What is your favorite style of Blues music?

[Zuni]

Poll question: What is your favorite style of Blues music?

Rough Outlines of the different type:

Delta---usually charecterized by single bluesmen or small groups. Acoustic Guitar and Harmonica are usually the main insturments, but fiddle is not uncommon. Slide guitar common. Often the music has irregular patterns. Percussion usually foot stomping. Famous Delta players include Robert Johnson, Skip James, Charlie Patton, Son House and Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Early Urban--- early nightclub style blues, usually with a female singer and accompanied by piano, bass, drums. Memphis Minnie and Victoria Spivey are two artists that fit into this category.

South Side Chicago--- Delta blues style adapted to a full band, an ensemble. Generally less erratic, more sophisticated than Delta. The bands in this style usually consist of 1-2 guitarists, piano, harmonica, bass and drums. Some electric slide playing. Artists of this genre include Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Elmore James

West Side Chicago---Evolved from the South Side style. Generally dominated by lead guitar and melodic vocals. Bands usually dominated by virtuoso guitar rather than an ensemble performance. Less like the Delta style, more looking towards rock. Examples of this style include Buddy Guy, Otis Rush and Magic Sam.

British---British blues rock is usually charecterized by heavy riffing and virtuoso guitar. Usually a mix of the other styles. Examples of British blues are anywhere from John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers to the Early Yardbirds or even the Early Rolling Stones.

Memphis---Urban blues charecterized by sophisticated arrangements, jazzy chord progressions and large bands that often include horns. Examples include BB King and Albert King

Blues Rock---Cream, Stevie Ray vaughn, Jimi Hendrix, peter green's Fleetwood mac etc.

Modern---slick production, more rock than earlier blues, often blends earlier styles and rock
this could be anything from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band to BB King's and Eric Clapton's disc together

R and B/Soul---More dancable, upbeat, often with multiple vocalists, slick arrangements, large bands
Ray Charles, booker T and The MGs Otis Redding or Wilson Pickett. Even the Blues Brothers could be called an R and B band

[solinvictus]

1. Delta..

I like the realism and emotion of the songs.

[grannylib]

2. Waaay too hard to choose. Love Fleetwood Mac old stuff, Cream,

love BB King and Janis and Etta James and Muddy Waters and Billie Holiday and The Hoopsnakes and Saffire... It's all good, man.

[ForrestGump]

3. Delta blues. Where it began.

Though I like a lot of the other kinds, too. Stevie Ray Vaughan was excellent even in a galaxy of musical perfection.

[Maddy McCall]

18. Yep.

I agree wih both points. And I saw SRV in one of his last concerts. Best concert I ever attended.

[Orsino]

25. Delta, indeed.

It's the primal form, with the rawest emotion, in general.

But all these styles are great.

[Initech]

4. I dont really know a whole lot about blues...

But it's a genre that I've been wanting to get into for a while now.

Unfortunately, the only blues album I own is BB King's Greatest Hits.

[xxqqqzme]

5. All of the above!

I have every single style on CD - I LOVE the blues; Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Stevie Ray, BB, Ray, Mayall, Otis, Butterfield, Roy Rogers, Bonnie Raitt (forgot her), Hooker, & Eric. Some I haven't mentiomed but by far the blues doiminate my collection.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

6. Blues was my first love and I like it all

Currently studying Flamenco, cause, if you can play Flamenco, you can play anything. It's like classical guitar on speed.

[AverageJoe]

7. What about Mississippi hill country blues?

I'm talking about Junior Kimbrough and R. L. Burnside, for example. Now that's the blues....

(I voted for Delta Blues, because that was the closest category to MHCB.)

[frylock]

9. i voted for delta blues, because that was the closest category to mhcb..

same here. I dig on some R.L.!!

[Zuni]

22. Another category i forgot was "Folk Blues"

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, for example.

[tigereye]

8. guess I'm a West Side girl

I suspect? Albert Collins would fit in there, one of my faves. I like Delta too, and many of the other varieties.

Nice poll, Z!

[JVS]

10. Blue's clues has the best music

[SouthoftheBorderPaul]

12. Newsflash, Zuni, BLUES IS BORING!

And none of it deserves its own subcategory. :P

[Tikki]

11. N O Blues & K C Blues, also........n/t

[Lannes]

13. Texas Blues

Lightnin Hopkins,T-bone Walker,Blind Lemon Jefferson,Albert Collins,Stevie Ray Vaughan among others.

[Blue_In_AK]

16. Absolutely Lightnin' Hopkins

I'm glad to see he wasn't forgotten here.

[Zuni]

21. dammit

I knew there was something I forgot. Freddie King would be a good example of the "texas blues" too.

[Lannes]

30. He was a Texan

But more Chicago blues IMO.I suppose there was alot of cross pollination
going on with other blues musicians like T-Bone Walker although I could hear more Texas in his sound than Freddie King.

[Tallison]

14. Do you consider John Lee Hooker more West or Southside?

[Zuni]

20. South Side

his boogies were basically electric delta blues

[Bake]

15. Where's the category for "All Of It?"

And how about BLUE-GRASS?? There's a lot of blues in Bill Monroe's music and its progeny.

Bake

[Zuni]

23. All of it would be my choice

and I forgot two major categories---Texas and Folk blues :(

[Kenneth ken]

17. British

because that's the first blues that really caught my ear, and is what drew me to all the other styles.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

19. I like these peeps

If you can let the blues flow free - then you can play the kind of blues I like. Coltrane, Hendrix, "Family Man" Barrett, Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, Nina Simone, Casandra Wilson, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Clifton Chenier, Sarah Jones, Erykah Badu, Mudy Waters, Ornette Coleman, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, Aretha Franklin, Lightnin' Hopkins, Skip James, Monk, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, Cannibal Ox, the Roots, Illogic, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, Saul Williams, Al Green, Albert King, Art Tatum, Scott Joplin, Babatunde Olatunji, Count Basie.............................

[Squeech]

24. What's the difference

between your categories of British and Blues Rock, other than that some of the practitioners of the latter aren't actually from England?

It seems an especially difficult line to draw (for me) given that most of the prime examples of both categories are *the same people*! Mayall brought Peter Green to prominence, along with his soon-to-be Fleetwood Mac rhythm section; Clapton played with the Yardbirds and Mayall before Cream, etc.

To the extent I can make a distinction, it seems to be that the guys in the British category adopted a more restrictive slant on what they would allow themselves to call "blues." Mayall is pretty strictly a 12-bar guy, and I don't remember (of course it's been years since I listened to this stuff) him ever doing an Elmore James riff, whereas Clapton and Green both did Elmore pastiches later, along with other more elaborate or eccentric forms. But on the other hand the Yardbirds and the Stones did a lot of pop songs that had only a tenuous relevance to blues, even early on...

[Shell Beau]

26. The Delta blues!!! And BB King is a mix with modern

and Delta. I have seen him several times and he is great.

[Zuni]

27. Classic BB defined the Memphis blues sound

lotsa horns

[Shell Beau]

28. He is was born in Indianola about 20 miles away from

my hometown. He plays at the Blues Festival nearly every year. He is a joy to watch.

[Beware the Beast Man]

29. South Side Chicago, with British following a close second.

I'm still a greenhorn to the whole blues thing, but I love the Wolf.