The Song Planner

Jazz-Blues / Swing Blues

familyStarted 1930s-1940s, where big-band swing, urban blues, jazz vocals and electric guitar blues metPeak 1940s-1960s club, radio and album erasLast big hit active as a repertory language in blues clubs, jazz festivals and roots-jazz albums

Jazz-Blues / Swing Blues covers blues performed with jazz harmony, horn arrangements, walking bass, brushed drums, swing phrasing and improvising soloists. It is less raw than country blues and less rock-facing than electric blues, but it still keeps the twelve-bar form, blue notes and vocal complaint at the center. The family connects T-Bone Walker's urbane guitar, jump blues shouters, smoky jazz singers, organ-combo grooves and hard-bop blues heads.

History

Blues and jazz grew beside each other in Black American performance, from New Orleans and vaudeville stages to Kansas City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Harlem clubs. Swing bands absorbed blues forms, blues singers hired jazz players, and postwar electric guitarists learned from horn-like phrasing. By the 1950s and 1960s, artists such as Jimmy Witherspoon, Ray Charles, Mose Allison, B.B. King and Cannonball Adderley showed how porous the border could be.

Defining artists

Show 2 more

Essential listening

Show 2 more
← Explore Blues

Sources

  • jazz-blues histories
  • artist discographies
  • blues standards references
  • streaming/video catalog checks