The Blues
The music of melancholy and resilience, born from African-American experience.
Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. It has incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or 'worried notes'), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.
- Founded
- 1905
- Home Ground
- Stamford Bridge
- Traditional Colours
- Royal Blue Shirts, White Shorts, Blue Stockings
- Primary Rivals
- Tottenham Hotspur, Fulham FC, Arsenal FC
Lore & Background
The term 'Blues' may have originated from 'blue devils', meaning melancholy and sadness. An early use of the term in this sense is in George Colman's one-act farce Blue Devils (1798). The phrase 'blue devils' may also have been derived from a British usage of the 1600s referring to the 'intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal'. By the 1800s in the United States, the term 'blues' was associated with drinking alcohol. In 1827, John James Audubon wrote to his wife that he 'had the blues'. Henry David Thoreau mentions 'the blues' in his book Walden (published 1854). Charlotte Forten wrote in her diary on December 14, 1862, that she 'came home with the blues'. The phrase has been attested to in print since 1912, when Hart Wand's 'Dallas Blues' became the first copyrighted blues composition.
In Their Own Story
The rain hammered against the corrugated iron roof of the old Shed End, a rhythmic drumbeat that had echoed for decades. Old Tom adjusted his scarf, the royal blue wool frayed at the edges from years of wear, and looked out at the pitch where the floodlights cut through the London drizzle. He remembered the roar when Osgood scored in '70, the silence of the 90s, and the explosion of noise when the Champions League trophy was lifted in Munich. The players changed, the owners changed, but as he watched the team run out in their royal blue kits, he knew one thing remained absolute: they were The Blues, and that would never change.
Reader's Guide
Early traditional blues verses often consisted of a single line repeated four times. The most common structure of blues lyrics today was established in the first few decades of the 20th century, known as the 'AAB' pattern: a line sung over the first four bars, its repetition over the next four, and a longer concluding line over the last bars. This pattern can be heard in 'Dallas Blues' (1912) and 'Saint Louis Blues' (1914). Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating racial segregation, discrimination, and other challenges experienced by African Americans. The blues form typically uses a repeating chord progression, most commonly the twelve-bar sequence. Vocal and instrumental patterns frequently display a call-and-response structure rooted in African and African-American musical traditions.
Did You Know?
- The first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908.
- World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues.
- Blues subgenres include country blues, Delta blues, Piedmont blues, Chicago blues, and West Coast blues.
- In the 1960s and 1970s, a hybrid form called blues rock developed.
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