Rock%20Music%20Styles

1
Rock Music Styles

• The Blues Roots of Rock Music

2
What is blues?

• Blues is vocal or instrumental music based on
  characteristic blue notes and twelve-bar
  structure.
• It emerged in the rural American-African
  communities combining various music traditions -
  African music which were brought to America by
  slaves, field hollers work songs, spirituals
  and rhymed English/Scottish popular ballads.

3
What is blues?

• The main sources of blues were African
  traditional music but it is too difficult to
  pinpoint exactly which ones they were as slaves
  came from very different regions.

4
Country Blues

• The earliest form of blues, cir. the end of the
  19th C.
• Blues developed in the rural areas of the South.
• Delta blues in Mississippi
• Carolina blues in South Carolina

5
Country Blues

• CHARACTERISTICS
• Rough tone and emotional words
• Songs are accompanied by guitar and blues harp
  (harmonica)
• Bottle necks and slide guitar
• Blue notes
• The third and seventh notes in a major scale are
  slightly lowered.
• In C major, E is between E and E? and B is
  between B and B ?

6
Country Blues

• Verse structure
• Combinations of three lines, the second of which
  is the repetition of the first.
• I got a kindhearted mama do anything in this
  world for me. (A)
• I got a kindhearted mama do anything in this
  world for me.(A)
• But these eveil-hearted women, man, they will not
  let me be. (B)
• I love my baby, my baby dont love me (C)
• I love my baby, my baby dont love me (C)
• I really love that woman, cant stand to leave
  her be. (D)

7
Country Blues

• Music Structure
• Music is organized into four bar patterns.
• (I got a kindhearted mama do anything in this
  world for me) Instrumental fill
• C C C C / C C C C / C C C C / C C
  C C
• (I got a kindhearted mama do anything in this
  world for me) Instrumental fill
• F F F F / F F F F / C C C C / C C
  C C
• (But these evil-hearted women, man, they will
  not let me be) Instrumental fill
• G G G G / F F F F / C C C C / C C
  C C
• Twelve-bar structure

8
Country Blues

• Robert Johnson (1911-38)
• Hardly any records are left concerning his life
  and career.
• The thing about Robert Johnson was that he
  existed on his records. He was a pure legend.
• Martin Scorsese

9
Country Blues

• RJ was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi on the 8th
  of May, 1911 (No record) as the 11th son of Julia
  Major Dodds out of wedlock. His father unknown.
  
• Charles Dodds, RJs stepfather was a relatively
  wealthy wicker furniture maker but was forced out
  of Hazlehurst by a lynch mob after an argument in
  the town. Lived in Memphis with his sons.

10
Country Blues

• RJ moved in the household of Charles Dodds at the
  age of 14 and reputedly he was taught playing the
  guitar by one of his half-brothers.
• RJ returned to Mississippi after his mother
  remarried. His new stepfather had no sympathy
  for music and RJ left home to join his musician
  friends.
• No evidence that he attended school.
• RJ married twice. His first wife died at her
  childbirth and his second wife had three children
  from her previous marriage.

11
Country Blues

• RJ travelled around the Mississippi delta area by
  bus, hitchhiking and hopping trains. He played
  in the streets, in front of restaurants and
  barbershops. He lived on tips. He sang what he
  was asked to sing but as he picked up any tune at
  the first hearing, there was no problem to meet
  his customers requests.
• RJ could reputedly be a husband or lover to any
  woman who did not mind having him whichever town
  or village he went to.

12
Country Blues

• November, 1936 RJ attended a recording session
  held at a make-shift studio set up at Gunter
  Hotel, San Antonio, Texas. In three days
  session, he recorded 16 selections with an
  alternate take of each.
• Further recording at a make-shift studio at
  Dallas, Texas.
• Distributions and sale are extremely limited.
• RJ died of drinking poisoned whisky. He was
  poised by the lover or husband of the woman with
  whom he flirted or the woman herself.

13
Country Blues

• RJs blues is more improvisational based on the
  blues formula.
• Not the exact repetition of the first line of
  text in the second line.
• Added extra beats to bars or extra bars to
  phrases.
• Use of more than one rhythm (poly-rhythm)

14
Country Blues

• RJs influence
• His music was covered by Rolling Stones, Eric
  Clapton (Cream), Fleetwood Mac
• Musicians heavily influenced by RJ include Led
  Zeppelin

15
Country Blues

• Memphis Minnie (1897-1973)
• MM left her home town at the age of eight and
  lived with street musicians. Moved to Chicago
  where she established herself as a blues
  musician. She became one of the biggest names
  during the depression era and the First World
  War. She is also known as one of the first women
  who started using an electric guitar in 1942.

