The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #30283   Message #388007
Posted By: ddw
01-Feb-01 - 11:05 PM
Thread Name: Help: Types of Blues
Subject: RE: Help: Types of Blues
Bboy — You're not really giving us enough to categorize anything. I suspect you're into urban blues and/or blues rock (you mention Zepplin, presumably as in Led Zep).

Generally urban blues is associated with Chicago originally, then spread to other places. Chicago just happened to be where a lot of the Mississippi delta players went in the '40s and '50s to record and it became the center of things.

Being "slow, rolling" doesn't really help pin things down. All blues forms had some of that, but they also have up-tempo and driving and wailing songs as well.

If you're interested in something other than blues rock, let me suggest (staying in the urban blues area) Sonny Boy Williamson II, Willie Dixon, James Cotton, Muddy Waters, B.B. King and Bobby "Blue" Bland. Almost any music store either has them or can get them for you pretty quickly (I'm assuming you don't live in the Australian Outback or the Gobi Desert).

If you get into those guys pretty well, then you might be ready to graduate into the older guys — those old country black men who learned to be a whole band with just their voices and one old beat-up guitar. That, in my opinion, is where you really start to learn about how wonderful the blues are.

BTW, welcome to Mudcat.

cheers

david