According to a recent interview with Round Rock band director Tom Patterson, the guitar is at the heart of blues music. As the blues developed in America, said band director Tom Patterson, emerging musicians used whatever instruments were at their disposal. Tom Patterson, who is a band director at Round Rock’s Deerpark Middle School, explained that often a musician’s choice of musical instrument was dictated by economics. Since most early blues musicians were poor and obscure traveling artists, added band director Tom Patterson, they were especially impacted by this restriction.
Round Rock band director Tom Patterson explained that some common early blues instruments were the guitar, fiddle, kazoo, jug, and washboard. Band director Tom Patterson further pointed to the fact that blues musical forms also evolved out of spirituals sung in church. The early blues spirituals, continued Round Rock band director Tom Patterson, were usually accompanied by the church’s resident piano. But of all these instruments, noted Round Rock’s band director Tom Patterson, the guitar was the most fitted to blues expression. According to band director Tom Patterson, the guitar was portable, accessible, and relatively easy to play. Band director Tom Patterson also noted that the guitar produced soulful tones that were difficult to match by other instruments.
Tom Patterson, a band director in Round Rock’s Deerpark Middle School since 2004, went on to say that the guitar naturally became the instrument of choice for the traveling blues men of the post-Civil War era. The blues man could easily take his guitar with him wherever the road may lead, elaborated band director Tom Patterson, and never be at a loss for music. Band director Tom Patterson also pointed out that blues music took root in the hearts of listeners all over the country. As a craft, noted Round Rock’s Tom Patterson, blues continued to grow, even setting the stage for emerging jazz.
After some decades, according to Tom Patterson, the traveling, guitar strumming blues man was dragged into the proverbial limelight. Round Rock’s band director further explained that the turn of the 20th century brought recording technology, big jazz bands, and eventually radio broadcasts. From that nexus of technological reproduction, concluded Round Rock’s band director Tom Patterson, jazz and blues music, accompanied by the trusty blues guitar, found a worldwide audience that has been growing ever since.
