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Blues standards are
blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...
songs that have attained a high level of recognition due to having been widely performed and recorded. They represent the best known and most interpreted blues songs that are seen as standing the test of time. Blues standards come from different eras and styles, such as
ragtime
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott ...
-
vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...
,
Delta
Delta commonly refers to:
* Delta (letter) (Δ or δ), a letter of the Greek alphabet
* River delta, at a river mouth
* D ( NATO phonetic alphabet: "Delta")
* Delta Air Lines, US
* Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19
Delta may also ...
and other
early acoustic styles, and
urban blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...
from
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
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, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
and the
West Coast West Coast or west coast may refer to:
Geography Australia
* Western Australia
*Regions of South Australia#Weather forecasting, West Coast of South Australia
* West Coast, Tasmania
**West Coast Range, mountain range in the region
Canada
* Britis ...
.
Many blues songs were developed in
American folk music
The term American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as ''traditional music'', ''traditional folk music'', ''contemporary folk music'', ''vernacular music,'' or ''roots music''. Many traditional songs have been sung ...
traditions and individual songwriters are sometimes unidentified. Blues historian Gerard Herzhaft noted:
Compounding the problem is that, in the earlier days, many blues songs were not copyrighted. Later, the rights were claimed by those who recorded a subsequent version or were managers or record company owners.
Nearly one half of the blues standards listed were first recorded in the pre-
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
acoustic blues era, before music publications tracked the sales of blues records. However, many popular renditions, as reflected in the
record chart
A record chart, in the music industry, also called a music chart, is a ranking of Sound recording and reproduction, recorded music according to certain criteria during a given period. Many different criteria are used in worldwide charts, often ...
s, are more modern versions featuring electric instruments. For example,
Robert Johnson
Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911August 16, 1938) was an American blues musician and songwriter. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generati ...
and
Tampa Red
Hudson Whittaker (born Hudson Woodbridge; January 8, 1903March 19, 1981), known as Tampa Red, was a Chicago blues musician.
His distinctive single-string slide guitar style, songwriting and bottleneck technique influenced other Chicago blues gui ...
, who were the first to record the most blues standards on the list at four each, performed them as solo or duo acoustic performances. However,
B.B. King
Riley B. King (September 16, 1925 – May 14, 2015), known professionally as B.B. King, was an American blues singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. He introduced a sophisticated style of soloing based on fluid string bending, shi ...
and
Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 April 30, 1983), known professionally as Muddy Waters, was an American blues singer and musician who was an important figure in the post-war blues scene, and is often cited as the "father of modern Chicago b ...
, with the most standards on the charts at five each, used electric blues-ensemble arrangements.
Music journalist
Richie Unterberger
Richie Unterberger (born January 19, 1962) is an American author and journalist whose focus is popular music and travel writing.
Life and writing
Unterberger attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he wrote for the university newspaper '' ...
commented on the adaptability of blues: "From its inception, the blues has always responded to developments in popular music as a whole: the use of guitar and piano in American folk and
gospel
Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...
, the percussive rhythms of
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
, the lyrics of
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley was a collection of music publishers and songwriters in New York City that dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It originally referred to a specific place: West 28th Street ...
, and the widespread use of amplification and electric instruments all helped shape the evolution of the blues." Blues standards that appeared on the main charts in the 1960s and 1970s often had been recorded by
rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated in African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly ...
,
soul
In many religious and philosophical traditions, there is a belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being".
Etymology
The Modern English noun ''soul'' is derived from Old English ''sāwol, sāwel''. The earliest attes ...
, and
rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
musicians.
[; ; ; ; ; ; ; ] Each song listed has been identified by five or more music writers as a blues standard. Spellings and titles may differ; the most common are used.
List
See also
* ''
''
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{{Musical repertoire
Blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...
Blues songs