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Part IV: Sounding Like the Masters: Blues Styles through the Ages
Distinguishing between Delta and Piedmont
You may be tempted to group the Delta and
Piedmont blues under one category. But the
Delta blues sound features a persistent bass
with a hard-edged blues melody and very often,
slide or “bottleneck” guitar. Piedmont blues is
more lively and melodic, with a ragtime syncopation
and an alternating bass that is more
bouncy and less grounded than a Delta blues
bass approach.
As students of blues history, consider Delta and
Piedmont separately because their stylistic characteristics
are so distinct, both from each other,
and from the other general categories of country
and folk blues (covered in the section “Everything
In-Between: Country and Folk Blues”) that draw
on aspects of these two established styles. As
well, each of these styles has important performers
and lineage associated with it.
Piedmont is often called country ragtime because of its lively, driving flavor.
This ragtime is different than the piano ragtime of Scott Joplin that you may
be familiar with. Ragtime in Joplin’s time was played straight without any
bounce or shuffle feel the way country ragtime is.
Geographically, the “Piedmont” in Piedmont blues refers to the area quite a
bit east of the Mississippi Delta, between the Appalachian mountains and the
Atlantic coastal plain, stretching from Richmond, Virginia, to Atlanta, Georgia.
Figure 11-5 is an example of the driving, two-beat feel, accomplished through
an alternating bass. This method is sometimes called Travis picking, after
country performer Merle Travis, whose alternating thumb technique was
widely popular (for more on Travis, check out “Country and Folk Blues Had
a Baby; Its Name was Rockabilly,” later in the chapter). Note that in this
passage, in the key of C, the blue notes E% and B% figure prominently in the
sound.
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C
F
C
Figure 11-5:
A bouncy
Piedmont
passage.
T
A
B
3
0 0
4 1
2 2
3
8
1 0
3
2 0 2
0
1 3 1
2
3 3
1 1
3
3 0 3
1 1
2 2
3
3 0 3
1
3
2 2
3
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