Memphis / St. Louis / Urban Blues
Memphis / St. Louis / Urban Blues covers blues styles shaped by city streets, theaters, piano rooms, medicine shows, jug bands, early recording studios, and later electric clubs. The sound ranges from Beale Street guitars and jug-band rhythm to St. Louis piano blues, vaudeville-band vocals, Memphis electric guitar, and soul-blues horn sections.
History
This family grew as blues moved from rural performance into commercial entertainment districts, especially Memphis's Beale Street and St. Louis's river-city piano culture. W. C. Handy popularized the idea of blues as published urban music, jug bands and songsters supplied flexible street-band forms, Mamie Smith and Bessie Smith made city-recorded blues commercially explosive, and postwar Memphis musicians connected blues to Sun, Duke, Hi, Stax, soul, and rock and roll. The family influenced jump blues, early R&B, rockabilly, soul-blues, Chicago migration blues, and modern blues revues.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Samuel Charters, The Country Blues
- Paul Oliver, The Story of the Blues
- David Evans, Big Road Blues
- AllMusic