50 Fun Facts About Blues Music

The blues originated among African Americans in which region of the United States?

The Deep South. Black Southerners who moved north for work carried the music with them, which is how a rural sound took root in cities like Chicago.

Which chord progression is the most common form of the blues?

Twelve-bar. In its basic form it needs just three chords, and the same pattern became the backbone of jazz, R&B and early rock and roll.

"Blue notes" are usually which scale degrees, flattened in pitch?

Thirds, fifths and sevenths. Singers and guitarists bend these notes slightly flat, often landing in the cracks between a piano's keys.

The word "blues" may derive from which old phrase for melancholy?

Blue devils. The same phrase was also used for delirium tremens, the visions that can come with severe alcohol withdrawal.

The three lines of a standard blues verse typically follow which lyric pattern?

AAB. A line is sung, repeated, then answered by a third, and an instrument fills the gap after each one, a call and response with roots in African music.

Which composer billed himself the "Father of the Blues"?

W. C. Handy. He did not invent the blues: he heard it from musicians in the Mississippi Delta, then arranged it for his band and became one of the first to publish it.

Which city did the "Father of the Blues" name in the title of his best-known song, published in 1914?

St. Louis. The tango was in fashion, so he opened "St. Louis Blues" with a tango rhythm to draw the dancers in before breaking into a low-down blues.

Who made the first blues recording by an African-American singer, "Crazy Blues", in 1920?

Mamie Smith. The record's runaway sales, many of them to Black buyers, showed labels a market they had ignored, and they hurried to record blues singers of their own.

Which singer was dubbed the "Mother of the Blues"?

Ma Rainey. By her own account she first heard the blues in a small Missouri town around 1902, and she was singing it in tent shows two decades before she made a record.

Which singer was nicknamed the "Empress of the Blues"?

Bessie Smith. She became the highest-paid Black entertainer of her day and bought a custom railroad car for her troupe to travel and sleep in.

The "Empress of the Blues" was born in which Tennessee city?

Chattanooga. Orphaned by the age of nine, she sang and danced on its streets for change while her brother played guitar.

In the 1920s, the record industry sold blues by Black artists under which marketing category?

Race records. Billboard ran a Race Records chart until June 1949, when it renamed the listing rhythm and blues, the name that stuck.

Kentucky-born Sylvester Weaver made the first known recordings of which blues technique in 1923?

Slide guitar. He pressed a knife along the strings, making the guitar whine and moan like a human voice.

Blind Willie McTell and Blind Boy Fuller played which fingerpicked blues style of the southeastern states?

Piedmont blues. The thumb keeps a steady bass line going on the low strings while a finger picks a bouncy tune on top, so one guitar can sound like a ragtime piano.

Legend says which Mississippi bluesman, dead at 27, sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads?

Robert Johnson. Older players such as Son House were unimpressed by him until he came back from months away playing brilliantly, and the legend grew up to explain it.

What was the title of Columbia's influential 1961 compilation of the crossroads bluesman's recordings?

King of the Delta Blues Singers. He had only one modest hit in his lifetime, but this album made him a legend to the rock players of the 1960s.

Which 1930s urban blues style was built on a regular left-hand bass figure on piano?

Boogie-woogie. It was played at rent parties and honky-tonks on Chicago's South Side in the 1920s, then became a national craze after a 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall.

Where did blues shouter Big Joe Turner, a pioneer of jump blues, start out as a singing bartender?

Kansas City. He sang from behind the bar as "The Singing Barman", and two decades later his "Shake, Rattle and Roll" helped launch rock and roll.

Which Texas-born "Stormy Monday" guitarist starred on the Los Angeles blues scene in the 1940s?

T-Bone Walker. He was the first star of the electric blues guitar; B.B. King said that once he had heard him, he knew he had to have an electric guitar himself.

Which event marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues?

World War II. War work drew Southern players to crowded, noisy city clubs, where they switched to electric guitars simply to be heard.

Who is often cited as the "father of modern Chicago blues"?

Muddy Waters. He took his amplified Chicago sound to England in 1958, and British players such as Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies soon plugged in themselves.

On whose behalf did Alan Lomax first record the "father of modern Chicago blues" on a Mississippi plantation in 1941?

The Library of Congress. Lomax recorded him at home on the plantation where he drove a tractor and ran a juke joint out of his house; two years later he left for Chicago.

Which rock and roll pioneer got his record deal in 1955 on a tip from the "father of modern Chicago blues"?

Chuck Berry. He took the label a slow blues and his reworking of the country tune "Ida Red"; the second, retitled "Maybellene", became his first hit.

Most Chicago blues artists recorded for which Chicago label?

Chess Records. Leonard and Phil Chess arrived from Poland as boys in 1928 and ran South Side nightclubs, among them the Macomba Lounge, before they went into the record business.

Which British band recorded the instrumental "2120 South Michigan Avenue" at that Chicago studio address in 1964?

The Rolling Stones. They cut it on their first American tour, at the studio their blues heroes had used; "It's All Over Now", from the same sessions, became their first UK number one.

Which song was a number one R&B hit for blues singer Big Mama Thornton three years before Elvis Presley recorded it?

Hound Dog. Two teenage songwriters, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, wrote it for her; it was her only hit, and she saw very little of the money it made.

Which bassist wrote "Hoochie Coochie Man", "Back Door Man" and "Wang Dang Doodle"?

