Somehow, different flavors of popular music have been stylistically all over the place. There are big differences between Sinatra and Hank Williams! But in other ways, structurally speaking, it’s surprising how closely different pop styles follow similar structural patterns. In that sense, rockabilly music has a lot in common with many different genres of popular music.
Having grown out of a combination of country, blues, gospel, and rhythm and blues music from the first half of the last century, it should come as no surprise that rockabilly music has a lot in common with each of those genres. Specifically, rockabilly songs often follow the familiar 12-bar blues pattern that forms the basis for millions of songs that have been written and recorded not only in the blues style, but also in country, rock and roll, music. folkloric and many others.
So what exactly is the “12 bar blues” pattern? For musicians who play in any of the styles I have mentioned here, the pattern is second nature. Musicians who don’t pay much attention to music theory may not even realize that they are playing the pattern – it just appears in so many songs that it is ingrained in them. But many non-musicians may have heard the term and wondered what it is about. And for rockabilly fans, why should they care?
Well, you certainly don’t have to understand the 12-bar blues pattern to enjoy rockabilly music, but if you’re interested in how it works, here’s a really dirty basic rundown!
The pattern is simply a structure that the composer uses to create a song that makes sense to the Western listener’s ear. There is no law that says a songwriter has to stick to the structure, but you can’t go too wrong with it. The structure provides instant familiarity to the listener and makes them feel comfortable with the heading of the song. The composer typically applies this structure to the verses of the song and, unsurprisingly, given the name of the structure, it is 12 bars, or musical bars, in length. The end of those 12 bars comfortably leads to the next section of the song, whether it’s another 12-bar verse pattern or a variation used as a chorus, solo, or bridge section.
Take for example the classic Carl Perkins song “Blue Suede Shoes”. The song sticks to the 12-bar blues structure and may be the best rockabilly song ever written. Think of the first verse of the song where Perkins helps us count the bars by providing us with the famous “Well, it’s one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, now go away.”
The “one”, “two” and “three” of the lyrics fall on the first beat of bars one, two and three of the verse. Add the “go cat go” and you’ve already gone through four of the 12 bars in the pattern. Perkins uses essentially the same musical chord for those first four bars. That chord can be specifically an E or an A or any other chord depending on the key in which the song is played, but it is generically known as the “one” chord. The choice of that chord is related to the 12-bar blues, since a very common chord pattern (one, four, one, five, one) usually works hand in hand with the 12-bar pattern. That’s another discussion for another day and it starts to dive deeper into music theory than most fans want!
After those first four measures, the song changes to what is known as the “four” chord, and the melody of the song changes accordingly. The song stays on the four chord for two measures. In our example, Perkins sings, “Don’t step on my blue suede” and we’re six bars in the middle of the pattern. The word “shoes starts the seventh measure of the pattern again at the” one “chord, and Perkins fills the rest of measure seven and measure eight with a clever guitar riff.
In bars nine and ten, Perkins sings “do anything, but leave my blue suede shoes” over what’s known as the “five” chord. He ends the pattern back on the chord with his big guitar touch again and then the whole pattern repeats as he launches into the “Well, you can knock me down …” from verse two.
“Blue Suede Shoes” is a brilliant example of the 12-bar blues pattern in rockabilly music. It’s actually somewhat unusual because the song doesn’t have a distinct chorus section. Instead, Perkins builds what serves as his chorus in the last eight bars of the verse so that the two share the same 12-bar pattern rather than using clearly different patterns for each.
“Blue Suede Shoes” is simply a great example of the 12-bar blues pattern used in rockabilly and other forms of popular music. Things get even more interesting when songwriters start playing around and experimenting with the standard pattern. There are no set rules about how many bars a song or its individual sections should have. For example, Gene Vincent’s brilliant “Be Bop a Lula” uses a standard 12-bar blues pattern for the chorus (where Gene sings, “Be Bop a Lula, she’s my baby. Be Bop a Lula, I don’t mean to maybe “. and so on.) But his verse sections use an unusual eight-bar pattern and everything works perfectly.
If you consider the 12-bar blues pattern to be a rule, then songs like “Blue Suede Shoes” show that rules make rockabilly music great. And songs like “Be Bop a Lula” show that, with rockabilly, the rules are made to be broken!
