Blues is a type of music that began among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. It includes songs like spirituals, work songs, field hollers, chants, and rhymed stories from African-American culture. The blues is found in many other music styles, such as jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll. It is known for its call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, with the twelve-bar blues being the most common. Blue notes, which are notes that are slightly lower in pitch than usual, are an important part of the blues sound. The rhythm of blues music, created by bass lines and repetitive beats, gives it a steady, flowing feel called the groove.
Blues music is defined by its lyrics, bass lines, and musical instruments. Early blues songs often repeated a single line four times. In the early 1900s, a common structure called the AAB pattern became standard. This pattern includes a line sung over the first four bars, its repetition over the next four bars, and a longer final line over the last bars. Early blues songs often told stories about the challenges faced by African Americans, such as racial segregation and discrimination. By this time, blues had become an important part of African American culture, sharing the struggles and traditions of Black communities. These stories often described the hardships of life in the Deep South, including the difficult work of sharecropping and the economic problems caused by the boll weevil.
Many features of blues music, like the call-and-response style and the use of blue notes, come from African music traditions. Blues also has roots in the spirituals, which are religious songs from the African-American community. Blues music began to appear after the end of slavery, and juke joints, which were places where people played and listened to music, became popular later. Blues music is linked to the freedom that former slaves gained after slavery ended. In the early 1900s, people started writing about blues music, and the first published blues sheet music appeared in 1908. Over time, blues evolved from simple vocal songs and oral traditions into many different styles. These styles include country blues, Delta blues, Piedmont blues, and urban styles like Chicago blues and West Coast blues. World War II led to the shift from acoustic to electric blues and helped blues music reach a larger audience, including white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a new style called blues rock developed, combining blues with rock music.
Etymology
The term "Blues" may have come from "blue devils," which means sadness and sorrow. An early example of this use is in George Colman's one-act play Blue Devils (1798). The phrase "blue devils" might also have come from a British expression in the 1600s that described strong visual hallucinations that can happen during severe alcohol withdrawal. Over time, the phrase stopped referring to "devils" and instead described a feeling of being upset or depressed. By the 1800s in the United States, the word "blues" was linked to drinking alcohol, a meaning still seen in the term "blue law," which bans the sale of alcohol on Sundays.
In 1827, John James Audubon wrote to his wife that he "had the blues," meaning he was feeling sad. In Henry David Thoreau's book Walden, he wrote about "the blues" in a chapter about his time living alone. He wrote the book in 1845, but it was published later, in 1854.
In her diary on December 14, 1862, Charlotte Forten, a 25-year-old free-born Black woman from Pennsylvania who worked as a schoolteacher in South Carolina, wrote that she "came home with the blues" because she felt lonely and sad. She later recovered from her sadness and noted songs like "Poor Rosy" that were popular among enslaved people. She described the songs as being sung with deep emotion and troubled feelings, qualities that have inspired many blues songs.
Although the phrase "the blues" may have been used earlier in African-American music, it was first written about in print in 1912, when Hart Wand's song Dallas Blues became the first copyrighted blues composition. In blues lyrics, the phrase often describes a feeling of sadness or depression.
Lyrics
Early traditional blues songs often had a single line repeated four times. However, the most common structure of blues lyrics today was developed in the early 1900s and is called the "AAB" pattern. This structure includes a line sung over the first four bars, the same line repeated over the next four bars, and a longer final line over the last bars. This pattern can be heard in some of the first published blues songs, such as "Dallas Blues" (1912) and "Saint Louis Blues" (1914). According to W.C. Handy, the "AAB" pattern was used to avoid the repetition of lines three times. Blues lyrics are often sung in a rhythmic, spoken style rather than a melody, similar to a style called "talking blues."
Early blues songs often told simple stories. African-American singers shared their personal struggles in a world filled with hardship, such as lost love, unfair treatment by police, discrimination by white people, and difficult times. This sadness has led some to suggest the blues may have roots in the Igbo people of Africa, who were known for their melancholic music and outlook during slavery. However, other historians argue there is little evidence of influence from Sub-Sahelian African cultures, which are known for complex rhythms, African drumming, and group participation. Historian Paul Oliver stated that the blues likely originated in the savanna regions of Africa, including areas like Senegambia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Northern Ghana, Niger, and northern Nigeria. Ethnomusicologist John Storm Roberts noted that the rhythmic and melodic techniques used in West African string instruments, such as the kora, are similar to those used by many blues guitarists.
Blues lyrics often described challenges faced by African Americans. For example, Blind Lemon Jefferson’s song "Rising High Water Blues" (1927) describes the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. While blues music is often linked to sadness and hardship, some songs also included humor and playful themes. "Hokum blues" was a style known for funny lyrics and lively, exaggerated performances. A song by Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, "It's Tight Like That" (1928), uses wordplay with the phrase "tight," which can mean being close to someone or having a more physical relationship. Songs with explicit sexual content were called "dirty blues." After World War II, blues lyrics became simpler, focusing more on relationship problems or sexual concerns. Themes like economic hardship, farming, devils, gambling, magic, floods, and drought, which were common in earlier blues songs, became less frequent.
