define "chicago blues" vs. "texas blues" etc.

[maryjane]

also "kansas city" and any other terms that are meant to indicate styles.

this is a total noob rookie question that i've never really considered much

i'd like to understand these terms a little better.

how do you guys define or distinguish the various styles.

what others are popular or familiar?

is there west texas vs. east texas?

is there a california or new jersey blues?

 

[String Tree]

This has to do with the History the American People.

All these people moving out of the Deep South to different parts of the Country to find work. They brought their Blues with them.

The Blues, Rock, Country ... they all went to Church together where they played Gospel.

Just keep in mind the Music is about the People who wrote it and performed it, they just happened to be from Texas, Mississippi, Chicago, etc.

 

[maryjane]

so it's not about particular rhythmic constructs or instrumentation??

i just don't know what people mean when they say something like:

"she's a chicago style blues singer" or "he plays kansas city style"

 

[dsutton24]

This is pretty subjective, and somebody will be along to call me a dumasp before long, but here're my thoughts on the subject...

The Blues from the south probably grew out of Spirituals, work songs, and the like. It's usually laid back and somewhat thoughtful and melancholy.

Chicago and Saint Louis blues are similar to each other, most of the greats in the early half of the last century played both cities pretty regularly. The Chicago blues has heavy urban influences, it was played on the streets and often had a purpose, parties, fund raising, etc.

Kansas City blues has more of a jump / pop vibe, reminds me of early rock and Motown. Texas blues reminds me of western swing.

I'm sure there are other subsets, a lot of the British invasion rock had blues roots.

 

[maryjane]

i often hear the terms used in a way that makes me think there will be something

distinctive in the drums, harmonica, piano, guitar, or whatever instruments are used.

if that's not the case and they don't really define something that makes one notably

different from another, i wonder what is useful about those terms?

btw, thanks for the responses

 

[dsutton24]

i wonder what is useful about those terms?

The terms describe the music, and the roots of the music. They're not shopping lists for instruments. For example, you can probably recognize music that has a Latin influence. It has a certain feel and a few distinctive rhythms that you notice right away. But, the instruments can range from accordion, to strings of all sorts, horns, a wide variety of percussion instruments.

Listen to Chicago blues, think of Howlin Wolf, Magic Sam, Hound Dog Taylor (or any of the Taylors). Memphis blues, listen to BB King, John Lee Hooker, Junior Wells. Kansas City, listen to Pete Johnson and early Charlie Parker.

 

[maryjane]

thanks for the references, dsutton....that's kind of what i'm hoping to learn.

i'm familiar with all of those artists, but i did not know with which city they're associated

so is bb king's style called "memphis style" because he's from memphis?

i'd hoped to be able to learn how to identify a style by simply listening to it .....

i'm not the brightest bulb in the box and i'm still confused.

 

[dsutton24]

i'm not the brightest bulb in the box and i'm still confused.

One of the nice things about music is that it often is a matter of feel rather than numbers or lists. Find some of the modern guys who are still working, and work your way backward in time. Find someone you like, and find out who his influences were, and listen to them.

I'm a big B. B. King fan. His early influences were people like T-Bone Walker and Sonny Boy Williamson. King has influenced everyone from Clapton to SRV to who knows who all... It's the history of much of modern music.

 

[4pickupguy]

I've always understood ( perhaps incorrectly) this to describe the style as well as instrumentation.
Around here at least they mean:
Chicago Blues= a band that typically has horns and lots of swing style tunes..Duke Robillard etc
Texas= a band that has more rock compliment. Guitar, organ bass, drums.. Lots of up beat shuffles and boogies etc..SRV
Mississippi= traditional delta style. Think Robert Johnson...
Most people I know around hold these conventions but, even those may be regional...

 

[franchelB]

Chicago Blues has a "jazzier"/big band style with a horn section (with a more complex musical arrangements)...some will even say it's close to Memphis-style. Think BB King, and Muddy Waters.

Texas Blues is more of the Mississippi/Country-style blues, where the music is more strip down (i.e. 3 chord songs, basic guitar, bass, drum set-up), but there is a jump blues-style influence. I think it's more varied, when you have artists like Lightning Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, Janis Joplin, Albert Collins, Johnny Winter, ZZ Top, and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

 

[perttime]

I'm no authority on blues styles, but it has been my feeling, too, that
- Texas Blues favors simpler arrangements and small bands or even solo performances, while
- Chicago has more complex arrangements and tends towards bigger bands with more different instruments.

