{{Short description|Music genre}} {{redirect|Folk blues|the album by John Lee Hooker|Folk Blues (album){{!}}''Folk Blues'' (album)}} {{Infobox music genre | name = Country blues | other_names = {{Flat list| *Folk blues *rural blues *backwoods blues *downhome blues }} | stylistic_origins = {{Flatlist| *Blues *folk *gospel music }} | cultural_origins = Early 20th century, American South | subgenres = {{Flatlist| *Delta blues *Piedmont blues }} }} '''Country blues''' (also '''folk blues''', '''rural blues''', '''backwoods blues''', or '''downhome blues''') is one of the earliest forms of blues music, but also refers to a blend of country music and blues.{{sfn|Wald|2010|p=}}{{pn|date=November 2025}} The mainly solo vocal with acoustic fingerstyle guitar accompaniment developed in the rural Southern United States in the early 20th century.<ref name="Rev">{{cite web | url = http://blues.about.com/od/abluesprimer/a/CountryBlues.htm | title = Country Blues Style Characteristics and Artists | first = Reverend Keith A. | last = Gordon | website = Liveaboutdotcom | date = May 23, 2019 | access-date = July 15, 2019 | archive-date = August 7, 2011 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110807191908/http://blues.about.com/od/abluesprimer/a/CountryBlues.htm | url-status = dead }}</ref> It stands in contrast primarily to the urban blues style, especially in the pre-war era.
==History== Artists such as Blind Lemon Jefferson (Texas), Charley Patton (Mississippi), Blind Willie McTell (Georgia) were among the first to record blues songs in the 1920s. Country blues ran parallel to urban blues, which was popular in cities.<ref name="Gordon"/>
Historian Elijah Wald notes many similarities between blues, bluegrass, and country & western styles with roots in the American south.{{sfn|Wald|2010|pp=1589}} Record labels in the 1920s and 1930s carefully segregated musicians and defined styles for racially targeted audiences.{{sfn|Wald|2010|pp=1391}} Over time, the rural black and rural white music evolved into different styles, with artists such as Bobby Bland, Ray Charles, and Willie Nelson lamenting the divide.{{sfn|Wald|2010|pp=1589}}
Folklorist Alan Lomax was one of the first to use the term and applied it to a field recording he made of Muddy Waters at the Stovall Plantation, Mississippi, in 1941.<ref name="Gordon"> {{cite book | last = Gordon | first = Robert | title = Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters | location = New York City | publisher = Little, Brown | year = 2002 | isbn = 0-316-32849-9 | pages = 38–39 }}</ref> In 1959, music historian Samuel Charters wrote ''The Country Blues'', an influential scholarly work on the subject.<ref name="Gioia"> {{cite book | last = Gioia | first = Ted | author-link = Ted Gioia | year = 2008 | title = Delta Blues | edition = Norton Paperback 2009 | location = New York City | publisher = W. W. Norton | isbn = 978-0-393-33750-1 | pages = [https://archive.org/details/deltablueslifeti00gioi/page/351 351–352] | url-access = registration | url = https://archive.org/details/deltablueslifeti00gioi/page/351 }}</ref> He also produced an album, also titled ''The Country Blues'', with early recordings by Jefferson, McTell, Sleepy John Estes, Bukka White, and Robert Johnson.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/us/dallas-church-preserving-the-legacy-of-robert-johnson.html?_r=0|last=Christensen|first=Thor|date=November 19, 2011|title=Dallas Church Preserving the Legacy of Robert Johnson|website=Nytimes.com| access-date=12 August 2022}}</ref>
Charters's works helped to introduce the then-nearly forgotten music to the American folk music revival of the late 1950s and 1960s.<ref name="Gioia"/> The acoustic roots-focused movement also gave rise to the terms "folk blues" and "acoustic blues", especially being applied to performances and recordings made around this period.<ref name="Rev"/> "Country blues" has also been used to describe regional acoustic styles, such as Delta blues, Piedmont blues, or the earliest Chicago, Texas, and Memphis blues.<ref name="Rev"/>
==See also== *List of country blues musicians
==References== {{Commons category}} {{Reflist}}
* {{cite book |last=Wald |first=Elijah |authorlink=Elijah Wald |title=The Blues. A Very Short Introduction |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-19-539893-9 |edition=Kindle }}
{{Blues}} {{Authority control}}
Category:Country blues Category:20th-century music genres Category:Blues music genres