Classic blues has revealed a specifically female awareness, especially about love; salacious love, unrequited love, abused love and cheating lovers.  These became central aspects in many female repertoires, replacing the feelings of loneliness, isolation, and desperation, which permeated the blues.

Barbara Morrison is one of the most well known figures in the history of blues.  She is a dynamic singer and her awareness of the classic blues has fueled her growth on the music scene.  Morrison has an incredible stage presence and her passion fills her songs about love with her throbbing multi-octave voice.  She has recorded with some of the finest jazz and blues musicians of her time and has traveled the world performing at festivals and remains a highly respected educator, businessperson, and humanitarian.

Attend one of her performances and you will find the females in her audience shouting in agreement with her lyrics, which are spontaneous, completely genuine, and never ordinary.

To increase awareness of the art form, Morrison teaches Ethnomusicology at UCLA where she has been a professor for over 13 years.  She also hosts her own radio show in Los Angeles where she provides a voice for the blues idiom and promotes its growth and development by offering her services in education, touring, communication, and recording.

The beloved harmonica has such a history with blues music.  Originally this instrument was only associated with the poor and was simply considered a toy instrument.  But if you know anything about the harmonica and blues music you know that it has become a huge player over the years in this genre.  The first recordings of the harmonica were actually in the 1920s and were intended for the black markets of the South.  And as it became more and more popular musicians began to experiment with different techniques such as tongue-blocking, hand effects, and the most important innovation of all, the 2^nd position or cross-harp.

During the 1950s, the harmonica sound began to make its way North to Chicago with the blues and black migrants.  As the blues sound became more amplified, so did the harmonica.  One of the greatest harmonica players of the time was Sonny Boy Williamson II.  He helped make popular the cross-harp technique, opening the possibilities of the harmonica technique up to greater and greater heights.  Many other artists during this time began to experiment with techniques and the harmonica sound took off.

During the 60s and 70s the harmonica sound began to wane, due to the popularity of the electric lead guitar.  However, during this era many artists who had been influenced by Sonny Boy Williamson II began to emerge. Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood , and Bob Dylan also famously played their harmonica to add a touch of blues to their folk and rock sound during this era. Dylan was known for placing his harmonicas in a brace so that he could simultaneously blow the harp and play his guitar.

The harmonica sound lives on today in current music.  Blues Traveler, Tom Morello from Rage Against The Machine, and Blackfoot are just a few examples of the modernization of the harmonica.

When we hear a banjo, we can’t help but think of the blues.  It also remind us of Dixieland and country music, but most definitely the blues.  The blues and the banjo go hand in hand.  There are many different types of banjos and though they are the same instrument, their sound is unique.  The banjo itself is a unique and wonderful stringed instrument.

African Americans and Caucasians have shared a love and appreciation for the banjo.  African Americans have been playing it for nearly 300 years, and Caucasians since the turn of the century.  And the banjo sounds different in different regions.  If you hear the banjo sound in the Mississippi Delta, it will sound completely different than in Virginia.

The music and style of the banjo was really shaped in the late 1800s by African Americans.  One of the greatest banjo players during that time was Gus Cannon, or better known as “Banjo Joe”.  During 1927 Banjo Joe cut several recordings for Paramount In which his “frailing techniques”, slide playing, and roll patterns became incredibly famous.

The banjo music played back then had such a fluid sound.  It created a nostalgic feeling of friends gathering for a good ole fashioned jam session.  Today it can sound like just about anything, square dance, swing, bluegrass, and everything in between.  What a wonderful instrument and you just can’t miss the banjo sound.

The first step in mastering the style of blues with the guitar is to learn and master guitar scales.  This is a must if you want to be an excellent guitar player.  Setting time aside each day to only practice scales is a great strategy.  Look at it as if the scales are the underlying technique in which everything else can be laid on top of.  It’s the groundwork so to speak.  Without mastering scales, it will impossible to improvise with the blues.

One tip in learning your scales is to not rush and try to learn several scales all at once.  It is better to start with one, gather all the knowledge of it, and then practice it to perfection.  Memorizing one at a time will actually make it easier to learn more and will eventually give you the freedom, confidence, and creativity once you are improvising.

Start by memorizing the fundamental 5 most common key for guitar C, D, G, A, & E.  These are simple.  And then move on to a minor pentatonic scale, which the big daddy of all scales and is often used for blues improvisation.

Once you feel as thought you’ve mastered your scales, begin to learn how to use them in constructing improvised solos and leads.  A great way to do this is to improvise along to guitar backing tracks.  These tracks can facilitate you to improve your timing skills as well as how to play with other musicians.  They will give you the freedom to write and produce your personal lead parts and are really helpful to better your practice time!

Boogie-woogie is a popular style of Blues Music.  It is a piano-based style from the early 20^th century.  It has a very strong bass pattern associated with and originally piano players accompanied themselves by playing this strong bass pattern with their left hand.  Then a bass player was added and they would duplicate the piano player’s bass line.  As this style evolved more, the bassist would often play the entire boogie-woogie bass line themselves, and the pianist played entirely different piano parts.

Boogie-woogie became very popular in the 30s and 40s.  It started as solo piano but then grew to three pianos at once, guitar, big band, gospel, and even country and western music.  While the traditional blues usually depicts a variety of emotions, boogie-woogie was mainly associated with dancing.

For the most part boogie-woogie tunes are twelve bar tunes and it’s said to have been created in logging and turpentine camps, and oil boomtowns of Texas, Louisiana, and the Mississippi Delta circa 1900.  The very first boogie-woogie hit was entitled “Pinetop’s Boogie-Woogie” by Pinetop Smith recorded in 1928 and first released in 1929. This was the first boogie-woogie recording to be a commercial hit, and helped establish boogie-woogie as the name of the style.

Boogie-woogie then gained further attention in 1938 and 1939 thanks to several concerts at Carnegie Hall.  And then it became only natural that swing bands began to implement the boogie-woogie beat into some of their music.  Famous dances known as the jitterbug and the Lindy Hop required the boogie-woogie beat.