chord sheet for blues in the night b flat

The melodic characteristics of blues have, from the beginnings of both genres, had a great deal to do with defining a performance as “jazz.” These melodic factors include, but are not limited to, use of the b3, b5, and b7 scale degrees (“blue notes”), usually in an otherwise-major tonal context. In a theory sense, blues has two aspects: a 12-measure harmonic structure, and a melodic vocabulary that includes traditional licks and certain performance practices (“blue notes,” bent notes, instrumental/vocal timbre). Louis Blues” (1914), to big band arrangements of the 1920s and 1930s, to bebop blues in the 1940s, to Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman’s modal and “free jazz” work in the 1950s and 1960s. Jazz has historically incorporated a “sophisticated” blues style, from W.C. Most musicians would say that jazz is not jazz without blues.

Although it is a distinct genre, blues has always been a tremendous influence on jazz, and an integral part of it (jazz, in turn, has also influenced blues). It is safe to say that blues grew out of various antecedent African American music forms (spirituals, work songs, “songster” styles, church music, ragtime).īlues as popular music has its own history and evolution, from sheet music tunes of the 1910s, to the first recordings of female blues singers in the early 1920s, to the Delta players recorded in the late 1920s and early 1930s, to boogie-woogie piano styles, to the Chicago players first recorded in the 1940s, to the R&B of the 1950s, to the vocal and guitar styles of rock and funk. As with jazz, the details of its origins are hazy, since the music was not recorded, and was barely documented in any way. By Peter Spitzer - Jazz Author, Musician, and Instructorīlues as a genre took shape around or shortly before the beginning of the 20th Century, at about the same time as jazz.

Chord sheet for blues in the night b flat