When African Americans moved north during the Great Migration for a better life, many settled in Midwestern cities like Chicago. When they moved, they brought the blues with and began adapting it to there new urban lives. The blues was no longer just about working farms and based in Southern ways and slang.
Chicago Blues, also known as Urban Blues took it’s base from the earlier blues styles like the Delta Blues but became electrified. Based heavily on on electric guitar it was a whole new style of which to play the blues. Electric and loud.
One of the most famous Chicago Bluesmen was Muddy Waters. Muddy was a Delta blues man when he moved to Chicago in the 1940s. Muddy was already a popular acoustic blues performer but decided to change things up and went electric. And when he did it helped launch a whole new style of blues.
Chicago blues musicians also took the classic blues performance duos of guitar and harmonica and expanded them into full bands with bass drums, drums and sometimes a saxophone—and amplifiers!