The Piedmont blues' (also known as Piedmont fingerstyle or East Coast' blues) is a type of blues music characterized by a unique fingerpicking method on the guitar in which a regular, alternating-thumb bass pattern supports a melody using treble strings. The result is comparable in sound to piano ragtime. The Piedmont style is differentiated from other styles (particularly the Mississippi Delta style) by its ragtime-based rhythms which lessened its impact on later electric band blues or rock 'n' roll, but it was directly influential on rockabilly, and the folk music scene. It was an extremely popular form of Black dance music for many decades in the first half of the last century.
The basis of the Piedmont style was the older "frailing" or "framming" guitar styles that may have been universal throughout the South, and was also based, at least to some extent, on formal "parlor guitar" techniques as well as earlier banjo playing and ragtime. Varieties of the older styles can be heard in players such as Peg Leg Howell and the Hicks brothers from Georgia, plus various musicians from other areas, including Mississippi John Hurt, Frank Stokes (from Memphis), and Mance Lipscomb (from Texas)--but if one is going to group musicians into regional styles, these clearly cannot be classed as Piedmont players. What was particular to the Piedmont was that a generation of players adapted these older, ragtime-based techniques to blues in a singular and popular fashion, influenced by such guitar virtuosi on records as Blind Blake and Gary Davis (as well as less-recorded masters like Willie Walker).
The Piedmont blues typically refers to a greater area than the Piedmont plateau, which mainly refers to the East Coast of the United States from about Richmond, Virginia to Atlanta, Georgia. Piedmont blues musicians come from this area, as well as Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and northern Florida, eastern Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama - later the Northeastern cities like Boston, Newark,NJ or New York. Recording artists such as Blind Blake, Josh White, Buddy Moss, and Blind Boy Fuller helped spread the style on the strength of their sales throughout the region... there were others on record of lesser impact, plus hundreds who never got into a studio. It was a nationally popular commercial Black musical form for over two decades in the early twentieth century from about the mid-20's through to the mid-40's judging from record sales and their substantial influence: Blind Boy Fuller's 1940 recording of "Step It Up & Go" apparently sold over half a million copies to both Blacks and Whites. This one style essentially overrode all other local styles over a vast area of the American South East, finding national favor among Black record buyers and party-goers.
As a form of Black American popular music, Piedmont blues fell out of favor on a national basis after WW II, but remained as a local, community-based music through the SE for older Black folks' "Saturday Night Functions" (house parties and the like). It still had a very danceable beat! As time progressed, Piedmont blues entered into the various US folk music revivals, becoming music for festivals (with mainly White audiences) rather than dancing, beginning in the 1960s. Before that it was up to Josh White, Rev. Gary Davis, and Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry to keep the Piedmont musical banner flying. Folklorists during the 60s (and later) located some heretofore unrecorded musicians (John Jackson, "Peg Leg Sam", Turner & Marvin Foddrell, Henry Johnson) who successfully entered into the festival circuits. Today in the 21st Century it's a case of diminishing possibilities as the older Black musicians die off (often documented and preserved by the Music Maker Relief Foundation in NC). People such as Roy Book Binder, Doug McLeod, Jorma Kaukonen, and Paul Geremia are among those younger White players who have carried the tradition on, often having "studied" under some of the old masters. Today the finger-picked, ragtime-based style of guitar playing, and its blues repertoire, has entered popular and folk music in inextricable ways - from Ralph McTell to Ray Davies, Doc Watson to Paul Simon, Davy Graham to Mark Knopfler, Leo Kottke to Jack White.
Musicians
Prominent musicians who play or played the Piedmont blues include:
References
- Andrew M. Cohen. (2008). "The Hands of Blues Guitarists." In Ramblin' on My Mind: New Perspectives on the Blues, ed. David Evans (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press). ISBN 0252032039.
- Bruce Bastin. (1971) Crying for the Carolines (London: Studio Vista). ISBN 028970297.
- Bruce Bastin. (1986/1995) Red River Blues: The Blues Tradition in the Southeast (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press). ISBN 033343661X/ISBN 0252065212.
- Peter B. Lowry (1977) "Atlanta Black Sound: A Survey of Black music from Atlanta During the 20th Century" in The Atlanta Historical Bulletin, Vol. II, No. 2, pp 88-113.
- Gaile Welker & Peter B. Lowry. (2006) "Piedmont Blues" in The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Blues, ed. Edward Komera (New York: Routledge). ISBN 0415926998.
- Peter B. Lowry (2003) "Against the Wind: Tim Duffy and the Music Maker Relief Foundation" in Rhythms (Melbourne) #130/May, pp. 48-50.
External links
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