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Sonnyterry,
Oh my gosh ... people have been trying to answer that question for years ... and there are entire libraries full of books on the subject ... there is no brief answer ... all I can do to repond to that question is supply you with two articles that I wrote for the Blues Foundations web site ... and after reading them, you can start doing your own research and drawing your own conclusions ... understand ... the writing herein are not as 'deep' as they could/should be ... bu you're asking question that volumes have been written on ... so forgive any oversights ... and feel free to continue to ask good questions ...
Hawkeye
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The Blues

The blues is a musical style created in response to the hardships endured by generations of African American people. It originated in the rural Mississippi Delta region at the beginning of the 20th century. Descended from earlier work shouts (arhoolies), blues is primarily a vocal narrative style featuring solo voice with instrumental accompaniment. Blues has contributed significantly to the development of jazz, rock music, and country and western music.

Blues Form

By the 1920s, the blues style had acquired its distinguishing characteristics of text, harmonic structure, and melodic shape. Blues lyrics contain a number of three-line rhymed stanzas in which each stanza consists of a line of verse which is repeated and then concluded with a final line. Harmony is based on a repeating blues chord progression, with a 12-bar pattern using the three major chords of a scale. Each stanza of text is set to one 12-bar chorus, with the typical blues ranging from four to eight stanzas in length. Melody is strongly influenced by "blues notesthat sound like "bent" or flattened third, fifth, and seventh notes of the major scale. Blues notes have a bittersweet emotional impact. Although vocals are the focus, performers usually improvise instrumental solos over blues chord progressions. In addition, performers can also contribute improvised"fills" at the end of a sung line in a kind of "call and response" style. One musical innovation was the development of the "bottleneck slide" style of guitar playing, which consists of scraping a knife or glass bottleneck up the guitar fingerboard to simulate vocal moans and slides.

Country Blues

The earliest blues, known as country or delta blues, were a product of the 19th-century Southern rural experience, especially after emancipation. Itinerant singer/guitarists (or harmonica players), generally men, traveled from one community to another singing about love, freedom, sex, and the sorrows of life. Important early musicians include Charlie Patton, Son House (who developed the bottleneck slide technique), and Robert Johnson.

Classic Blues

As rural African Americans migrated to urban areas such as Memphis and New Orleans in search of work, blues gradually became more of an urban phenomenon. Classic or urban blues featured a male or female singer usually accompanied by a piano or whole jazz combo. Capitalizing on the increasing popularity of urban blues, the music industry began publishing and marketing arrangements for blues compositions such as W. C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" (1914). These songs became so successful that many popular songs that were not actually blues simply added the word blues to the title to ensure their popularity. New York vaudeville singer Mamie Smith's 1920 recording of "Crazy Blues" launched the "race recording" industry, which targeted blues and jazz directly at the African American audience. These recordings proved popular with a larger American public as well, and blues recordings by performers such as Bessie Smith, "Empress of the Blues," Jelly Roll Morton, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, and Louis Armstrong dominated the musical landscape. Throughout the country blues could be heard in small dance halls, barrooms, rent parties, and juke joints, where new styles such as "barrelhouse" and boogie-woogie were performed by pianists such as Clarence "Pine Top" Smith.



Electric Blues

After World War II, the center of blues activity moved to cities such as Chicago, where musicians such as Muddy Waters, Riley "B. B." King, and Buddy Guy intensified the sound by amplifying the guitars and adding more emphasis to the drums. During the 1950s this style was adapted by white musicians as well, and rhythm and blues hits were often rerecorded ("covered") by white musicians such as Elvis Presley and Bill Haley, transforming rhythm and blues into rock and roll. A decade later British musicians such as the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Eric Clapton returned to the blues roots as the source for their heavily amplified hard rock style. Although much of the energy of blues has been channeled into rock and rhythm and blues styles, traditional blues musicians such as John Lee Hooker, Etta Baker, Junior Wells, and Buddy Guy enjoy successful careers. Blues has also developed into a major force in contemporary music through the rock-edged style of Robert Cray, as well as roots-oriented jazz by musicians associated with Wynton Marsalis (see Marsalis, family), the zydeco sound, and some rap groups.

Bibliography:
Barlow, W., Looking Up at Down (1989)
Guralnick, P., Sweet Soul Music (1986)
Lomax, A., The Land Where Blues Began (1993)
Sonnier, A., A Guide to the Blues (1994).

Some brief comments on African American music:
The term African American music encompasses a vast array of musical styles. It reflects a mixture of European and West and Central African traits. African American music incorporates an African conceptual approach into a European American musical infrastructure to produce music with a distinctive aesthetic. The combined cultural influences contributed to the development of spirituals, blues, gospel music, jazz, rhythm and blues, soul music, and rap music.

