Jazz is not Blues and Blues is not Jazz.......

Glad you added that “other common denominator”. I was about to point that out as a response to your “obvious connection” of ethnicity comment. Putting ethnicity aside, swing is the most important component of both Blues and Jazz and another obvious common ground as you point out. And as your Neil Peart account describes so well, the reason that relative “difficulty“ is not as obvious as it may seem. Sure, from a music theory and “technical” standpoint, Jazz is usually more complicated; but, not always.  Take Miles’ “KOB”, most of those modal tunes are actually even simpler harmonically than many Blues tunes. I would bet BB could have played some relatively simple, but very tasty solos over some of those tunes. The tasty part? THAT’S the difficult part. There’s good reason why Jazz players often judge another player’s true mettle based on whether that other player can play the Blues.

Surely there are different styles of music, but for the most part the labels we placed upon them are marketing terms that assist record labels, radio stations and other music distributors.  Genre labels can be helpful, but they shouldn't be taken too seriously.  Is it really that important that southside Chicago blues was slightly different than westside Chicago blues?
It's my observation that if you can make a living playing music that you have the versatility and talent to play most forms of popular music.   As an example, take Paul Humphrey.  He's primarily known as a jazz drummer, but he worked with Albert King, Frank Zappa, Dusty Springfiled, Jerry Garcia, Tony Orlando and Marvin Gaye.  He was also the drummer in the Lawrence Welk Orchestra.  He made a living playing music.

The premise of this thread is quite relevant, and one that I have often wondered about myself.


We have clearly illustrated that even the people who create the two genres are so very different; then why shouldn't the music be different. Beyond the commonality of ethnicity, I can't see any similarities. Even the same word means two different things; when a jazz musician refers to "The Blues", does his reference sound like Howling Wolf?