback in the 1990s with his album
Unplugged, in which he played some standard blues numbers on acoustic guitar. However, beginning in the 1990s,
digital multi-track recording and other technological advances and new marketing strategies, including
video clip production, increased costs, challenging the spontaneity and improvisation that are an important component of blues music. In the 1980s and 1990s, blues publications such as
Living Blues and
Blues Revue were launched, major cities began forming blues societies, outdoor blues festivals became more common, and
Tedeschi Trucks Band and
Gov't Mule released blues rock albums. Female blues singers such as
Bonnie Raitt,
Susan Tedeschi,
Sue Foley, and
Shannon Curfman also recorded albums. In the 1990s, the largely ignored
hill country blues gained minor recognition in both blues and
alternative rock music circles with northern Mississippi artists
R. L. Burnside and
Junior Kimbrough. or of the
Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary and
Traditional Blues Album. The
Billboard Blues Album chart provides an overview of current blues hits. Contemporary blues music is nurtured by several blues labels such as
Alligator Records,
Ruf Records,
Severn Records,
Chess Records (
MCA),
Delmark Records,
NorthernBlues Music,
Fat Possum Records, and
Vanguard Records (Artemis Records). Some labels are famous for rediscovering and remastering blues rarities, including
Arhoolie Records,
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (heir of
Folkways Records), and
Yazoo Records (
Shanachie Records).
Themes and Emotional Expression Many blues songs use the idea of sin and redemption to show the emotional world of the singer. This does not always mean the music is religious. Instead, singers used church language because it was familiar in their communities and helped them express feelings of guilt, struggle, and desire. In the Mississippi Delta, where poverty and discrimination were part of daily life, the theme of sin was a way for musicians to talk about broken relationships, unfair treatment, and survival. The blues also used the idea of sin to question strict social rules. A singer might describe gambling, drinking, or cheating not just as bad behavior but as a reaction to hard times. This shows how the blues challenged moral expectations. Instead of judging people, the music gave performers a way to speak honestly about their lives. Scholars like Alan Lomax and Amiri Baraka note that this honest emotional expression helped shape the sound and feeling of the blues. It created a space where people could express personal truth without fear of being punished or ignored. African rhythms and storytelling traditions, as described by Robert Palmer, also helped musicians connect individual experiences to the wider community. ==Musical influence==