Beyond Strophic: Prolonged Refrains, Choruses, and Bridges in the Blues, 1923–1966

The blues is usually associated with strophic form. Yet some of the genre’s most famous recordings, like Bessie Smith’s “St. Louis Blues” and Muddy Waters’s “(I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man,” venture beyond a strophic approach and contain contrasting sections—bridges or choruses. In this study I examine 113 blues songs that feature prolonged refrains, choruses, or bridges, identifying five primary models, each of which can be heard as a hybridization of originally rural strophic blues: 1) the 4+8 model, with its prolonged refrain; 2) the 8+8 model, where the first four bars of the 4+8 pattern are extended to eight bars, resulting in a clearer sense of verse-chorus form; 3) the verse/bridge blend model, in which there is a contrasting section that has characteristics of both a verse and bridge; 4) the solo-bridge model, in which an AABA form is used but is interrupted by an instrumental solo before the bridge; and 5) the two-bridge model, following an overall AABA-solo-BA structure with two iterations of a “classic” bridge.