Texas blues
The Texas Blues is a form of country blues , which in the 1920s in the impoverished black communities Texas cities such as Dallas , San Antonio and Houston was born. The imaginative texts usually tell a story with a joke and come to the fore than, for example, with Delta Blues , which tends to stick to traditional themes. The full, chord-emphasized guitar playing forms more of a unity than a dialogue with the vocals, which has a pronounced melody. Interpreters, especially guitarists, of the Texas Blues are more adventurous and more cultivated in their playing style. Such a strongly uniform, regional style as in the Mississippi Delta Blues cannot be recognized in the southern states of the USA due to the diverse demographic characteristics.
history
Originally the singers were accompanied melodically on the acoustic guitar , a relaxed and swinging playing style is typical of the Texas Blues. Well-known representatives of this original style are Blind Lemon Jefferson , JT Smith , Leadbelly , Lightnin 'Hopkins and T-Bone Walker . Jefferson is considered to be the pioneer of single-string guitar solo. His protégé Walker paved the way for the electrically amplified guitar in the blues in the 1940s and thus influenced the development of R&B and, subsequently, that of rock music . The originally rather filigree blues developed into a massive blues style played on electric guitars with its characteristic jazzy phrases, swinging- syncopating rhythm section and excessive use of half-diminished and diminished seventh chords . In the 1970s the Texas Blues then took up elements of rock music, for example distorted electric guitars ( ZZ Top , see blues-rock ).
Stevie Ray Vaughan presented the Texas Blues in the 1980s as a virtuoso blues style with a small band line-up (drums, electric bass, electric guitar, electric organ), sometimes supplemented by a few brass sections, but mainly dominated by the guitar. Another typical representative of this style of blues towards the end of the 20th century was Johnny Winter .
Important Texas blues musicians
Other well-known representatives of the Texas blues musicians were or are u. a. Blind Lemon Jefferson , Freddie King , Albert Collins , Stevie Ray Vaughan , Jimmie Vaughan , The Fabulous Thunderbirds , Johnny Winter , ZZ Top and Mance Lipscomb .