Maybe it is the countryside vs. city thing - or influences from other music also played in the geographical area.

 

[bblumentritt]

Texas blues is typically played with more swing than other blues styles. It differs from Chicago blues in its use of instruments and sounds, especially the heavy use of the guitar, with powerful lead guitar breaks.

Chicago blues is more band oriented, closer to big band music.

The beat emphasis is often different. Think 1 - 2 - 1 - 2 in Stevie Ray Vaughn's music, and a more syncopated Bop, Bop on the 1 and 2-1/2 for Chicago. This is not set in stone.

 

[maryjane]

thanks for the input, boys...

i appreciate getting some understanding....

and more is always welcome.....

 

[elihu]

I like what String Tree said-I think blues was a regional thing back in the days where communication took more time and people had to dig deep within themselves to come up with music. They had fewer resources to draw on too, namely family history and neighbors.

I'd like to compare Texas and Chicago Blues in the 50's by their largest respective record labels, namely Duke/Peacock out of Houston and Chess in Chicago. One of the first and biggest T-Bone disciples was Gatemouth Brown, Peacock's first artist. Gate's urban thing was jazzy guitar lines over a swinging band with horns. This is what i consider the Texas style-other successful Duke/Peacock artists such as Bobby Bland, Junior Parker, Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland and Roy Gaines followed in his footsteps. Mance Lipscomb and Lightning Hopkins had more of a country blues solo style, even though Lightnin' could really do it all. His Herald sessions in 1954 had some smoking electric guitar (check out Hopkin's Sky Hop) but electric for Sam was a DeArmond pickup on his acoustic.

I see Chicago as being first generation offspring of the Delta. Many Black people moved to Chicago during WWII for the jobs and after the war the conditions were ripe for music with those newfangled electric guitars. All of a sudden you could be heard over noisy bar patrons! Muddy was the archtype Delta influenced bluesman-learning at the feet of Robert Johnson and Son House and bringing it to Chicago crowds with electricity. His "big" band had guitar, bass, drums, piano and harmonica with Muddy on slide...not really as big in numbers as the swing bands of Bobby Bland with their horn sections. Another thing-slide guitar is a Delta thing and became a Chicago thing-it was hard to find slide guitar in Texas in the 50's. I don't think the harmonica was as popular in Texas in the 50's either, whereas Little Walter essentially wrote the book on how to play amplified harmonica in a band context. And after the onset of rock and roll in 1955 the Chicago bands got even smaller due to decreased demand. They adjusted by going to a three piece arrangement-guitar/bass/drums-later dubbed the West Side Sound. This is where Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Freddie King, Magic Sam and others got their start.

So generally speaking I see Texas Blues as being more of a swinging style with horns as opposed to Chicago which has a harder Delta influence. But there are always multiple shades of gray when catagorizing music-there are going to be lots of individual artists that don't fit my generalizations.

Roy Gaines in 2005...71 years young!

 

[Larry F]

Who are some examples of Chicago blues that had a big band character? When I think of Chicago blues, it is Muddy, Wolf, Otis, Buddy, Junior Wells, Little Walter, Earl Hooker, Magic Sam, Sunnyland Slim, Pinetop Perkins, Willie Dixon, Luther Allison, The Four Aces, Eddie Boyd, Lonnie Brooks, James Cotton, Elmore James, Robert Lockwood, Jr., JB Lenoir, Robert Nighthawk, Jimmie Reed, Fenton Robinson, Son Seals, Otis Spann, Hound Dog Taylor, Koko Taylor, Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller). Of course, also Bloomfield, Butterfield, etc.

Also, some significant cross-movement, by Wolf in Memphis-Chicago, Freddie King in Chicago-Texas, etc.

 

[joeford]

Roy Gaines in 2005...71 years young!

he hopped up faster than i can at 30... i want what he's having...

 

[BenM]

Who are some examples of Chicago blues that had a big band character? When I think of Chicago blues, it is Muddy, Wolf, Otis, Buddy, Junior Wells, Little Walter, Earl Hooker, Magic Sam, Sunnyland Slim, Pinetop Perkins, Willie Dixon, Luther Allison, The Four Aces, Eddie Boyd, Lonnie Brooks, James Cotton, Elmore James, Robert Lockwood, Jr., JB Lenoir, Robert Nighthawk, Jimmie Reed, Fenton Robinson, Son Seals, Otis Spann, Hound Dog Taylor, Koko Taylor, Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller). Of course, also Bloomfield, Butterfield, etc.

