Blues music: Past, present and future

The Blues culture evolved from a folk culture developed in the southern states of America by a black population, the ancestors of whom had been transported from West Africa as slaves in the 19th century.

Robert Johnson (1911 1938), one of the early blues singers stood up as an individual in the 1930s. He had grown up listening to Charley Patton (1887 1934) and Son House; and had merged his own style in the traditional way of playing blues. His passionate and emotional voice accompanied with light boogie riffs brought forward an improved style of blues.

It gave a chance to the blues musicians to experiment with rhythm and lead along with other instruments.

Scrapper Blackwell (1903 1962) used a resonator to be heard above Leroy Carr's piano; and Tampa Red (1904 1981) could play by fretting chords on the lower strings while gliding over the top with smooth slide part. They became very influential and important figures in the blues music scene.

Les Paul is reported to have made the first electric guitar(http://www.doubleneckguitarsale.com/double-

necked-guitars/) followed by Leo Fender. Till 1930s, their electric guitars became commercially available, and many blues musicians adopted them.

T-Bone Walker (1910 - 1975) is considered to be a key figure to first use the electric guitar. He worked with blues and jazz groups and experimented with them, which led him to professionally adopt the electric guitar. Muddy Waters (1915 1983) also adopted the electric guitar, on which he used his direct melodic and rhythmic technique. He had succeeded in establishing Delta-influenced electric blues. B. B. King (1925) played the electric guitar with surging exuberance and used down strokes to give a full sound, with string bending and his own styled vibrato. The 1940s and 1950s saw T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters and B. B. King improvise in their styles of playing blues. John Estes, Bukka White and Skip James, made a come back into the world of blues music and successfully recorded their albums.

Till 1960s, blues had become modern and had taken the shape of Rock. Many leading blues players had evolved and brought out their best works in this decade.

Jimmy Hendrix (1942 1970) created a new style of playing blues, through which he opened the structure of Rock music in the 1960s. He could play guitar behind his back and strike the strings with his teeth. Both played with a heavy rock background, and are considered as the revolutionary blues guitarists of the 1960s.

In the 1970s, blues had transformed from Rock to Heavy Rock. Jimmy Page of the band Led Zeppelin is considered as the defining guitarist who brought forward progressive heavy rock. Teaming up with Robert Plant on vocals, John Paul Jones on bass and John Bonham on drums, he succeeded in becoming a pioneer of modern heavy rock. His inspiration form blues had earned him the respect he deserved. He often used double neck Gibson guitar. After the decade of the 1970s, from 1980s and onwards, different genres had emerged through blues such as Blues Rock, Country-Rock and Blues, Heavy Metal and Grunge. These genres were played by guitarists like Van Halen, Yngwie Malmsteen, Guns and Roses, Metallica and Kurt Kobain. No matter how much the genres keep changing, blues will not lose its uniqueness, and will continue to inspire modern guitar players in bringing out new genres in the world of music?