Bob Dylan early in his career played harmonica with blues great Big Joe Williams, and Janis Joplin sang work first done by Big Mama Thornton. It is made from a log that Billy Gibbons, ZZ Top s guitarist, had collected from Muddy Waters boyhood home, a cabin on the Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale. Initially, Gibbons had planned to play the white electric guitar. Describing the blues as a musical form can t be done strictly, according to Ruskey. There are no firm rules, but there are some generalities.
Blues music is polyrhythmic.
A musician may play the same instrument in several different time signatures in a song. Sometimes the instrument is being played in a minor key, and the singing is in a major key. The third and fifth notes are often flat. Often two lines in a lyric are the same, giving the singer a chance to improvise on the third line. Traditional blues players prided themselves on their ability to make up their lyrics as they went along, and their music was meant for dancing.