Country blues is a general term that refers to all the acoustic, mainly guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

-driven forms of the blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

. It often incorporated elements of rural gospel, ragtime, hillbilly, and dixieland jazz. After blues' birth in the southern United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, it quickly spread throughout the country (and elsewhere), giving birth to a host of regional styles. These include Memphis

Memphis blues

The Memphis blues is a style of blues music that was created in the 1920s and 1930s by Memphis-area musicians like Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Furry Lewis and Memphis Minnie...

, Detroit

Detroit blues

Detroit blues is blues music played by musicians resident in Detroit, Michigan, particularly that played in the 1940s and 1950s. Detroit blues originated when Delta blues performers migrated north from the Mississippi Delta and Memphis, Tennessee to work in Detroit's industrial plants in the 1920s...

, Chicago

Chicago blues

The Chicago blues is a form of blues music that developed in Chicago, Illinois, by taking the basic acoustic guitar and harmonica-based Delta blues, making the harmonica louder with a microphone and an instrument amplifier, and adding electrically amplified guitar, amplified bass guitar, drums,...

, Texas

Texas blues

Texas blues is a subgenre of blues. It has had various style variations but typically has been played with more swing than other blues styles....

, Piedmont

Piedmont blues

Piedmont blues refers primarily to a guitar style, the Piedmont fingerstyle, which is characterized by a fingerpicking approach in which a regular, alternating thumb bass string rhythmic pattern supports a syncopated melody using the treble strings generally picked with the fore-finger,...

, Louisiana

Louisiana blues

Louisiana blues is a genre of blues music that developed in the period after World War II in the state of Louisiana. It is generally divided into two major sub-genres, with the jazz-influenced New Orleans blues based around the city and the slower tempo swamp blues incorporating influences from...

, West Coast

West Coast blues

The West Coast blues is a type of blues music characterized by jazz and jump blues influences, strong piano-dominated sounds and jazzy guitar solos, which originated from Texas blues players relocated to California in the 1940s...

, Atlanta, St. Louis

St. Louis blues

St. Louis blues is a type of blues music. It is usually more piano-based than other forms of the blues, and is closely related to the jump blues, ragtime and piano blues...

, East Coast

East Coast blues

East Coast blues casts a wide net covering all of Piedmont blues - a style that relied on fast, virtuosic fingerpicking and added influences such as ragtime - as well as the urbanized R&B of New York blues and countless smaller regional styles....

, Swamp

Swamp blues

Swamp blues, sometimes the Excello sound, is a sub-genre of blues music and a variation of Louisiana blues that developed around Baton Rouge in the 1950s and which reached a peak of popularity in the 1960s. It generally has a slow tempo and incorporates influences from other genres of music,...

, New Orleans

New Orleans blues

New Orleans rhythm and blues refers to a type of R&B music from the U.S. city of New Orleans, Louisiana, characterized by extensive use of piano and horn sections, complex syncopated "second line" rhythms, and lyrics that reflect New Orleans life....

, Delta

Delta blues

The Delta blues is one of the earliest styles of blues music. It originated in the Mississippi Delta, a region of the United States that stretches from Memphis, Tennessee in the north to Vicksburg, Mississippi in the south, Helena, Arkansas in the west to the Yazoo River on the east. The...

, Hill country

Hill country blues

Hill country blues is a regional offshoot of country blues style characterized by few chord changes, unconventional song structures, and an emphasis on the "groove" or a steady, driving rhythm...

 and Kansas City

Kansas City blues (music)

See also Kansas City Blues for disambiguation.Kansas City blues is a genre of blues music. It has spawned the Kansas City Blues & Jazz festival and the Kansas City Blues Society.-Kansas:...

 blues.

When African-American musical tastes began to change in the early 1960s, moving toward soul

Soul

A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...

 and rhythm & blues music, country blues found renewed popularity as "folk blues" and was sold to a primarily white, college-age audience. Traditional artists like Big Bill Broonzy

Big Bill Broonzy

Big Bill Broonzy was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences...

 and Sonny Boy Williamson II

Sonny Boy Williamson II

Willie "Sonny Boy" Williamson was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter, from Mississippi. He is acknowledged as one of the most charismatic and influential blues musicians, with considerable prowess on the harmonica and highly creative songwriting skills...

 reinvented themselves as folk blues artists, while Piedmont bluesmen like Sonny Terry

Sonny Terry

Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry was a blind American Piedmont blues musician. He was widely known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers, and imitations of trains and fox hunts.-Career:Terry was born in Greensboro, Georgia...

 and Brownie McGhee

Brownie McGhee

Walter Brown McGhee was a Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry.-Life and career:...

 found great success on the folk festival circuit

American folk music revival

The American folk music revival was a phenomenon in the United States that began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Richard Dyer-Bennett, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob...

.