How to Find Blues Lyrics

With its short and simple quatrains, blues has an accessible style that lends itself to creative expression. Blues lyrics can be found from a variety of sources, in print or on the Internet.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Listen to live blues. Small-time neo-blues musicians have their own clever blues lyrics that you may want to collect for posterity.

2. Get blues books. Much of the history of blues has been compiled into books that you can find at your local bookstore or library. The old great blues artists (Leadbelly, B.B. King, etc) are most likely to have their lyrics in print. Books like Randy Poe's "Squeeze My Lemon" and "The Blues Line" (Eric Sackheim) are examples of blues lyric anthologies that contain dozens of old lyrics.

3. Find full-scale Internet lyrics sites like "A-Z Lyrics Universe." These sites will generally provide lyrics for all genres, with "blues" as a sub-category.

4. Look for blues tribute websites. These sites may have large lyric collections, and often are sponsored by non-profits or organizations dedicated to the study of music. Sites like "The Rhythm and Blues Music Primer", "The Blues Highway" and "Blues Foundation" all have resources on the history of the genre and links to places where you can find lyrics.

5. Look for small-time, owner-maintained blues websites. Many good sites host blues lyrics from a single server maintained by a blues collector. These small sites often are hosted by Geocities and other web hosting agencies. To find these smaller sites, go to Geocities (or another similar site) and search by topic.

Tips & Warnings

• While collecting blues lyrics is easy, it might be a lot harder to find the one song that's been bouncing around in your head. Many times, a particular song is found by entering the name of the song or a few known lyrics into a search engine.

Resources

• Blues website
• A-Z Lyrics Universe
• Jazz and Blues lyrics website.