The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #162650   Message #3874237
Posted By: GUEST,Joseph Scott
29-Aug-17 - 08:34 PM
Thread Name: Obit: RIP - Blues expert Paul Oliver.(1927-2017)
Subject: RE: Obit: RIP - Blues expert Paul Oliver.(1927-2017)
"I guess that most blues aficionados go to other sites to find real blues content." Folk blues was folk music (a blues is a type of tune that caught on like e.g. a bad man ballad is a type of tune that caught on, a rag is a type of tune that caught on, etc.), and imo I've seen a lot of good discussion of folk blues tunes here from people who understand folk blues tunes in reasonable context because they understand folk music in reasonable context, which many people out there don't. Since blues music started as folk music, getting folk music is vital to getting early blues and important to getting later blues.

In my experience many blues "aficionados" pretty much can't handle the truth, to put it bluntly. For instance, if someone starts out barking up the tree that Son House's style would be representative of the region we have evidence blues music arose in, what he may end up with in that tree is LOVING how TRANSCENDENT Son House was instead, that sort of thing, because we don't really have that evidence at all. And loving how transcendent people were isn't the same thing as researching music history.