Also, some significant cross-movement, by Wolf in Memphis-Chicago, Freddie King in Chicago-Texas, etc.


and others from the 50s and later. When we're talking about big band or horns in general, we're not referring to the

This is exactly what I was thinking—the names that came to my mind in thinking Chicago were Muddy, Wolf, Wells, and Walter… not really a big band sound at all.

 

[drlucky]

There's also Piedmont Blues, which is solo ragtime guitar played by such greats as Blind Blake, Rev. Gary Davis, Josh White. Much more intricate than Delta style.

West Coast blues tends to be reminiscent of Texas blues, as many of the West Coast guys (Charles Brown, Pee Wee Crayton i.e.) are transplants from Texas.

 

[BigSteveBlues]

@MaryJane:

Chicago blues is basically amplified Delta blues music. Muddy, Wolf, Sonny Boy... they all played solo or in small duo or trio formats for moonshine parties at illegal bars in the Delta. When these men moved up north to Chicago, they basically took their downbeat-heavy style and just made it louder. Notice that piano players like Pinetop Perkins or Johnny Johnson used lots of fills and triplets in between the vocal lines of the singer. That's because the songs were generally so sparsely arranged that the piano players had to do a lot of filling in where there would otherwise be almost no sound.

Chicago-style blues was always about hard-liquor nightclub environments. Basically still is.

Memphis style blues are more swinging; BB King, Al Green... they all have a more pronounced R&B influence, because they were influenced by:

Kansas City blues, which are more of a jazz-oriented sound. T-Bone Walker, although a Texan, was very much schooled in the Kansas-City-swing sound. Think Big Joe Tuner or Wynonie Harris.

Texas blues has always had a strong, strong emphasis on the meter of the song, because Texans LOVE to dance. Not grind or just wiggle around, but actually DANCE. You can two-step, boot-scoot or even waltz to some Texas-derived blues music. One thing that will always help you recognize a Texas-influenced player (Texas Instruments! LOL) is that there will often be a more clean-guitar-amp-up-LOUD tone, rather than a smaller, overdriven amp sound, like is typical of Chicago style. Even Buddy Guy, although using fairly high-wattage amps for blues (40-60 watts), is using amps with circuits that are meant to overdrive pretty easily.

Texans, on the other hand, had access to MUCH louder amps that were clean UNLESS you cranked them. That's because electric and steel guitarists in Texas bands usually favored a much cleaner sound to their tones. Listen to Eldon Shamblin with the Bob Wills Band (Western Swing), and you'll hear the seeds of Albert Collins and Jimmie Vaughan. Listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan, and that Dumble amp you're often hearing is giving him a sound much closer to a cranked-up steel-guitar amp than any Marshall or Fender.

The blues style with the greatest variations from the original Delta styles has got to be what is known as "West Coast" blues, where anything from jazz-oriented rhythm parts to rockabilly/hillbilly twang can be heard. Much more "urbane" and sophisticated sound very often, because there's always something a little "tongue-in-cheek" about getting jazz cats to try to play straight 12-bar blues music. It always comes out with a twist or a bit of a sense of humor. Listen to George Smith, Rod Piazza or even the organist Jimmy Smith. There's where you'll hear how much boundary-stretching stuff goes on once the blues gets into the hands of the West Coast jazz players.

Hope this all helps. I've been a student of the history of blues music for many years, and I'm a transplanted Texan living on the East Coast who also happens to play blues and country guitar and harmonica. Have FUN listening to all the stuff that everyone has recommended! ;-)

 

[Larry F]

@MaryJane:

Chicago blues is basically amplified Delta blues music. Muddy, Wolf, Sonny Boy... they all played solo or in small duo or trio formats for moonshine parties at illegal bars in the Delta. When these men moved up north to Chicago, they basically took their downbeat-heavy style and just made it louder. Notice that piano players like Pinetop Perkins or Johnny Johnson used lots of fills and triplets in between the vocal lines of the singer. That's because the songs were generally so sparsely arranged that the piano players had to do a lot of filling in where there would otherwise be almost no sound.

