Delta blues, the ur-blues, originated with anonymous black musicians in the Mississippi Delta, south of Memphis. These blues ain't nothing but a good man singing about feeling bad, usually accompanied by guitar (often fretted with a bottleneck) and sometimes by harmonica. The classic three-line twelve-bar pattern, where the second line repeats the first and third rhymes, is found in Celtic ballads, but Delta bluesmen like Charley Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson, and Big Joe Williams made it their own, and the blues became for the Jim Crow period what spirituals had been in slavery times. Our selection comes from Booker Washington "Bukka" White who began recording in 1930s before doing time for shooting a man during a brawl. Bukka White was rediscovered in the '60s when he recorded "Columbus, Mississippi Blues," available on Arhoolie Records' Mississippi Delta Blues Jam in Memphis. (AU Format) (Real Audio Format)