Folk Blues / Country Blues / Roots Blues
familyStarted 1910sPeak 1928–1965Last big hit still active
This family covers the acoustic and roots-blues overlap: fingerpicked guitar, bottleneck slide, elastic vocal phrasing, and lyrics that preserve the directness of rural blues while often retaining folk-song shape and storytelling.
History
The family grows from early 20th-century African American vernacular music in the South, where work song, spirituals, ballads, dance tunes, and blues all circulated together before later genre boundaries hardened.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Britannica
- Library of Congress
- Smithsonian Folkways
- regional blues sources. citeturn1search5turn9search2turn3search2