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50 free Blues Music trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The blues grew up among African Americans in the Deep South in the decades after emancipation, carrying work-song call-and-response and African blue notes into juke joints, then onto "race records" in the 1920s, and finally into Chicago's electric clubs and London's R&B scene. Its twelve-bar form underpins jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll. These 50 questions cover the whole story: W. C. Handy's sheet music, Mamie Smith's first recording, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson's crossroads legend, boogie-woogie and jump blues, Chess Records and the Chicago sound, B.B. King's guitar Lucille, John Lee Hooker's boogie, the British blues boom and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Easy questions cover the nicknames and the biggest names; harder ones ask about the first slide recording, the Library of Congress sessions and who was recruited to Sun Records by Ike Turner. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a music-night round.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The blues originated among African Americans in which region of the United States?
The Deep South
Its first appearance is usually dated after the Emancipation Act of 1863, as juke joints spread.
Q 02Which chord progression is the most common form of the blues?
Twelve-bar
It is built mostly on the I, IV and V chords and is ubiquitous in jazz, R&B and rock and roll.
Q 03"Blue notes" are usually which scale degrees, flattened in pitch?
Thirds, fifths and sevenths
They are also called "worried notes" and can be traced back to African music.
Q 04The word "blues" may derive from which old phrase for melancholy?
Blue devils
George Colman used it as the title of a one-act farce in 1798.
Q 05The three four-bar phrases of a standard blues typically follow which lyric pattern?
AAB
An opening line over the tonic is repeated over the subdominant, then answered over the dominant.
Q 06Which composer billed himself the "Father of the Blues"?
W. C. Handy
His signature work was "Saint Louis Blues"; he first heard the blues in Tutwiler, Mississippi, in 1903.
Q 07In which Alabama town was the "Father of the Blues" born in 1873?
Florence
The log cabin of his birth is preserved near downtown; he learned cornet after brief organ lessons.
Q 08Who made the first blues recording by an African-American singer, "Crazy Blues", in 1920?
Mamie Smith
More a vaudeville performer than a bluesman, she sold 75,000 copies in the first month.
Q 09Which singer was dubbed the "Mother of the Blues"?
Ma Rainey
Born Gertrude Pridgett, she made over 100 recordings between 1923 and 1928, including "See See Rider Blues".
Q 10Which singer was nicknamed the "Empress of the Blues"?
Bessie Smith
Her Columbia recording career began in 1923; a car crash killed her at 45.
Q 11The "Empress of the Blues" was born in which Tennessee city?
Chattanooga
Orphaned young, she and her six siblings survived by performing on street corners.
Q 12In the 1920s, the record industry marketed blues by black artists under which label?
Race records
"Hillbilly music" was the matching category for white rural artists.
Q 13Kentucky-born Sylvester Weaver was the first to record which technique in 1923?
Slide guitar
The guitar is fretted with a knife blade or the sawed-off neck of a bottle; it became central to the Delta style.
Q 21Who is often cited as the "father of modern Chicago blues"?
Muddy Waters
Born McKinley Morganfield, he recorded his first success, "I Can't Be Satisfied", in 1948.
Q 22On whose behalf did Alan Lomax record the future Chicago blues father at Stovall, Mississippi, in 1941?
The Library of Congress
Lomax came back in July 1942 to record him again; he moved to Chicago in 1943.
Q 23The Chicago blues father got his nickname from playing in the muddy water of which stream?
Deer Creek
His grandmother Della Grant, who raised him, gave him the name as a small child.
Q 14Blind Willie McTell and Blind Boy Fuller played in which "delicate and lyrical" southeastern style?
Piedmont blues
It used an elaborate ragtime-based fingerpicking technique.
Q 15Legend says which bluesman, who recorded just 29 songs, sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads?
Robert Johnson
He had only two sessions, in San Antonio in 1936 and Dallas in 1937, and died in 1938 aged 27.
Q 16What was the title of Columbia's influential 1961 compilation of the crossroads bluesman's recordings?
King of the Delta Blues Singers
It shaped the British blues boom; Clapton called him "the most important blues singer that ever lived".
Q 17Which 1930s urban blues style was built on a regular left-hand bass figure on piano?
Boogie-woogie
Jimmy Yancey and the Boogie-Woogie Trio of Ammons, Johnson and Lewis pioneered it in Chicago.
Q 18Jump blues, pioneered by Louis Jordan in the 1940s, was based in which Missouri hub?
Kansas City
It grew out of boogie-woogie and big-band music and fed directly into rock and roll and R&B.
Q 19Which Texas-born guitarist dominated the Los Angeles blues-jazz scene in the 1940s?
T-Bone Walker
He made the transition from early urban blues to jump blues and is associated with the California style.
Q 20Which event marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues?
World War II
The postwar years also opened the music to wider, especially white, audiences.
Q 24Most Chicago blues artists recorded for which Chicago label?
Chess Records
Its sister label was Checker; both were run by brothers Leonard and Phil Chess.
Q 25The famous Chicago studio immortalized in a Rolling Stones instrumental stood at what address?
2120 South Michigan Avenue
The Stones recorded the track there on their first U.S. tour in 1964; the building became a Chicago Landmark in 1990.
Q 26The Chess brothers' label succeeded which company they had founded in 1947?
Aristocrat Records
The successor label was established in 1950 and sold shortly before Leonard Chess died in 1969.
Q 27Which bassist wrote "Hoochie Coochie Man", "Back Door Man" and "Wang Dang Doodle"?
Willie Dixon
He was the Chicago scene's most prolific songwriter and later sought new markets in Europe.
Q 28Blues musicians commonly call the harmonica what?
The harp
Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson and Sonny Terry were early Chicago masters of it.
Q 29Chester Arthur Burnett performed under which stage name?
Howlin' Wolf
A protégé of Charley Patton, he had a booming voice AllMusic called "a sandpaper growl".
Q 30Which A&R man recruited the "Smokestack Lightning" singer to record in Memphis?
Ike Turner
His first record, "Moanin' at Midnight" in 1951, led to a deal with Chess in Chicago.