85 articles
African blues
African blues is a label for blues traditions and blues-adjacent guitar music from African countries, most prominently Mali and the Tuareg communities of the Sahara, named after Ali Farka Touré's 1990 album.
Alan Wilson (musician)
Alan 'Blind Owl' Wilson (1943–1970), American blues musician, co-founder and co-lead singer of Canned Heat; wrote 'On the Road Again' and 'Going Up the Country', helped Son House relearn his songs, died at 27 in Topanga Canyon.
Albert Collins
Albert Collins (1932-1993), the "Iceman" and "Master of the Telecaster," was a Texas blues guitarist known for open F minor tuning, fingerstyle Telecaster playing, a long-cord stage act, and the Grammy-winning album Showdown!.
Albert King
Albert King (Albert Nelson, 1923-1992), "King of the Blues Guitar," was a Stax-era blues guitarist famed for upside-down left-handed Flying V playing; not related to B.B. King.
B. B. King
B.B. King (Riley B. King, 1925–2015), Mississippi Delta electric blues guitarist and singer nicknamed Blues Boy at WDIA radio; famous for Lucille, his vibrato, "Three O'Clock Blues," "The Thrill Is Gone," 15 Grammys, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Bad to the Bone
Bad to the Bone is a 1982 blues-rock song and album by George Thorogood & The Destroyers on Capitol Records, known for its Bo Diddley-derived riff, Muddy Waters rejection story, and iconic uses in Christine and Terminator 2.
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith (1894-1937), the Empress of the Blues, was a Chattanooga-born blues and jazz singer whose 1923 Columbia recording Downhearted Blues sold about 800,000 copies; she made some 160 recordings, became the highest-paid Black entertainer of her day, and died in a 1937 car crash in Mississippi.
Beth Hart
Beth Hart (born 1972, Los Angeles) is an American blues-rock singer, songwriter, and keyboardist with six Billboard Blues chart toppers, three Joe Bonamassa albums, a 2014 Grammy nomination for Seesaw, and the 2024 album You Still Got Me.
Big Mama Thornton
Big Mama Thornton (Willie Mae Thornton, 1926-1984) was an Alabama-born blues singer who first recorded "Hound Dog" in 1952 and wrote "Ball and Chain," later hits for Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin; she earned $500 for "Hound Dog" and entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2024.
Blind Lemon Jefferson
Blind Lemon Jefferson (Lemon Jefferson, c. 1893-1929) was a blind Texas country blues singer-guitarist from Couchman, the first commercially successful self-accompanied male blues recording artist, best known for "Matchbox Blues" and "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean."
Blind Willie Johnson
Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945) was an American gospel blues singer and slide guitarist from Texas who recorded thirty titles for Columbia Records between 1927 and 1930.
Blue note
Blue note: flattened 3rd, 5th, or 7th scale degree (b5 in the minor-pentatonic blues scale, b3 in the major) sung or played slightly flat or bent, characteristic of blues, jazz, and soul.
Blues
Blues, or blues music, is a secular music that emerged among African Americans in the rural southern United States in the late nineteenth century, built on twelve-bar forms and blue notes.
Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton
Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton, "The Beano Album" (Decca, 22 July 1966), by John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with John McVie and Hughie Flint; the record on which Clapton's 1960 Les Paul through a cranked Marshall JTM45 combo set the blues-rock guitar template, peaking at No. 6 in the UK.
Blues rock
Blues rock: hybrid genre fusing electric blues forms (12-bar, dominant 7ths, minor pentatonic) with rock volume and improvisation; emerged late 1960s via Cream, Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Butterfield Band; parent of heavy metal and Southern rock.
Blues scale
Blues scale: six-note scale = minor pentatonic plus flatted fifth (1, b3, 4, b5, 5, b7). C blues: C, Eb, F, Gb, G, Bb. The added blue note is a passing tritone; a major blues variant exists.
Blues Unlimited
Blues Unlimited was a British magazine devoted entirely to blues music, published from 1963 to 1987 and credited as the world's first magazine dedicated to the subject.
Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley (Ellas McDaniel, 1928-2008), American blues and rock and roll guitarist called "the Originator", creator of the Bo Diddley beat and the rectangular guitar, Chess Records pioneer, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 1987.
Bobby Bland
Bobby "Blue" Bland (Robert Calvin Brooks, 1930-2013) was an American blues and soul singer from Rosemark, Tennessee, known for his hoarse crying vocal style, Duke Records hits like "Farther Up the Road" and "I Pity the Fool," and work with B.B. King.
Boogie
Boogie (boogie-woogie) is a blues-based piano style with a repeated left-hand eighth-note bass over 12-bar blues, arising in Southern barrelhouse camps around 1900 and popularized in the late 1930s by Ammons, Johnson, and Lewis, later feeding rock and roll.
Boogie-woogie
Boogie-woogie: a blues-based piano style with a rolling left-hand bass, 12-bar I-IV-V form, "8 to the bar" rhythm; origins in 1870s Texas, hit record Pinetop's Boogie-Woogie (1928).
British blues
British blues was an early-to-mid-1960s musical movement based in London clubs, founded by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies, that became an important influence on the rock explosion.
Buddy Guy
Buddy Guy (George Guy, born 1936, Lettsworth, Louisiana) is the Chicago electric blues master, Chess Records house guitarist, 9-time Grammy winner, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2005 inductee, and owner of Buddy Guy's Legends.
Canadian blues
Canadian blues is blues music made and consumed in Canada, which grew from US radio and touring American acts and reached widespread popularity in the early 1960s.
Canned Heat
Canned Heat (also Canned Heat Blues Band) is an American blues-rock/boogie band formed in Los Angeles in 1965 by Alan Wilson and Bob Hite, named for Tommy Johnson's 1928 song; known for Woodstock 1969 and the hits On the Road Again, Going Up the Country, and Let's Work Together.
Charles Wayne Day
Charles Wayne Day (Bing Day, Chuck Day), 1942-2008, American Chicago-born guitarist, bassist, and baritone blues singer with Johnny Rivers and the Mamas & the Papas, credited with the Secret Agent Man riff and father of Cass Elliot's daughter Owen.
Charley Patton
Charley Patton (c. 1891, died April 28, 1934), American Delta blues singer-guitarist called the father of Delta blues; recorded 1929-1934 for Paramount, based at Dockery Plantation, taught Howlin' Wolf and influenced Son House and Robert Johnson.
Cheap Thrills (Big Brother and the Holding Company album)
Cheap Thrills (1968) is the second studio album by Big Brother and the Holding Company, the last with Janis Joplin, released on Columbia. It spent eight weeks at number one on Billboard, featured "Piece of My Heart," and carried a Robert Crumb cover.
Chicago blues
Chicago blues, also called Chicago electric blues, is the electrified band style created by Delta blues migrants in Chicago from the late 1940s, centered on Chess Records, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, and Willie Dixon.
Cross Road Blues
Cross Road Blues ("Crossroads") is a 1936 Delta blues song by Robert Johnson, recorded November 27, 1936 at San Antonio's Gunter Hotel for Vocalion, famous for the crossroads-devil legend and Cream's 1968 cover.