New Orleans Blues

New Orleans blues is the piano-led blues tradition of New Orleans, distinguished by rolling triplet figures, second-line syncopation and the Spanish tinge inherited from the city's Caribbean exchanges. Where guitar dominates most regional blues, here the piano professors of the sporting houses and juke joints set the terms, from *Tuts Washington* and *Archibald* to *Professor Longhair*, whose rhumba-inflected style fused blues, boogie-woogie and Afro-Cuban rhythm into the foundation of New Orleans rhythm and blues. The tradition prizes rhythmic looseness, good humour and dancefloor utility, and its players, *James Booker*, *Champion Jack Dupree* and *Snooks Eaglin* among them, move freely between blues, R&B and jazz.