19th Century

The music of blacks during slavery integrated their African heritage and the Judeo-Christian ethic. African American musical traditions began to emerge as an identifiable entity in the latter half of the18th century, with the development of the sacred form of music known as the spiritual. Spirituals were sung in both religious and nonsacred settings. The use of the spiritual reflects the African ideal that while sacred song allows one to communicate with the other world, it may also address matters of the present world.

One combination of song and movement that developed during slavery was known as ring shouts, or shout spirituals. These were a form of musical and religious expression performed primarily "after service" in praise houses or after a formal religious event. The music was call-and-response oriented; accompaniment included singing, hand clapping, foot stamping, and thigh slapping. Shout music came from a body of spirituals and/or hymns used primarily for religious expression. The music was drawn from remnants of African melodies, single lines from hymns or folk spirituals, and songs reflecting significant events in the lives of participants.

Spirituals developed in northern independent black churches during the 18th and 19th centuries. Freedmen utilized the singing style and the practice of mixing movement with the music found in the South, but modified them to suit their specific needs. Spirituals were adapted from other hymnals, taken from folk and popular songs, or were new tunes composed to accompany text. Richard Allen's hymnal, published in 1801, used all of these techniques. Allen modified some hymns by adding supplementary lines, refrain lines, and choruses to ensure full participation of the congregation.

Philadelphia minister Charles Albert Tindley continued the tradition of Richard Allen. By the early 1900s, Tindley wrote more than 45 hymns, including "Stand By Me," "We'll Understand it Better By and By," and "I'll Overcome Someday." In the late 19th century, arranged spirituals appeared. George L. White, a young white teacher at Fisk University, developed a repertoire of classical music and musical forms that originated during slavery but were changed to reflect the different circumstances under which these former slaves lived. He gave his students musical training and formed the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who began touring in 1871. This started a musical tradition in historically black colleges and universities.

Prior to the mid-19th century, European American and African American musical traditions rarely interacted. Some of the exports by whites of African American culture did not present positive images. Minstrels--white performers in blackface--would provide imitations of slave singing and dancing. The minstrel show developed in the latter half of the 18th century, but did not gain widespread popularity until 1843 when the Virginia Minstrels performed in New York City.

Rise of the Blues

The blues is rooted in religious songs, field hollers, shouts, work songs, and game songs. The form gained currency during the postbellum era. The subject matter bears similarities to songs found in the Caribbean and Africa, indicating a close kinship to traditional African songs of gossip, complaint, and/or recrimination. As the blues evolved into a musical form, it developed specific characteristics and features, although some blues did not adhere to a strict structural format. By the 1920s, the country blues style of a singer accompanying himself on an acoustic guitar had developed, as exemplified by performers such as Robert Johnson. The Mississippi Delta was the cradle of country blues.

By the 1920s, a style known as classic blues was being performed exclusively by women such as Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Mamie Smith, Bessie Smith, and Sippie Wallace. The women singing classic blues initiated a vocal style whose musical qualities capture the essence of the sacred and the secular in the form of blues, jazz, and gospel. Classic blues cross-bred the rural Southern styles long associated with males, with the style of Northern females who tended toward gospel and religious music. Vaudeville was also an influence.

In February 1920, Mamie Smith made the first blues records, on the Okeh label. Later that year, she recorded "Crazy Blues," which sold 75,000 copies in its first month, reaching black and white audiences. Buoyed by the success of these records, Okeh established its "race records" or "race music" division. Mamie Smith represents the entrance of African American women into the world of professional entertainment, and helped bridge the gap between the southern styles that came with the immigrants, and the northern tradition already in place. She was also the first to reach white audiences with music originally from the black community. During the Depression race records, in conjunction with the jukebox, breathed new life into the hard-hit record industry.

As African Americans migrated north in the 1930s and 40s, they carried the blues traditions with them. The country blues became more sophisticated, reflecting the urban lifestyle of most blues musicians. Blues was now performed by small groups, with drums, electric guitar, and bass, along with the harmonica, and occasional piano. These changes modified country blues to a style called rhythm and blues (R&B).

Different geographical areas developed unique R&B styles. The Chicago style was linked directly to the Mississippi Delta through artists such as Muddy Waters, Elmore James, and J. B. Lenoir. Memphis developed a style that is a synthesis of musical influences. B. B. King, a prime example of the Memphis sound, transformed country blues by adding amplified guitar, piano, drums, and horns; the use of ninth chords; rarely using his guitar as a percussive instrument; and singing his lines rather than the half-speak, half-sing style common in the Delta/Chicago tradition.

Okay ... now ... I'll leave it up to my fellow BMBF'ers to fill in more details.

Hawkeye
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Well, scholars have been able to trace the pentaonic scale used in most/many blues songs (one, flat three, four, five, flat seven) to Africa ... but the form itself (12 bars in an AAB poetry format) cannot be traced back to Africa.
Hawkeye