Writer Ed Morales suggested that Yoruba mythology influenced early blues, pointing to Robert Johnson’s "Cross Road Blues" as a reference to Eleggua, a Yoruba god associated with crossroads. However, Christian themes were more clearly present in blues music. Many early blues artists, such as Charley Patton and Skip James, included religious songs or spirituals in their music. Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Willie Johnson were often considered blues musicians, even though their songs were clearly spiritual in nature.
Form
The blues form usually follows a repeating pattern of chords, most often the twelve-bar sequence. Songs and instrumentals often use a call-and-response structure, which has roots in African and African-American musical traditions.
At the start of the 20th century, early blues did not have a single, fixed structure. Folklorist Howard W. Odum recorded secular songs from around 1908–1910 that had verses that could be repeated or extended freely. David Evans also noted that early blues had many different structures before becoming more standardized through recordings.
As recorded blues singers like Bessie Smith gained popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, the twelve-bar form became more common. Other structures, such as 8-bar and 16-bar progressions, are also widely used. Examples include "How Long, How Long Blues," "Trouble in Mind," Big Bill Broonzy's "Key to the Highway," Ray Charles's "Sweet 16 Bars," and Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man." Some songs use less common forms, like the nine-bar "Sitting on Top of the World" by Walter Vinson.
A typical twelve-bar blues uses a 4/4 time signature and three closely related chords arranged in a fixed order. These bars are often grouped into three four-bar sections that follow an "AAB" pattern: the first section uses the tonic chord (I), the second repeats the subdominant chord (IV), and the third ends with the dominant chord (V). The final measures often include a turnaround. These chords are usually played as dominant sevenths, which gives the blues its unique sound.
Melodies in blues often use the minor pentatonic scale and include blue notes, which create tension by mixing major and minor elements. This flexibility allows for expressive playing and improvisation.
Rhythms in blues are shaped by shuffle patterns and steady bass lines, creating a strong, forward-moving groove. This rhythm became important in R&B and swing music. A key feature of blues rhythm is the backbeat, with emphasis on the second and fourth beats, which helps create the music's swing and energy.
History
Blues historians such as Paul Oliver and Samuel Charters have suggested that the blues originated in the Sahel region of West Africa and was brought to the Americas by enslaved Africans during the slave trade. Enslaved Africans who were taken to South America and the Caribbean mostly came from regions in southern coastal West Africa, such as southern Nigeria, where music was often based on percussion instruments. However, central Africa and areas where Bantu languages were spoken had fewer musical elements that contributed to the blues. Many enslaved people who arrived in North America came from the Sahel region and were more familiar with stringed instruments, such as the akonting, which influenced the creation of the banjo. Samuel Charters noted that Sahelian slaves often came from Muslim cultures and preferred stringed, melodic, and solo singing styles, which differed from the drum-based music of other African regions. Plantation owners sometimes allowed these musical traditions because they feared drums as tools of rebellion, and these traditions later evolved into the blues.
Historians Sylviane Diouf and Gerhard Kubik have identified Islamic music as an influence on blues music. Diouf observed similarities between the Islamic call to prayer, which originated with Bilal ibn Rabah, an African Muslim in the early 7th century, and 19th-century field holler music. Both styles include lyrics praising God, melodic patterns, dramatic changes in musical scales, and nasal intonation. She noted that field holler music likely came from African Muslim slaves, who made up about 30% of enslaved people in America. Kubik stated that the vocal style of many blues singers, such as using melisma and wavy intonation, reflects the musical traditions of the Sahel region, which had contact with the Islamic world through the Maghreb since the 7th and 8th centuries. Kubik also said that Arabic music elements did not influence the Sahel region, as its musical style remained unaffected by the Arabic/Islamic musical traditions that spread through West Africa via trans-Saharan trade routes. Many early blues characteristics, such as the blues scale, polyrhythm, blue notes, and melismatic vocals, are found not only in the West African Sahel but also in Sudanese music in the eastern Sahel, suggesting musical exchange across the Sahel region. The blues, which originated in the American South, likely developed from a blend of African just intonation scales and European 12-tone musical instruments and harmony. This combination created a uniquely American music that remains widely practiced and forms the foundation of another genre, American jazz.
