Country blues (also folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues, or downhome blues) is one of the earliest forms of blues music, but also refers to a blend of country music and blues. The mainly solo vocal with acoustic fingerstyle guitar accompaniment developed in the rural Southern United States in the early 20th century. It stands in contrast primarily to the urban blues style, especially in the pre-war era.
History
Artists such as Blind Lemon Jefferson (Texas), Charley Patton (Mississippi), Blind Willie McTell (Georgia) were among the first to record blues songs in the 1920s. Country blues ran parallel to urban blues, which was popular in cities. In 1959, music historian Samuel Charters wrote The Country Blues, an influential scholarly work on the subject. He also produced an album, also titled The Country Blues, with early recordings by Jefferson, McTell, Sleepy John Estes, Bukka White, and Robert Johnson.
Charters's works helped to introduce the then-nearly forgotten music to the American folk music revival of the late 1950s and 1960s.