In my estimation, the two sides of this debate are really arguing at cross-purposes and are conflating two distinct and separate matters. With that in mind, both sides are right in their own particular way.
The word “Blues” is really a misnomer. We all generally assume that we mean the same thing when we use the word but having listened to people on this topic since at least 1979, it has, for a long time, been clear to me that different people mean different things when the term is used. It’s like the term “rock,” or “jazz,” or to take it wider, “love.”


“Blues” ceased to have a singular musical meaning even before Alexis Korner, the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac were playing it. Miles Davis would have told you that jazz came from the blues. Did Chuck Berry and James Brown play blues ? And so on, and so forth.
Asking how much blues is there in Black Sabbath is like asking how much Latin is there in American English. If you know your Latin well, you’ll be aware of just how much it frames, shapes and comes up in English and therefore American English. But American English is not Latin. It, unconsciously for the most part, drew from Latin but has very much gone its own way to develop into something different and that is more or less what happened with Black Sabbath and the blues.

On their first few albums, one can detect smatterings of blues in the stylings of Ozzy, Tony and Bill. Those stylings are an overhang from their stricter blues past and would pop up here and there in their recorded songs, in much the same way that progressive leanings {not ‘prog’}, jazzy conceptualization, psychedelic and classical tendencies and Tony’s physical limitations all made up part of the overall sonic picture. But they also borrowed from Cream and Led Zeppelin.


Martin made an interesting comment when, in countering a point about Ozzy’s vocals and Tony’s solos being from the blues, he said something like, you may as well say it’s just music as opposed to blues. But that is the central point – music by the late 60s was broken into many different forms and many of these forms informed Sabbath’s music, among which was the blues. There is acoustic folk in some of Black Sabbath’s early music. These influences and elements poked their heads up into Sabbath’s music in different ways but the overall picture was something new and other than those forms in and of themselves. It’s pointless looking for blues songs that Black Sabbath did. Whereas some artists {Cream, Hendrix, Zeppelin} covered actual blues songs and directly obvious rigid blues forms, other heavyweights {Purple, Sabbath, High Tide} didn’t. But they all had blues as part of their musical palette. They couldn’t _not_. Same way they couldn’t not have rock and roll as part of their palette.


One final thing – it’s important to pay heed to what the artists themselves have said about what they thought they were playing. When you hear phrases like ‘heavy blues’ it tells you some of the artists were playing what they thought of as blues, even if we don’t today. Sabbath had the blues as part of their language, but were also moving towards something else, like most of the heavy bands of that time.

While you don't get the full 12 bar blues structures or any traditionally based tropes of pure blues with Black Sabbath, you get a lot of British blues rock influences in the first two albums. More so on the debut, but the blues still flavors Paranoid quite a bit. Ozzy's singing style with Black Sabbath is definitely informed by the blues, and Tony's soloing style has a lot of blues to it even beyond Paranoid. Black Sabbath take British blues rock and mutates that into something darker and heavier and different, but you can still get a ghost of the blues in places.

A fascinating follow-up I would like to see-not for the sake of "how much blues" is there in this band, but because it does come up almost as much as it does in the Sabbath conversation is "How much blues is there in Motorhead?"

I see it as the remnants of the 'Roll' part of Rock n Roll too. The 'Rock' being the solid part and the 'Roll' being the loose swing of the music.

I like Martin's point about emphasizing the NON-Blues aspects of Sabbath because that gives more credit to them inventing something totally new - which is true.
I find it really amazing to reflect on how Heavy Metal was born out of a more 'Bluesy' background because that was never something that was inevitable. I think Heavy Metal was ALWAYS destined to be invented - because it's the logical conclusion of people pursuing the expression of aggressive and heavy music with distorted guitars.

The type of style played aggressively and heavy didn't HAVE TO be Bluesy like Sabbath, it could have came from other genres like Jazz or Classical - if they were to have pursued distorted aggression and heaviness as a priority in their expression.
As Heavy Metal progressed toward Priest and Maiden - it got significantly LESS Bluesy, proving that Bluesiness is not an intrinsic element of Heavy Metal - it just happened to be the foundation.
There is a rhythmic looseness to a lot of Black Sabbath, some degree of swing - this is what gets trimmed as we move to the late 70s and early 80s.

If you look at the riffs that define the progress in Metal - they're the ones with the LEAST swing, least looseness, and most rigid tightness. Riffs like Paranoid, Children of the Grave and especially Symptom of the Universe.
As a big fan of Classical Music - I think it's fascinating to look back at the rhythmic precedents to Heavy Metal in music that predates it by centuries.