A blue note, a key feature of blues and rhythm and blues music, is characterized by flattened thirds, fifths, or sevenths. This musical element has roots in the traditions of the Sahel region of West Africa, showing that African American music like the blues has a Sahelian-based origin. In contrast, Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Cuban music, which are more percussion-based, reflect influences from southern coastal West Africa, Central Africa, and Bantu-speaking regions, where blue notes are absent. The Griot tradition of the Sahel, which involves storytelling through music, may have influenced talking blues and, by extension, hip-hop. This tradition is not found in Bantu-speaking cultures in central, eastern, or southern Africa, further supporting the idea that the blues has a Sahelian foundation, along with European musical influences.
The first published blues song was Hart Wand’s “Dallas Blues” in 1912, followed by W.C. Handy’s “The Memphis Blues” the same year. The first recording by an African American singer was Mamie Smith’s 1920 performance of Perry Bradford’s “Crazy Blues.” However, the origins of the blues date back to the 1890s. This music is poorly documented partly due to racial discrimination in U.S. society and the low literacy rates among rural African Americans at the time.
Early reports of blues music in southern Texas and the Deep South appeared at the start of the 20th century. Charles Peabody wrote about blues music in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and Gate Thomas reported similar songs in southern Texas around 1901–1902. These accounts align with the recollections of Jelly Roll Morton, who first heard blues music in New Orleans in 1902; Ma Rainey, who remembered hearing it in Missouri the same year; and W.C. Handy, who first heard it in Tutwiler, Mississippi, in 1903. Howard W. Odum conducted the first extensive research on blues music, publishing folk songs from Mississippi and Georgia between 1905 and 1908. Odum also made early non-commercial recordings, called proto-blues by Paul Oliver, which are now lost.
Other surviving early recordings were made in 1924 by Lawrence Gellert. Later, Robert W. Gordon, who became head of the Archive of American Folk Songs at the Library of Congress, made additional recordings. Gordon was succeeded by John Lomax, who, along with his son Alan, recorded many non-commercial blues songs in the 1930s. These recordings show the variety of early blues styles, such as field hollers and ring shouts. Recordings from artists like Lead Belly and Henry Thomas also preserve blues music as it existed before 1920. These sources reveal that blues music had many structures different from the common twelve-, eight-, or sixteen-bar forms.
The social and economic reasons for the blues’ emergence are not fully understood. The blues first appeared after the Emancipation Act of 1863, between the 1860s and 1890s, a time when African Americans transitioned from slavery to sharecropping and when juke joints became places for music, dancing, and gambling. This period also saw the expansion of railroads in the southern United States. Scholars suggest that the blues developed as a shift from group performances to individualized performances, reflecting the newfound freedom of formerly enslaved people.
Lawrence Levine noted a connection between the national emphasis on individualism, the popularity of Booker T. Washington’s teachings, and the rise of the blues. He argued that African Americans were being shaped in new ways after slavery, and their secular music reflected these changes.
While blues music has no single set of characteristics, some features were present long before the modern blues emerged. Call-and-response shouts were an early form of blues-like music, described as a “functional expression” without accompaniment or harmony and not bound by strict musical structures. These styles were heard in slave ring shouts and field hollers and later expanded into solo songs filled with emotional expression.
Blues music evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions.
Musical influence
Blues music, including its forms like the 12-bar blues, melodies, and the blues scale, has influenced many other music styles, such as rock and roll, jazz, and popular music. Famous musicians like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Bob Dylan have recorded important blues songs. The blues scale is used in popular songs such as "Blues in the Night" by Harold Arlen, blues ballads like "Since I Fell for You" and "Please Send Me Someone to Love," and even in orchestral pieces like George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Concerto in F." Gershwin's second "Prelude" for solo piano is an example of a classical blues piece that follows the form carefully. The blues scale is common in modern popular music and affects many musical structures, especially the ladder of thirds used in rock music, such as in the song "A Hard Day's Night." Blues forms are also found in the theme music for the TV show Batman, Fabian Forte's hit "Turn Me Loose," Jimmie Rodgers' country music, and Tracy Chapman's song "Give Me One Reason."
Blues singing focuses on expressing emotions. Its influence on popular singing has been so widespread that, for men, singing and showing emotion are closely linked. It is more about projecting feelings than hitting specific notes.
Early country blues musicians like Skip James, Charley Patton, and Georgia Tom Dorsey played both country and urban blues and were influenced by spiritual singing. Dorsey helped spread Gospel music, which began in the 1930s with the Golden Gate Quartet. In the 1950s, soul music by artists like Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, and James Brown combined gospel and blues elements. In the 1960s and 1970s, gospel and blues merged into soul blues. Funk music from the 1970s was influenced by soul and can be seen as a precursor to hip-hop and modern R&B.
R&B music has roots in spirituals and blues. Spiritually, these songs came from New England choral traditions, especially Isaac Watts's hymns, mixed with African rhythms and call-and-response styles. Spiritual singing was more widely recorded than blues because African-American communities could gather for religious events called camp meetings.