Chicago-style blues was always about hard-liquor nightclub environments. Basically still is.

Memphis style blues are more swinging; BB King, Al Green... they all have a more pronounced R&B influence, because they were influenced by:

Kansas City blues, which are more of a jazz-oriented sound. T-Bone Walker, although a Texan, was very much schooled in the Kansas-City-swing sound. Think Big Joe Tuner or Wynonie Harris.

Texas blues has always had a strong, strong emphasis on the meter of the song, because Texans LOVE to dance. Not grind or just wiggle around, but actually DANCE. You can two-step, boot-scoot or even waltz to some Texas-derived blues music. One thing that will always help you recognize a Texas-influenced player (Texas Instruments! LOL) is that there will often be a more clean-guitar-amp-up-LOUD tone, rather than a smaller, overdriven amp sound, like is typical of Chicago style. Even Buddy Guy, although using fairly high-wattage amps for blues (40-60 watts), is using amps with circuits that are meant to overdrive pretty easily.

Texans, on the other hand, had access to MUCH louder amps that were clean UNLESS you cranked them. That's because electric and steel guitarists in Texas bands usually favored a much cleaner sound to their tones. Listen to Eldon Shamblin with the Bob Wills Band (Western Swing), and you'll hear the seeds of Albert Collins and Jimmie Vaughan. Listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan, and that Dumble amp you're often hearing is giving him a sound much closer to a cranked-up steel-guitar amp than any Marshall or Fender.

The blues style with the greatest variations from the original Delta styles has got to be what is known as "West Coast" blues, where anything from jazz-oriented rhythm parts to rockabilly/hillbilly twang can be heard. Much more "urbane" and sophisticated sound very often, because there's always something a little "tongue-in-cheek" about getting jazz cats to try to play straight 12-bar blues music. It always comes out with a twist or a bit of a sense of humor. Listen to George Smith, Rod Piazza or even the organist Jimmy Smith. There's where you'll hear how much boundary-stretching stuff goes on once the blues gets into the hands of the West Coast jazz players.

Hope this all helps. I've been a student of the history of blues music for many years, and I'm a transplanted Texan living on the East Coast who also happens to play blues and country guitar and harmonica. Have FUN listening to all the stuff that everyone has recommended! ;-)

Hey, we lured you in. This is great stuff. Hope you stick around.

Here's a question about Texas: what is a "flat tire" groove or shuffle in the drums?

When I think of West coast, I think jump, but I can see rock-a-billy influence, too, mainly because both types emphasize arpeggiations and generally sticking to the chord tones closer than the Delta-derived Chicago guys, who "float" over the 12-bar changes with the minor pent more often. I think the minor pent used this way comes from the Delta melodies. It is very fashionable right now to criticize the use of the minor pent. But my take on it is that the critics are imagining a jazzier approach, not a Delta-Chicago approach. Looked at this way, it is possible to see the London bands of the 60s as being more influenced by Chicago than Texas-West Coast. Maybe part of the London infatuation with the Chicago sound came, in part, from those Folk Blues tours of the early 60s, which sometimes resulted in a roomful of Claptons and Pages literally sitting at the feet of one of their idols in someone's living room.

To me, the Texas-West Coast connection seems pretty solid, with T-Bone and Pee Wee Crayton, both from Texas, but later lived in California. They were the pioneers of sticking closer to the chord changes when soloing, both by emphasizing chord tones and arpeggios, and suppressing the minor pent at times. I think the tendency to use cleaner amps in Texas and Cali ties in with the chord tone and arpeggio approach mentioned above. I should mention Duke Robillard, who has a strong Texas side to his playing (he's from the Northeast, though).

With Robillard mentioned, I'd like to make one last observation. If a guitarist is wearing a Hawaiian, bowling, or panel shirt, no way is he a Chicago cat. When I lived in Chicago in the 80s-90s, a lot of guys went the Otis route and wore a cowboy hat and boots, pressed jeans, and tweed jacket. So, I suppose you could bring attire into the discussion of different blues schools. This reminds me. In Guitar Player Magazine, there was an article that mentioned the John Mayall school of blues guitar players, including Clapton, Green, and Mick Taylor. In the next issue, a kid wrote a letter to the editor, asking where the John Mayall School of Blues Guitar was located, and how does he apply. Very, very sweet. Looking back, I wonder if it was Gary Moore?