, in particular, were able to produce many of the vocal sounds of the blues singers (Shirmer, 79). Blues lyrics contain some of the most fantastically penetrating autobiographical and revealing statements in the Western musical tradition. Blues lyrics are often intensely personal, frequently contain sexual references and often deal with the pain of betrayal, desertion, and unrequited love (Priestley,119) or with unhappy situations such as being jobless, hungry, broke, away from home, lonely, or downhearted because of an unfaithful lover. (Abrams, 159) The early blues were very irregular rhythmically and usually followed speech patterns, as can be heard in the recordings made in the twenties and thirties by the legendary bluesmen Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson and Lightnin' Hopkins among others (Marhall & Basquiat, 53). The meter of the blues is usually written in iambic pentameter. The first line is generally repeated and third line is different from the first two (Shirmer, 38). The repetition of the first line serves a purpose as it gives the singer some time to come up with a third line. Often the lyrics of a blues song do not seem to fit the music, but a good blues singer will accent certain syllables and eliminate others so that everything falls nicely into place. (Shirmer, 98) The structure of blues lyrics usually consists of several three-line verses. The first line is sung and then repeated to roughly the same melodic phrase (perhaps the same phrase played diatonically a perfect fourth away), the third line has a different melodic phrase. Most blues researchers claim that the very early blues were patterned after English ballads and often had eight, ten, or sixteen bars. (James, 36) The blues first originated and emerged from rural areas in the south. Rural blues were developed by a new generation of black agricultural workers in the south. Different types of rural blues were folk blues, Missippi Delta blue...
