New Orleans Blues
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New Orleans Blues is blues colored by the city’s piano, brass-band, second-line, jazz, Caribbean, and R&B traditions. It moves with syncopated bass, rolling triplets, horn replies, parade-drum accents, sly vocals, and a rhythmic looseness that makes even slow blues feel like it might turn a corner into a street procession.
History
New Orleans had blues elements before commercial recording through Storyville entertainment, brass bands, early jazz, ragtime, barrelhouse piano, and neighborhood dance culture, but the recognizable postwar city style emerged through Cosimo Matassa’s studios and local labels. Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, Guitar Slim, Smiley Lewis, Champion Jack Dupree, Earl King, and Dr. John gave the style its piano, guitar, vocal, and Mardi Gras dimensions. New Orleans Blues fed rock and roll, funk, soul, swamp pop, New Orleans R&B, and the continuing club culture of Frenchmen Street, Treme, and festival stages.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- John Broven, Rhythm and Blues in New Orleans
- Jeff Hannusch, I Hear You Knockin'
- AllMusic
- The Blues Foundation