Browsing: The Language of the Blues

A jelly roll is a dessert made of sponge cake that has been spread with jam (or jam mixed with cream) and rolled up into a log, but this is the blues and that’s not all it means!

The Wolof word yees means to become extremely lively or energetic. It evolved during American slavery into the Southern slang term “jass”…

To jam is to improvise with other musicians. Linguist David Dalby traced jam to a Wolof word… check out where your favorite musician get-together came from!

In the blues, Jake isn’t just a name! Find out the boozy, interesting, and moonshine-steeped history of the Jake Leg that Tommy Johnson himself even sang about!

Find out where Hoochie Coochie, made famous by Muddy Waters himself, means, exactly… and discover the term’s deep origins!

A lighthearted subcategory of urban blues called hokum was popular in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Find out all about this old, raucous, raunchy genre of blues music!

Migratory workers who jumped on trains and hitchhiked without direction were a staple in blues songs. Now discover the interesting origin of both the word and the lonely travelers…

This is the latest installment of our weekly series, The Language of the Blues, in which author/rocker Debra Devi explores…

The blues harp goes all the way back to a Chinese Emperor! See how the harp successfully emulated the field hollers that became the blues, and why it’s been such an important instrument in the genre!

In the blues, a Hambone is usually, unsurprisingly, a euphemism. Find out how it got into blues song, and who popularized it in this week’s fascinating LOTB column!