Question: what led to the development of the blues

title: Origins of the blues
text: Songs from this period had many different structures . A testimony of those times can be found for instance in Henry Thomas 's recordings . However , the twelve - , eight - bar , or sixteen - bar structure based on tonic , subdominant and dominant chords became the most common . Melodically , blues music is marked by the use of the lowered third and dominant seventh ( so - called blue notes ) of the associated major scale . The standard 12 - bar blues form is noted in uncorroborated oral histories as appearing communities throughout the region along the lower Mississippi River during the decade of the 1900s ( and performed in New Orleans at least since 1908 ) . One of these early sites of blues evolution was along Beale Street in Memphis , Tennessee . However , author Eileen Southern has pointed out several contrasting statements by old - time musicians . She cites Eubie Blake as saying `` Blues in Baltimore ? Why , Baltimore is the blues ! '' and Bunk Johnson as claiming that the blues was around in his childhood , in the 1880s .