Famous Blues Songs and Artists: The Blues Through Its Songs, from Robert Johnson to Coltrane | Niels Dalgaard
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Blues to jazz · the history

The blues through its songs

From the Mississippi Delta to Chicago, from B.B. King to Stevie Ray Vaughan, and from Count Basie to Charlie Parker and Coltrane: a hundred years of the blues in two dozen recordings. Every song points to the step of the ladder whose form it uses, with a backing track to play it in your key.

Before the records: the Delta and the stage (1900s–1930s)

The blues was sung in the Mississippi Delta long before anyone recorded it, and published as sheet music before it was a style: W.C. Handy, a bandleader who heard it at a train station, wrote it down and sold it. In the 1920s the first stars were women — Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith — singing with jazz bands, which is why the blues and jazz have shared a form from the start.

Then the country blues of the Delta: Charley Patton, Son House and Robert Johnson, one voice and one guitar. Johnson recorded twenty-nine songs in 1936 and 1937, and a generation of electric players learned the blues from them.

St. Louis Blues

W.C. Handy · Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong · 1914 · 1925

Published in 1914; Bessie Smith’s record with Louis Armstrong is the classic one. Twelve-bar strains with a tango in the middle.

The chords and a backing track →

Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out

Bessie Smith · 1929

A blues ballad rather than a twelve-bar, with ragtime chords — the vaudeville side of the blues.

The chords and a backing track →

Chicago goes electric (1940s–1950s)

When millions of Black Southerners moved north, the Delta blues moved with them and plugged in. In Chicago, on Chess Records, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter and Elmore James turned it into a band music — electric guitar, amplified harmonica, bass and drums — with Willie Dixon writing many of the songs.

This is the sound of step 1: the shuffle, the boogie bass, the backbeat. Almost everything that came after — rock and roll included — started here.

Texas and the jazz chords: T-Bone Walker (1940s)

While Chicago was getting louder, T-Bone Walker was taking the blues the other way. He grew up in Dallas, played with jazz bands, and used ninth chords and horn-like single-note lines on the electric guitar. B.B. King said that hearing him was what made him want an electric guitar.

His most famous song is already halfway up the ladder: its chords move like a jazz blues.

Call It Stormy Monday

T-Bone Walker · 1947

Ninth chords and chromatic passing chords in a slow blues. The Allman Brothers’ live version (1971) adds full ii–Vs: step 3, slowed down.

Play the form: step 3, Jazz blues →

The three Kings (1950s–1960s)

B.B. King, Albert King and Freddie King — not related — defined lead blues guitar: the bend, the vibrato, the phrase that leaves space. B.B. took T-Bone Walker’s single-note style and sang through the guitar; Albert bent strings further than anyone; Freddie wrote the instrumentals every guitarist still learns.

The Thrill Is Gone

B.B. King · 1969

A minor blues with ♭VI7 sliding to V7 in bars 9–10 — the same move as Coltrane’s Mr. P.C. Step 4, with strings.

Play the form: step 4, Minor blues →

The blues goes rock (1960s–1980s)

British bands learned the blues from Chicago records and sold it back to America louder: the Rolling Stones took their name from a Muddy Waters song, and Eric Clapton built a career on Robert Johnson and Freddie King. Jimi Hendrix played the blues under everything, and in the 1980s Stevie Ray Vaughan brought the Texas shuffle back to the charts.

If you came to the blues through rock, this is your door into the ladder — and the songs are steps 1 and 3.

Stormy Monday

The Allman Brothers Band · 1971

From At Fillmore East: T-Bone Walker’s song with jazz ii–Vs, and a jazz-influenced guitar solo.

Play the form: step 3, Jazz blues →

Meanwhile, in jazz (1930s–1960s)

Jazz never left the blues. In Kansas City, Count Basie’s band built whole tunes out of riffs over the twelve bars, and a teenage Charlie Parker grew up hearing them. Parker’s bebop blues added the ii–Vs of step 3 and then the falling chain of step 5. Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Wes Montgomery each recorded blues that are now standards.

The books behind this page

See all the books
Project 09 · Jazz guitar

Mastering Modern Pentatonics

An 8-week program · 20 minutes a day · 82 backing tracks Project 07 · Jazz guitar

The Jazz Guitar Shortcut

How the greats simplified harmony, chords and improvisation to play with more freedom Project 01 · All instruments

The Jazz Roadmap

Your comprehensive roadmap to all areas of study · For all instruments
Completely free Free edition · All instruments

The Jazz Roadmap Lite

The sixteen stages of the roadmap, a paragraph each, and which book develops every one of them. Fifteen pages, fifteen minutes — enough to know where you are standing and what comes next. Download the free PDF →

Now play them

Every song above sits on one of five forms. The ladder gives you each one with a backing track in your key, the new chords marked, and what your pentatonic box can do over them.

Step 1 · 12-bar blues

Three chords, twelve bars, a shuffle. Home base — and already the place to start hearing the changes instead of playing over them.

Open →

Step 2 · Quick change and turnaround

The IV comes back in bar 2, and the last two bars turn around through four chords. Your first ii–V, hidden inside a blues.

Open →

Step 3 · Jazz blues

Now the trio swings, and four new chords appear: a ii–V into the IV, the ♯IV diminished, the VI7, and a ii–V instead of V–IV. The blues of Now’s the Time and Billie’s Bounce.

Open →

Step 4 · Minor blues

The I and the IV turn minor, and bars 9–10 slide from ♭VI7 down to V7alt: the sound of Mr. P.C. and Equinox — and of The Thrill Is Gone.

Open →

Step 5 · Bird blues

Charlie Parker’s blues: almost every bar a ii–V, falling by step from the I to the IV and back. The top of the ladder — and still twelve bars with the IV in bar 5.

Open →