Essential Blues Songs

If you’ve got the blues, maybe you should play some blues and sing along. Music offers a variety of mental health benefits, from improving your mood to triggering memories. It can also help you manage stress and regulate your blood pressure and heart rate, according to a new report from AARP’s Global Council on Brain Health (GCBH).

Listening to familiar tunes is like hanging out with old friends, but escaping your musical comfort zone is good for your brain. “Unfamiliar melodies may stimulate your brain while providing a new source of pleasure as you get used to hearing them,” the GCBH report states. That’s why Staying Sharp asked experts from musicians to music historians for their lists of essential songs in seven genres: rock, classical, jazz, Latin, country, hip-hop and blues. You’ll find the lists on the Music and Brain Health landing page.

Here’s a list of five essential blues songs.

1. “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground,” Blind Willie Johnson (1927)

Recorded in 1927 by an itinerant black guitarist in a Dallas hotel room, “Dark Was the Night” is a wordless interpretation of an 18th-century gospel hymn and arguably the most influential blues track ever. Accompanied only by his plaintive bottleneck steel guitar playing, Johnson's moaning lament reflects the human condition at its bluest.

2. “Cross Road Blues,” Robert Johnson (1936)

This enigmatic Delta blues guitarist was long mythologized as a devil's disciple whose ungodly talent was acquired at a Mississippi crossroads. In his dark, funky, and idiosyncratically arranged 1936 solo performance, however, Johnson begs the Lord's forgiveness at an existential junction — no satanic intervention required. English power trio Cream's electric interpretation made it a blues-rock standard.

3. “Evil,” Howlin' Wolf (1954)

“Any time you’re thinking evil, you’re thinking about the blues,” growling Chicago blues legend Howlin’ Wolf once declared. This 1954 hit, with its eerie drums and boogeying piano, ruminates on the suspicion, fear and jealousy whipped up when “you know another mule is kickin' in your stall.”

4. “Mannish Boy,” Muddy Waters (1955)

Waters’ walloping 1955 follow-up to his hit single “Hoochie Coochie Man” combines potent male braggadocio with a subtle affirmation of black pride: Having split the Deep South for Chicago, he's now an “M-A-child–N ... no B-O-child–Y.” Find the song’s best version on the Johnny Winter-produced album Hard Again.

5. “Wang Dang Doodle,” Koko Taylor (1966)

Roaring Tennessee-born blues queen Cora “Koko” Taylor promises a hard-partying night with a colorful cast of characters including Automatic Slim and Razor-Totin’ Jim. Prolific Mississippi-born songwriter Willie Dixon wrote this Chicago blues blast for Howlin’ Wolf, but it took Wolf's bellowing female counterpart to turn it into a 1966 hit.