Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T02:31:20.784Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Blues music theory and the songs of Robert Johnson: ladder, level and chromatic cycle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2015

Ben Curry
Ben Curry*
Affiliation:
School of Music & Fine Art, University of Kent, Chatham Historic Dockyard, Kent ME4 4TZ E-mail: b.curry@kent.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The blues is a complex and subtle musical language that warrants careful analysis and sustained debate. There are legitimate concerns with the application of music-theoretical paradigms to blues music, but we should not allow such concerns to undermine all attempts to address the blues as a serious and coherently structured music. This paper explores the notions of ladder, level and chromatic cycle as an insightful set of theoretical tools in analysing the music of Robert Johnson. Key sources in developing this analytical approach are the scholarship of Gerhard Kubik and the spatially oriented analytical methods of neo-Riemannian theory. The notions of ladder, level and chromatic cycle are explored with close reference to Johnson's ‘Kindhearted Woman’ and through a more general consideration of the scale-degree content of his vocal parts.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 245 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbott, L. 1992. ‘“Play that barber shop chord”: a case for the African-American origin of barbershop harmony’, American Music, 10/3, pp. 289–325Google Scholar
Abbott, L., and Seroff, D. 2008. ‘“They cert'ly sound good to me”: sheet music, southern vaudeville, and the commercial ascendancy of the blue’, in Ramblin' on My Mind: New Perspectives on the Blues, ed. Evans, D. (Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press), pp. 49–104Google Scholar
Ainslee, S., and Whitehall, D. 1992. Robert Johnson at the Crossroads: The Authoritative Guitar Transcriptions (Milwaukee, WI, Hal Leonard)Google Scholar
Averill, G. 2003. Four Parts, No Waiting: A Social History of American Barbershop Harmony (Oxford, Oxford University Press)Google Scholar
Borneman, E. 1970. ‘Black light and white shadow: notes for a history of American negro music’, Jazzforschung, 2, pp. 24–93Google Scholar
Capuzzo, G. 2004. ‘Neo-Riemannian theory and the analysis of pop-rock music’, Music Theory Spectrum, 26/2, pp. 177–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Capuzzo, G. 2006. ‘Pat Martino's The Nature of the Guitar: an intersection of jazz theory and Neo-Riemannian theory’, Music Theory Online, 12/1Google Scholar
Cook, N. 1995–1996. ‘Music minus one: rock theory and performance’, New Formations, 27, pp. 23–41Google Scholar
Evans, D. 1982. Big Road Blues: Tradition and Creativity in the Folk Blues (Los Angeles, CA, University of California Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, D. 2008. ‘Introduction’, in Ramblin' on My Mind: New Perspectives on the Blues, ed. Evans, D. (Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press), pp. 1–10Google Scholar
Everett, W. 2004. ‘Making sense of rock's tonal systems’, Music Theory Online, 10/4Google Scholar
Everett, W. 2008. ‘Pitch down the middle’, in Expression in Pop-Rock Music, ed. Everett, W. (New York, Routledge), pp. 111–74Google Scholar
Everett, W. 2009. The Foundations of Rock: From Blue Suede Shoes to Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (Oxford, Oxford University Press)Google Scholar
Handy, W.C. (ed.) 1972[1926]. Blues: An Anthology (Cambridge, MA, Da Capo)Google Scholar
Henry, J. 2000. ‘The origins of barbershop harmony: a study of barbershop's musical links to other African-American musics as evidenced through recordings and arrangements of early black and white quartets’, PhD thesis, Washington UniversityGoogle Scholar
Kopp, D. 1995. ‘A comprehensive theory of chromatic mediant relations in mid-nineteenth-century music’, PhD thesis, Brandeis UniversityGoogle Scholar
Kubik, G. 1999. Africa and the Blues (Jackson, MS, University Press of Mississippi)Google Scholar
Kubik, G. 2008. ‘Bourdon, blue notes, and pentatonicism in the blues; an Africanist perspective’, in Ramblin' on My Mind: New Perspectives on the Blues, ed. Evans, D. (Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press) pp. 11–48Google Scholar
Middleton, R. 1972. Pop Music and the Blues: A Study of the Relationship and its Significance (London, Victor Gollancz)Google Scholar
Oliver, P. 1970. Savannah Syncopators: African Retentions in the Blues (London, Studio Vista)Google Scholar
Rothenbuhler, E.W. 2007. ‘For-the-record aesthetics and Robert Johnson's blues style as a product of record culture’, Popular Music, 26/1, pp. 65–81Google Scholar
Sargeant, W. 1959[1946]. Jazz Hot and Hybrid (London, Jazz Book Club)Google Scholar
Stearns, M.W. 1956. The Story of Jazz (Oxford, Oxford University Press)Google Scholar
Stoia, N. 2010. ‘Mode, harmony and dissonance treatment in American folk and popular music, c. 1920–1945’, Music Theory Online, 16/3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoia, N. 2013. ‘The common stock of schemes in early blues and country music’, Music Theory Spectrum, 35/2, pp. 194–234Google Scholar
Tagg, P. 2003. Ten Little Tunes: Towards a Musicology of the Mass Media (New York, Mass Media Music Scholars' Press)Google Scholar
Temperley, D. 2007. ‘The melodic-harmonic divorce in rock’, Popular Music, 26/2, pp. 323–42Google Scholar
Titon, J.T. 1994[1977]. Early Downhome Blues: A Musical and Cultural Analysis (Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press)Google Scholar
van der Merwe, P. 1989. Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth Century Popular Music (Oxford, Oxford University Press)Google Scholar
Wald, E. 2004. Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues (New York, Amistad)Google Scholar
Weisethaunet, H. 2001. ‘Is there such a thing as a “Blue Note”?’, Popular Music, 20/1, pp.99–116Google Scholar