Delta Blues
Delta blues, a regional variant and subcategory of Country blues, is used in reference to a style of blues that came about during the early phase of blues development, beginning after the Civil War and continuing into the first quarter of the twentieth century. According to Elizabeth F. Barkley:
Country blues are more directly the result of personal expression, and are therefore sung solo. Solo singing frees up the singer to be more expressive, so these blues are characterized by non-standardized forms, both in the lyric pattern and in the harmonic progression. The singer sometimes introduces and ends his performance with spoken words, and in the singing uses a great variety of vocal techniques, for example rough, growling tones contrasted with high falsetto. Country blues are accompanied by unamplified guitar, which is sometimes played using items such as a knife, tube, or bottleneck as a barre. Barres allows for both open tuning (in which the guitar strings are tuned to a chord and the barre is slid down the neck to change the chord) and they enable the performer to produce different kinds of sounds such as train whistle. There is also occasional addition of the harmonica.
(Barkley 2003, 98-100)
A summary of the musical characteristics associated with Delta blues is listed below:
- Non-standardized forms
- Unamplified guitars
- Spoken introductions and endings
- Ostinato patterns in the guitar/banjo accompaniment
- Bottleneck used on the frets of the guitar
- Rough, growling tones delivered with a falsetto voice
- Males perform them