If you listen to Military Marches that are featured in Classical works - you hear some precedent to Metal, also in some music like Chopin's Polonaises - that same Marching feeling, bits of gallop.
Those forms of music came from Folk Dances - and also music to motivate soldiers in battle.
Some folk dances have a pretty loose and elegant feel - like the Waltz, but the March and Polonaise and other styles like that - they have that very tight and locked in, almost aggressive style that would manifest in Metal.
Obsessive 'ostinatos' in classical music are also something that sound like a precedent to Metal - repeated figures that really do kind of resemble 'riffs'.
It makes sense when you listen to something like the Imperial March from Star Wars and consider how METAL it sounds! The rhythmic vocabulary, dark harmony shifts, and melodic contour - they're very Metal but came from a completely unrelated source.

So the tight, percussive, militant type of aggressive expressed in Metal had precedent in other genres... when we look at the evolution of Rock n Roll with it's aggressive rebellion, and use of guitar distortion - it makes sense that, over time - the rhythms would gradually morph to be more driving and resemble the same rousing rhythms featured in Marches, aggressive Classical works, or other Folk Dances.

I think we could basically say that this was Rock losing it's Roll!
There was still some Roll in Sabbath, but when Judas Priest moved forward - they lost the Rolla and pursued pure Rocka!

Of course nothing in Folk or Classical has the same pure furious sustained drive of Metal - but when you listen back to music of the past you see the Harmonic, Melodic, and especially Rhythmic ingredients they used to express feelings are pretty similar.

I think this proves that the evolution of Metal was always inevitable - and that we just needed to invent distortion for it to manifest!

I think it’s that they have a heavy blues influence in terms of the musical vocabulary they use, namely the blues scale, however, they linger on the chromatic notes and don’t stick to twelve bar or other rigid structures.

I’d say that they’re certainly metal, but with heavy blues and jazz influences

A lot of early Black Sabbath is pretty funky. Ward and Butler could groove.

Since the first time I heard Wicked World I thought this sounds bluesy mixed with rock'n roll. I hear it mainly on their first album....

Martin "aren't they just electric guitar?"
Really could do with some actual musicians in this debate.

Certainly less blues than early Fleetwood Mac, Cream or Zeppelin. Davey makes an excellent point that the blues Sabbath was referencing was more electric british blues rock than Delta blues or even Chicago blues. But I agree with Martin that they went farther away from it earlier than those other bands. Sabbath was Heavy metal...more so than Hendrix, Clapton, Beck, Page or Green. Great discussion!

Enjoy folks!

Great discussion, the first album has a lot of bluesy songs and some songs on the later albums as Faries wear boots on the Paranoid album for example.

HEART LIKE A WHEEL!!

It is on 7th Star... the one nobody listens to (though I love it now but it took a while for me to adjust to it!!)

They did start out  as a blues band

I thoroughly enjoyed this, informed parties advocating conflicting arguments. Thank you, gentlemen and respect to you all.

They never caught the Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack, John Mayall, can't fail blues.

British Blues - like Cream and Zeppelin.

The english style blues influence is undeniable on the first album, and every here and there one can detect a wiff of it afterwards but its minimal. The blues are in Ozzy's vocals?  Um no, I think thats a stretch. Did I hear someone say N.I.B. was bluesy? Another stretch. Blues solo on the song Black Sabbath? Naw...
Sabbath were certainly unique in there sound. A bit of  blues and jazz influences mixed in with the really heavy sound and doomy lyrics as well as some progressive dabbling (Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabatoge albums)--it all combined to make not only the earliest but some of the best metal ever.
1 percent blues, 99 percent metal.

Great topic, even if I found myself somewhat at odds with a good share of the discussion. Enjoyed it, thanks guys!

Maybe Ozzy had a blues feel on the first album, but he didn't know any better, he was raw. Sabbs never followed Ozzy's vocal line, in fact the opposite is true, he followed the riff for example, or added his own melody lines. Can you sing the blues over a pentatonic scale? Could Ozzy?

Next up:
Martin argues that Sabbath invented heavy metal, abandoned their invention, to then become a prog rock band with "heavy leanings" from Vol. 4 though Technical Ecstasy
Also throw in Booooogie of Sabbra Caddabra when Birmingham England meets Birmingham Alabama... and go off Pop-Off

My short answer: Yes. Lots.
Much is made about Ozzy’s vocal phrasing and that’s true, but even more so in my books is Bill Ward’s drumming. Disguised under many of the doomy riffs is Bill Ward’s blues shuffle. He really swings. Take Children of the Grave for instance. Strip away the bass and guitar and you are left with a hard and swinging blues shuffle. There is no escaping it.