UNC-TV ONLINE: Piedmont Blues:

Picture: Children learning about the blues at the Hayti Heritage Summer Camp

Typically, when you hear the phrase, "the blues," you think that someone is sad. True, "to have the blues" has come to mean that someone is feeling down. However, the blues are also a type of music that people listen to, like rock & roll. Most people are surprised to hear that some rock & roll actually comes from some blues songs. Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul and Mary are two artists that you might have heard about who sang some of the same songs as some of the blues musicians sang.

Piedmont blues sounds a lot like folk music or bluegrass. Blues musicians usually play the guitar, although some of them play the banjo or the harmonica. Piedmont blues has a "happy" sound and is usually picked from the strings rather than strummed. A lot of Piedmont blues musicians use a thick metal ring that they slide up and down the neck of the guitar while they pick the strings--this is called "slide guitar" or "reeling." In the beginning of the blues movement, musicians used the neck of a bottle before the metal rings had been invented.

Most Piedmont blues musicians lived during the 1920s and 30s; there are very few left today, and most of them have changed the music slightly so it sounds a little different from the way it was played in the past. Blind Boy Fuller, Reverend Gary Davis, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee were some of the most famous Piedmont blues artists.

| 1 | 2 |