Delta Blues Style
Notable artists include Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Son House
Back to the Blues Styles
Delta blues is the original Blues music. It came from a region in Northwestern Mississippi known
as "the delta" because of it's flatlands and fertile soil. The music was started by poor
black sharecroppers and former slaves as a way to keep entertained and to relieve the
brutal conditions they were forced to live in. The majority of the Delta Blues
contained a single instrument: the guitar, though harmonica and,
to an extent, piano were used as well. This is where the Blues as we know it began,
and it started with a handful of musicians that are revered among Blues affectionados
today. Son House, Charley Patton, Tommy Johnson, Bukka White and perhaps
the most famous of them all, Robert Johnson were all massively influential Delta Blues
musicians. Delta musicians were the first traditional-style Blues artists to be recorded,
and most recorded playing and singing solo. Most of the music was played with
fingerpicking techniques or slide, and most of it, with several notable exceptions,
was in the traditional "12 bar blues" style. It was from the Delta's roots that many other
styles of the Blues were born, most notably the famous Chicago Blues. Countless artists
have been heavily influenced by the music of the delta pioneers, including the likes of
Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, The White Stripes, The Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin, and a
wide group of others in an array of genres.
The Delta still maintains a rich Blues heritige, with dozens of markers along the
Mississippi Blues Trail that commemorate
notable events, places and people in Blues history. Excellent Blues museums dot Mississippi,
including the Delta Blues Museum and the
beautiful newly opened B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center.
Blues clubs, festivals, and artwork continue to thrive and carry the Blues tradition that was
essential to and deeply engrained in music as we know it today.
Delta Blues from the blues music section
Vital Contemporary Listening
Keep It Simple
(buy album)
(download album)
Keb' Mo'
Vital Classic Listening
Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings
(buy album)
(download album)
Robert Johnson
Vital Reading
Delta Blues by Ted Gioia
