Blues » Early Acoustic Blues » Early American Blues

Early American Blues delineates the sound of the raw African-American song being put into a recognizable form of a commercial context. Starting with the work songs of slaves in the plantation fields down South and following it to the development of "floating verses" used by them to form actual songs, there was no written structure involved. But the strength -- and popularity -- of the music could not go unnoticed by other African-American musicians of more professional standing. This development brought with it the very first attempts to put the blues into the standard 12-bar form, utilizing three basic-chord changes and the AAB verse stanzas indigenous to the genre.