Piedmont blues

Piedmont blues (also called East Coast Blues) is a blues music style from the East Coast of the USA. The name came from the Piedmont, a hilly coastal area between Richmond, Virginia and Atlanta, Georgia. But the style is also played in Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Florida.

The main instruments are guitar, vocals, drums and bass. The Piedmont style is played on acoustic instruments. The main difference to the Delta blues is the ragtime based rhythm. The style is influenced by ragtime, country string bands, traveling medicine shows and popular song of the early 20th century. East Coast Piedmont Blues blended both black and white, rural and urban song elements in the diverse urban centers of the Southeast and mid-Atlantic region. In contrast to Delta blues, the Piedmont blues were influenced by white music.

In the early twentieth century artists such as Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Blake, Blind Willie McTell, Rev. Gary Davis and Sonny Terry made Piedmont blues popular. Women also played the Piedmont guitar style, including Etta Baker and Elizabeth Cotten, whose “Freight Train” is one of the most recognized Piedmont tunes. Before the Second World War Piedmont blues was a style that was very popular with the African-Americans of the South. The heyday was the 1920s and 1930s.

List of Piedmont blues musicians
Florida

 Blind Blake
 Gabriel Brown 
Georgia

 Blind Willie McTell (William Samuel McTell)
 Barbecue Bob (Robert Hicks)
 "Laughing" Charley Lincoln (Charlie Hicks), Barbecue Bob’s brother.
 Peg Leg Howell
 Eddie Mapp 
 Curley Weaver
 Buddy Moss
 Tampa Red
 Bumble Bee Slim (Amos Easton)
 Baby Tate (Charles Henry "Baby" Tate)
 Andrew and Jim Baxter
 Clifford Lee 
 Jonas Brown 
 Buddy Keith 
 Georgia Cotton Pickers

South Carolina

 Pink Anderson
 Alvin "Little Pink" Anderson
 Simeon "Simmie" Dooley
 Reverend Gary Davis
 Willie Walker
 Josh White
 Henry Johnson
 Peg Leg Sam 
 Ted Bogan
 Julius Daniels
 Cottie Stark

North Carolina

 Blind Boy Fuller (Fulton Allen)
 Carolina Slim (Edward P. Harris)
 Sonny Terry
 Etta Baker
 Elizabeth Cotten
 Floyd "Dipper Boy" Council
 Richard Trice
 Willie (Welly) Trice
 Roy Dunn
 Alden “Tarheel Slim” Bunn
 George Higgs
 Ephen Lee 
 John Dee Holeman
 Quentin "Fris" Holloway
 Lesley T. Riddle
 Preston Fulp

Tennessee
 Brownie McGhee
 Cripple Clarence Lofton
 Howard Armstrong ("Louie Bluie")
 Joe Evans (Billy Bird)

Virginia

 Jimmie Strother
 Luke Jordan
 John Jackson
 James Jackson (son of John Jackson)
 Archie Edwards
 Stephen Tarter
 Harry Gay
 William Moore
 Carl Martin

Washington, DC

 John Cephas
 Phil Wiggins

Others

 Sam Butler (Bo Weavil Jackson)
 Bayless Rose 
 Chicken Wilson and Skeeter Hinton

References