Delta Blues

B.B. King Editor’s Note: Throughout Black History Month, we’ll be publishing a series of stories of Black artists who contributions to music should not be overlooked. You can follow along here. Also make sure to subscribe and listen to our new podcast series, Rootsland, which explores the story of two friends who take a musical and spiritual journey from the suburbs of Long Island to the streets of Kingston, Jamaica. Feel so bad, feel so sad, feel so glad? Blues music has always had a mysterious therapeutic quality about it. How can sad expression — being down in the dumps — bring such comfort, and even joy at times, to listeners? What is it about those chord progressions, those blue notes, and those call-and-response patterns of field songs and spirituals that have the power to make ...