From: Jan Depner <eviltwin69@cableone.net>
> It mentions the Sun Records and Sam Phillips in Memphis, Tennessee,
> under the Elvis section.  It also refers to the "uptempo" beat of the
> music.  Would you consider such music as Blues?  Or is it way too fast
> to be Blues?
> 

    You mean like Boogie With The Hook by John Lee Hooker (later stolen
by ZZ Top and called La Grange)?  There's jump blues, shuffle blues...
Speed has nothing to do with whether a song is blues or not.

Hello Jan,

 

So I got out my ZZ Top  Greatest Hits and listened to La Grange again.  Didn't strike me as Blues.  That got me wondering if my definition of Blues is correct or not.

 

To answer that question, I went to The New Harvard Dictionary of Music edited by Don Michael Randel copyright 1986.  Pages 98, 99, and 100 deal with Blues.

 

You are correct.  Nothing in the Blues section mentioned anything about tempo.  It discussed structure such as AAB, and I-I-I-I-IV-IV-I-I-V-IV-I-I; but not tempo.  It does end with a statement that the genre of blues proper stands in complex relationship to jazz, boogie-woogie, jug band music, rhythym and blues, rock, soul, and white American folk music.

 

But I don't know.  For me, blues isn't blues unless its slow and sad with a lot of pain underneath.

 

Best,

Stephen.