LECTURE 2 (Part 2): The Mississippi Delta Blues

    Blues from the Mississippi Delta Region and Beyond

Photo by Jan Kronsell, 2002.

Below, open the link "Mississippi History Now," and read through it. Read through it and get a good sense of what the blues are all about historically and as a style of musical performance. As mentioned earlier, the blues originated in the rural South. Eventually, in the 1930s, as blacks left the rural South looking for factory work in the urban north, they took the blues with them. As black musicians migrated into cities, they met other musicians, such as jazz musicians. They adapted their lifestyles to accommodate urban living. Consequently, the blues changed and evolved once they got into cities like Chicago.

Link Links to an external site.  Mississippi History Now

Review/Study Questions.

If you can answer these questions, you should do well on the assessment.

1. What were some of the early forms of music that influenced the development of the Mississippi Delta blues?

2. What elements of music from the dominant white culture influenced the blues?

3. What is a juke joint and how does it figure into the history of the blues?

4. What is the bottleneck slide technique and who is one major blues musician that used it?

5. Who is dubbed the king of Chicago blues?

5. What changes occurred to the Mississippi style blues occurred when musicians began taking the blues to Chicago?