16
Urban Blues

• Urban blues are more complicated and larger in
  scale than country blues.
• Most urban blues include a group of
  instrumentalists
• Bass, drums, guitar and/or piano (rhythm
  section)
• Saxophone or other wind instruments (instrumental
  section)
• Electric guitar

17
Urban Blues

• B.B. King (1925 - )
• King of blues arguably the greatest urban
  blues musician
• Great sophistication and power

18
Chicago Blues

• Blues developed in Chicago, adding electric
  guitar, bass guitar, piano, drums and instruments
  to guitar/harmonica Delta blues.
• Blues traditional hexatonic scale
• C Eb F F G Bb
• More notes from major scale are added

19
Chicago Blues

• Migration - a large number of blacks moved to
  more economically prosperous north in the early
  20th century including musicians.
• Musicians from the south came to touch with those
  from the north.
• Chess Records

20
Chicago Blues

• Phil Chess and Leonard Chess, Polish emigrées
  gave black musicians to record their music.
• Chess brothers gave blues musicians backup
  musicians and equipments.

21
Chicago Blues

• John Lee Hooker (1917
• - 2001)
• Came from Mississippi and learned music from his
  stepfather, a local blues musician in Louisiana.
• JLH is known for his spoken style and free
  rhythm.

22
Chicago Blues

• Muddy Waters (1913 -
• 1983)
• A father of Chicago blues was also from
  Mississippi.
• In his early career, he emulated Delta (acoustic)
  guitarists but turned to electric guitar in
  Chicago.

23
Chicago Blues

• Sonny Boy Williamson
• II (1899-1965)
• Mississippi
• Blues harmonica player, singer and song writer

24
Classic (Female) Blues

• Blues sang by female soloists in jazz and blues
  bands.
• Those soloists sang being backed by piano, horns,
  and drums.
• They played in vaudeville tours but were the
  first black musicians that were recorded.

25
Classic (Female) Blues

• Ma Rainey (1886-1939)
• Georgia or Alabama
• Mother of the blues
• Recorded also with great jazz musicians such as
  Coleman Hawkins and Louis Armstrong
• (Erotic?) moaning, dramatic pauses, heightened
  blue notes

26
Classic (Female) Blues

• Bessie Smith (1894-1937) Tennessee
• Expressive blue notes
• Use of dramatic expressions.
• BS also recorded with Hawkins, Armstrong and
  Benny Goodman

27
Rhythm and Blues

• RB is a marketing term invented by Jerry Wexler
  for Billboard magazine in 1947, replacing the
  existing term, race music.
• RB is a catchall term referring to any music
  made by and for black Americans.
• Robert Palmer
• Later RB became a blanket term covering also
  Soul and Funk.

28
Rhythm and Blues

• Some of the early RBs accented the second and
  the fourth beats of each bar.
• As it is more common to accent the first and
  third beats in each bar, the RB rhythm came to
  be called off-beat or back-beat.
• 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 Normal
  rhythm
• 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4
  Back-beat
• RB was first dance music and developed in
  ghettoes of large cities with suggestive lyrics.

29
Rhythm and Blues

• Bo Diddley (1928 - )
• Mississippi
• Singer, song writer and guitarist
• Generally considered as an important musician who
  bridged RB and rockn roll.
• He is known for using his guitar as if drums.
• He introduced insistent, driving rhythm through
  his guitar.

30
The Birth of Rockn Roll and Black Musicians

• A significant change in the American music scene.
  
• Music by African Americans had never been popular
  among the white audience. In the 50s some white
  musicians whose background was country music or
  pops started covering RB.
• The popularity of blues and RB arose and many
  African American musicians came to receive more
  attention.

31
The Birth of Rockn Roll and Black Musicians

• Professor Longhair
• (1918-1980) Louisiana
• New Orleans blues musician and RB pianist
• Known for boogie-woogie piano playing style
  (fast, repeated note patterns with two notes
  played in a single beat.)

32
The Birth of Rockn Roll and Black Musicians

• Fats Domino (1928 - )
• New Orleans
• RB musician, Rockn Roll singer, song writer and
  pianist.
• FD combined bluesy style, stride (jazz style) and
  boogie-woogie.

33
The Birth of Rockn Roll and Black Musicians

• Little Richard (1932 - )
• Singer, song writer and pianist, who was an
  important figure in the transition from RB to
  Rockn Roll.
• Studied piano in his church and was influenced by
  gospel.
• Pounding piano and suggestive lyrics

34
The Birth of Rockn Roll and Black Musicians

• Chuck Berry (1926 - )
• Singer, song writer and guitarist
• CBs music rooted in blues and RB but he is a
  classic Rockn Roller, combining his black roots
  with Country and Western.
• Father of Rockn Roll Guitar