Drone Blues
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Drone Blues uses sustained tonal centers, open strings, repeated bass notes, and modal melody to keep the music anchored to one hypnotic sound. Its guitar parts often ring on one chord or tonic note while voice and slide bend around it, creating a mood that is ancient, stubborn, and hard to knock off course.
History
Drone Blues reaches back to field hollers, work songs, African-derived call-and-response, fiddle and fife traditions, and early country blues tunings, but North Mississippi musicians made it especially audible. Mississippi Fred McDowell’s slide drones, Junior Kimbrough’s electric vamps, R. L. Burnside’s one-riff boogies, Jessie Mae Hemphill’s open-string figures, and Robert Belfour’s stomping guitar lines gave the style its recorded vocabulary. Drone Blues influenced trance blues, garage blues, desert blues comparisons, psychedelic blues-rock, and modern minimalist roots music.
Defining artists
Essential listening
- Kokomo Me Baby — Mississippi Fred McDowellSpotifyYouTube
- Meet Me in the City — Junior KimbroughSpotifyYouTube
- Poor Black Mattie — R. L. BurnsideSpotifyYouTube
- Standing in My Doorway Crying — Jessie Mae HemphillSpotifyYouTube
- Hill Stomp — Robert BelfourSpotifyYouTube
- To the Left to the Right — T-Model FordSpotifyYouTube
Sources
- Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began
- George Mitchell, Blow My Blues Away
- AllMusic
- Living Blues