The term blues ballad is used to refer to a specific form of popular music which fused Anglo-American and Afro-American styles from the late 19th century onward. Early versions combined elements of the European influenced "native American
ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Great Britain and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages until the 19th century. They were widely used across Eur ...
" with the forms of
African American
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...
music.
[ From the 20th century on it was also used to refer to a slow tempo, often sentimental song in a blues style.
]
Structure and variations
The blues ballad often uses the Thirty-two-bar form
The 32-bar form, also known as the AABA song form, American popular song form and the ballad form, is a song structure commonly found in Tin Pan Alley songs and other American popular music, especially in the first half of the 20th century.
Th ...
of verse-verse-bridge-verse, in contrast to the 12-bar or 8-bar blues forms.[Boyd, Jack (1991). ''Encore!: A Guide to Enjoying Music'', p. 31, . " 2-bar formis sometimes called ballad form because so many of our popular ballads, middle-of-the-road popular songs, and Country Western songs use this form."]
Popular blues ballads
The first blues ballads tended to deal with active protagonists, often anti-heroes, resisting adversity and authority, often in the context of industrialisation. They usually lacked the strong narrative common in European ballads, and emphasised instead individual character.[N. Cohen, ''Folk Music: a Regional Exploration'' (Greenwood, 2005), pp. 14-29, ] They were often accompanied by banjo and guitar and often followed a standard 12-bar the blues format, with a repeated refrain in the last line of every verse.[T. A. Green, ''Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music, and Art'' (ABC-CLIO, 1997), p. 81, ] Blues ballads are usually anonymously authored and were performed by both black and white musicians in the early 20th century. Ballads about anti-heroes include "Wild Bill Jones", " Stagger Lee" and " John Hardy". The most famous blues ballads that deal with heroes in the context of industrialisation include those about John Henry and Casey Jones.[
]
Blues ballads in other genres
From the late 19th century the term ballad began to be used for sentimental songs with their origins in the early ‘Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley was a collection of History of music publishing, music publishers and songwriters in New York City that dominated the American popular music, popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Originally ...
’ music industry.[D. M. Randel, ''The Harvard Dictionary of Music'' (Harvard University Press, 4th edn., 2003), p. 73, ] As new genres of music, including the blues, began to emerge in the early 20th century the popularity of the genre faded, but the association with sentimentality meant led to this being used as the term for a slow love song from the 1950s onward.[
Today the term is used to describe a song that uses a blues format with a slow tempo, often dealing with themes of love and affection.][ Examples include songs such as B. B. King's "]Blues on the Bayou
''Blues on the Bayou'' is the thirty sixth studio album by B.B. King, released in 1998.
In the CD liner notes, B.B. King writes: "Of the many records Lucille and I have had the pleasure of recording over the years, this one is especially close ...
", Fats Domino
Antoine Caliste Domino Jr. (February 26, 1928 – October 24, 2017), known as Fats Domino, was an American singer-songwriter and pianist. One of the pioneers of rock and roll music, Domino sold more than 65 million records. Born in New Orl ...
's " Every Night About This Time", The blues ballad format is also popular in rock, jazz, and country music
Country (also called country and western) is a popular music, music genre originating in the southern regions of the United States, both the American South and American southwest, the Southwest. First produced in the 1920s, country music is p ...
, such as Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer and songwriter. One of the most iconic and successful Rock music, rock performers of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and her "electric" ...
's version of " Cry Baby" and country singer Crystal Gayle
Brenda Gail Webb (born January 9, 1951), known professionally as Crystal Gayle, is an American country music singer widely known for her 1977 hit " Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue". Initially, Gayle's management and record label were the same ...
's " Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue".
References
External links
Blues Ballad's real beauty comes through with Staton
a review by ''Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...
'' writer Larry Kart of performances by Dakota Staton.
{{Blues
Blues music genres