City or urban blues styles emerged alongside rural or country blues in the 1920s with the growth in the recording industry, but were more codified and elaborate.

Classic female urban or vaudeville blues singers were popular in the 1920s, among them Mamie Smith, Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey, Bessie Smith and Victoria Spivey. Mamie Smith, more a vaudeville performer than a blues artist, was the first African-American to record a blues in 1920.

Urban male performers included popular black musicians of the era, such Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy and Leroy Carr.

After World War II and in the 1950s, as African Americans moved to the Northern cities, new styles of electric blues music became popular in cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Kansas City. Electric blues used amplified electric guitars, electric bass, drums and harmonica. Chicago in particular became a centre for electric blues in the early 1950s.