Willie Dixon. Led Zeppelin borrowed his lyrics for "Whole Lotta Love" without credit; he sued, and the band settled and added his name to the song.

Blues musicians commonly call the harmonica what?

The harp. Tired of being drowned out by electric guitars, Little Walter cupped a small microphone against his and played it through an amplifier, making it a lead instrument.

Chester Arthur Burnett performed under which stage name?

Howlin' Wolf. The usual story is that his grandfather gave him the name, warning the boy that wolves would come and get him when he misbehaved.

Which 19-year-old bandleader's group really made "Rocket 88", the 1951 Memphis record often called the first rock and roll single?

Ike Turner. The label credited the record to his sax player and singer, Jackie Brenston, and "his Delta Cats", who were really Turner's own band, the Kings of Rhythm.

Which producer's Sun Records challenged the dominant Chicago labels in the early 1950s?

Sam Phillips. He first recorded bluesmen for other labels to release, launched Sun in 1952, and two years later discovered Elvis Presley, after which Sun turned from blues to rock and roll.

B.B. King gave every one of his guitars which name, after a dance-hall fire started by two men fighting over a woman?

Lucille. He ran back into the burning hall in Twist, Arkansas, to rescue his $30 guitar, and chose the name to remind himself never to do anything so foolish again.

What do the initials in B.B. King's name stand for, a nickname from his days as a Memphis disc jockey?

Blues Boy. Listeners to Memphis station WDIA knew the young disc jockey as the "Beale Street Blues Boy", which was cut to "Blues Boy" and then to two letters.

Which song gave B.B. King his biggest hit and a Grammy as the 1970s began?

The Thrill Is Gone. It was a remake: Roy Hawkins had an R&B hit with the song in 1951, almost two decades before King's version crossed over to the pop chart.

On which 1988 album did the "King of the Blues" record "When Love Comes to Town" with U2?

Rattle and Hum. U2 cut the song at Sun Studio in Memphis, where Elvis Presley had recorded, and King kept it in his own concerts long after the band stopped playing it.

To whom did the "King of the Blues" present his trademark guitar at a 1997 Christmas concert?

Pope John Paul II. King had just played the Vatican's Christmas concert, and the gift was one of many guitars to carry the famous name: the 1949 original was long gone.

Which blues and R&B singer turned "At Last", a tune from a 1941 Glenn Miller film, into her signature song?

Etta James. Beyoncé, who played her in the 2008 film Cadillac Records, sang "At Last" at Barack Obama's inaugural ball, and James complained on stage that it was her song.

The "Three Kings of the Blues Guitar" are B.B., Freddie and which other King?

Albert. He was no relation, yet early on he was billed as "B.B. King's brother"; a left-hander, he taught himself on a guitar turned upside down.

Which 2000 album with Eric Clapton won B.B. a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album?

Riding with the King. The title song was not written for B.B. King: John Hiatt wrote it and made it the title track of his own 1983 album.

Whose debut record, "Boogie Chillen'", reached number one on the R&B chart in 1949?

John Lee Hooker. He recorded it alone: just his voice, an amplified guitar and his own foot stomping out the beat.

The "Boogie Chillen'" singer developed his electric style in which northern city?

Detroit. He came north for factory work and was still working as a janitor when his first record came out.

Which future pop-rock giant began in 1967 as a British blues band led by guitarist Peter Green?

Fleetwood Mac. Green named the band after the rhythm section he wanted, drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie, to tempt a hesitant McVie into joining.

Swamp blues stars Slim Harpo and Lightnin' Slim built their careers in the bars of which Louisiana city?

Baton Rouge. Producer J. D. Miller recorded the local players and sent the tapes to Excello, a label in Nashville, which is how a Louisiana bar sound reached the national R&B chart.

Which American guitarist was taken to London in 1966 by the Animals' bassist and became a star there first?

Jimi Hendrix. Chas Chandler spotted him in a Greenwich Village club; within months he had three UK top ten hits, and only at Monterey in June 1967 did American audiences catch up.

Guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop first made their names in which Chicago group?

Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Bob Dylan heard it at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and borrowed several of its players to back his first electric set the next day.

Which Texas guitarist fronted the trio Double Trouble?

Stevie Ray Vaughan. He took the band's name from an Otis Rush song; its 1983 debut, Texas Flood, was cut in a three-day session at singer Jackson Browne's studio.

Which rock star saw the Double Trouble frontman at Montreux in 1982 and hired him as lead guitarist for his next album?

David Bowie. The Texan's blues solos run through six songs on Let's Dance, but he walked away from Bowie's world tour days before it opened and went back to his own band.

The Double Trouble frontman died in a 1990 helicopter crash after a show at which venue?

Alpine Valley Music Theatre. He had just closed the show jamming with Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy and Robert Cray when his helicopter took off into dense fog and hit a ski hill.

Which 1986 album announced Robert Cray as a major blues artist?

Strong Persuader. Its single "Smoking Gun" crossed over to the pop chart, carrying a straight blues album into the mainstream and winning Cray a Grammy.

Which 1989 album revived the "Boogie Chillen'" singer's popularity late in life?

The Healer. He made it as a set of duets with admirers including Carlos Santana and Bonnie Raitt, and the Raitt track, "I'm in the Mood", won him a Grammy.