Edward P. Comentale noted that blues was often used as a way to express art or personal identity, saying: "From Delta shacks to Chicago tenements to Harlem cabarets, the blues showed—despite its painful origins—a flexible way to shape identity and community."
Before World War II, the lines between blues and jazz were less clear. Jazz often used harmonic structures from brass bands, while blues used forms like the 12-bar blues. However, jump blues from the 1940s combined both styles. After WWII, blues had a strong influence on jazz. Bebop songs, like Charlie Parker's "Now's the Time," used blues forms with the pentatonic scale and blue notes.
Bebop changed jazz from a popular dance music to a more complex, intellectual style. The audience for blues and jazz separated, and the boundary between the two became clearer.
The blues' 12-bar structure and blues scale greatly influenced rock and roll. Rock and roll is sometimes called "blues with a backbeat." Carl Perkins described rockabilly as "blues with a country beat." Rockabillies were also said to be 12-bar blues played with a bluegrass rhythm. The song "Hound Dog," with its unchanged 12-bar structure and melody based on a flatted third and flatted seventh, is a blues song turned into a rock and roll song. Jerry Lee Lewis's rock and roll style was strongly influenced by blues and its related style, boogie-woogie. His music was not exactly rockabilly but was often called real rock and roll, a label shared by many African-American rock musicians.
Many early rock and roll songs are based on blues, such as "That's All Right Mama," "Johnny B. Goode," "Blue Suede Shoes," "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On," "Shake, Rattle, and Roll," and "Long Tall Sally." Early African-American rock musicians kept the sexual themes and hints from blues music, as in "Got a gal named Sue, knows just what to do" ("Tutti Frutti," Little Richard) or "See the girl with the red dress on, She can do the Birdland all night long" ("What'd I Say," Ray Charles). The 12-bar blues structure can also be found in pop songs like Bob Dylan's "Obviously Five Believers" and Esther and Abi Ofarim's "Cinderella Rockefella."
Early country music included blues elements. Musicians like Jimmie Rodgers, Moon Mullican, Bob Wills, Bill Monroe, and Hank Williams described themselves as blues singers, and their music had a blues feel different from the later country-pop style of artists like Eddy Arnold. Arnold also started with bluesy songs like "I'll Hold You in My Heart." Much of the 1970s "outlaw" country music by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings also used blues influences. When Jerry Lee Lewis returned to country music after rock and roll declined, he sang with a blues feel and included blues songs on his albums.
In popular culture
Blues music has often been called the "devil's music" or "music of the devil," and some people believed it could encourage violence or bad behavior. In the early 1900s, blues was seen as improper, especially when white audiences began listening to it in the 1920s. Between the 1920s and 1960s, blues songs and culture often included references to the devil. Over time, the connection to the devil became less common in popular memory, though the story of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil at a crossroads remained well known. A 2017 study titled Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil & The Blues Tradition explored the devil's role in blues music.
During the blues revival in the 1960s and 1970s, blues musicians Taj Mahal and Lightnin' Hopkins created music that was featured in the 1972 film Sounder. Mahal received a Grammy nomination and a BAFTA nomination for his work on the film’s score. In 2001, Mahal composed and performed a banjo piece in the movie Songcatcher, which focused on preserving Appalachian music traditions.
A major example of blues music in the late 20th century was the 1980 film The Blues Brothers, starring Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. The film brought together famous rhythm and blues artists, including Ray Charles, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, and John Lee Hooker. The film’s band later toured successfully under the name The Blues Brothers. A 1998 sequel, Blues Brothers 2000, included more blues musicians, such as B.B. King, Bo Diddley, and Eric Clapton.
In 2003, filmmaker Martin Scorsese helped promote blues music to a wider audience. He worked with directors like Clint Eastwood and Wim Wenders to create a PBS documentary series called The Blues. He also produced high-quality CDs featuring major blues artists. In 2006, blues musician Keb’ Mo’ performed a blues version of “America, the Beautiful” to close the final season of The West Wing.
The blues was highlighted in 2012 during a White House event titled “Red, White and Blues.” Hosted by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, the event featured performances by B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and other blues artists.
In 2022, filmmaker Tyler Perry released A Jazzman’s Blues, a movie set in the 1940s Deep South. The film uses blues music to tell a story about forbidden love, family, and survival. The soundtrack includes original songs and traditional blues hits performed by artists like Ruth B. and Amirah Vann. The film shows how blues music reflects cultural and historical struggles.
In 2025, the horror film Sinners explores blues music through a supernatural story set in 1930s Mississippi Delta. Directed by Ryan Coogler, the film blends African American blues traditions with Chinese mythology. It introduces the character Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, and mixes blues music with Chinese musical influences. The film’s soundtrack combines original Delta blues with Chinese music, creating a unique sound. Reviewers praised the film for using supernatural themes to explore identity, resilience, and cultural connections.