Blues Progressions

10/02/2026

Clap on the two and the four — that push you just felt is the backbeat, the heartbeat of rock and roll.The finale: the instrument that turns a lonely blues into a whole band and decides if a room catches fire. The blues started without drums (solo Delta guitar + foot stomps); the drum kit is a 20t...

09/25/2026

Drop your attention to the very bottom of a song — that low, round thing you feel in your chest morethan you hear. Almost nobody notices it, and it's holding the whole song together. The hidden engine. The bass's unique job: the hinge between rhythm and harmony — root notes define the chords, th...

09/18/2026

One beat-up upright, one player, and a left hand rolling like a freight train — and suddenly one person is the whole band. The most underappreciated instrument in blues rock: the piano. The barrelhouse: rough sawmill/turpentine joints where one pianist was the entire band The two-hand division of ...

09/11/2026

09/04/2026

The problem amplification solved: guitar from background rhythm to lead voice Pickups, sustain, grit — why an electric guitar is a new instrument, not a loud acoustic Charlie Christian invents the guitar solo; T-Bone Walker invents electric blues lead ("Stormy Monday") Muddy Waters' Delta muscle; ...

08/28/2026

There's a sound in the blues that doesn't play notes so much as it cries them. That's slide guitar — the instrument that sounds most like a human voice weeping and singing at once. We start the series here. Why slide sounds like a voice: gliding between pitches, no frets, the notes between the not...

08/21/2026

The finale brings it home to right now. Joe Bonamassa as the model for the modern DIY blues-rock empire (and his Royal Albert Hall night with Clapton); Gary Clark Jr. fusing the blues with everything modern ("This Land"); Kingfish carrying it straight out of Clarksdale, mentored by Buddy Guy — the...

08/15/2026

The loudest, most virtuosic chapter. The power trio as an invention (Cream) that forces the guitar into godhood; the extended live jam traced straight back to call-and-response; "Crossroads" as a Robert Johnson song turned rocket; the Marshall-stack volume arms race; Clapton and Duane Allman's "Layl...

08/14/2026

The wilderness and the morning after. How disco, punk, new wave, and hair metal pushed blues rock to the margins (Muddy Waters died in '83; the industry called the blues a museum piece) — and how it survived underground in clubs, festivals (the Chicago Blues Festival launched in '84), and the hand...

08/07/2026

The hinge of the series — the blues comes home to America, to Texas. The Lone Star blues bloodline (T-Bone Walker's "Stormy Monday," Lightnin' Hopkins, Freddie King); ZZ Top as a ferocious blues-rock power trio hiding inside MTV fame ("La Grange" off John Lee Ho**er); the Austin scene at Antone's ...