6.2 Mississippi blues

The Deep South is seen as the birthplace of the blues, with Mississippi generally considered as being the epicentre (Davis, 2003; Stolle, 2011; Gioia, 2008). This early style of blues to come out of Mississippi was known as Delta blues, the name coming from the Mississippi Delta near where the music was said to originate. The first recorded examples of Delta blues weren’t released until the late 20s but they are considered one of the most influential styles of blues music (alongside the electric blues of the 1950s). Although the main defining characteristic of blues music as a whole is the twelve-tone system, Delta blues tends to stand out with its use of instrumentation and lyrical content. The guitar, “undisputed king of the Delta” (Gioia, 2008, p.5), was often played using a bottleneck, a finger tube used in place of the fingers to alter the pitch and vibration of the strings as the guitar is played. This didn’t always lead to diverse melodies; at times, single chords would be used throughout whole songs with only slight adjustments (Gioia, 2008). Examples of this include Bobby Grant’s Nappy Head Blues, Barefoot Bill’s Snigglin’ Blues and John Lee Hooker's Wednesday Evening Blues