THE USA IS A BIG COUNTRY

Why, yes it is.... and yes there are.

  There are regional differences in style and taste in music in a country as geographically large as this, but the lines are getting a lot blurrier by the influences of mass media and "cross over" bands and their recordings.  That is expected in a land where the common language doesn't segregate, one style of music or the region of origin from the others.

  Living here we kind of take for granted the "largness" of our country, but I became aware of the difference in viewpoints when a friend of mine came over from Germany with his uncle and cousin to visit the "West Coast" shopping for holiday properties.  They flew into San Diego and rented a car thinking they would just "drive up to Seattle" and sight see along the way looking for some oceanfront land to build a vacation home on.  Three days later they stopped and visited me and my family here in Oregon and they still had another long day of driving ahead to Seattle!  It took two days to drive through California (on the coast road), not quite like getting a rail pass and passing through five countries in 24 hours in Europe.

Take Care;
Doug

The same thing can be said of a much smaller place like the uk .... with a lot less more miles to travel the music styles can vary greatly .. ie .... cornish ... welsh , scottish, even cockney styles and apologies to all the others I have left out.

The distance is making less difference in sounds over time.  With the advent of You-Tube and CD Baby, anyone can get any kind of music anywhere.  Plus, there's a lot more regional movement of people.  I don't have any evidence to support it, but I suspect that people are following jobs a lot more readily than they used to when three or four generations would live on the same street in the same town. 

Anyway, Chicago blues relies heavily on harmonica and repetitive bass lines upon which are built interesting (at least to me) variations in the lead electric line.  At the other end of the river (OK, three rivers: Chicago River to Missouri River to Mississippi River), the Delta blues has strong zydeco and cajun influences and often uses concertinas in lieu of harmonicas and washboards aren't unheard of. 

I agree with bensonp in liking them all.

To get a good flavor of local music, you have to hit the bars on open mic night.  The regions can be very, very small.  I can think of one road where there's large towns every 20 miles or so.  Start at the eastern most and you find a lot of party rock bands, in the middle town you'll find more folk music, and go to the western most town you'll get a lot of country and bluegrass.  You can find any of those kinds of music in any of those towns if you look, I'm just talking about generalities. 

- Zurf