Can white folks sing the blues?

Subject: RE: Can white folks sing the blues?
From: Matt Woodbury/Mimosa
Date: 15 Jun 00 - 12:27 PM

Defeat?? Enemy??

It seems more to me like learning to use the tools a group of fellow humans developed for my own expression and/or healing.

Mimosa

Subject: RE: Can white folks sing the blues?
From: GUEST,simon
Date: 15 Jun 00 - 01:53 PM

if i have to listen to one more person say how great janis joplins overwrought singing is a will be ill. authenticity is the key to the blues and i guess i am not really trying to say that only a black american can sing the blues but and its a big but here when people co-op another persons suffering i dont know....

Subject: RE: Can white folks sing the blues?
From: reggie miles
Date: 15 Jun 00 - 04:30 PM

I say it's all good. If a style of music, like blues for example, echos within a person's soul enough to cause that person to seek more of the same, to either listen to or to try and emulate via iterpretation or imitation, I say it's done it's job. Isn't that, after all, how all of us have come to this curious obsession? In this pursuit color plays little if any role. Gettin back to the question posed, silly though it may be, at least to me, a white guy who has loved and played blues music for more years than I care to mention, the answer is of course yes. To quote Bonnie, blues is just somebody singing about their pain and pain is something we all share. We can all identify with hard times because at one time or another we all seem to have to face them.

Subject: RE: Can white folks sing the blues?
From: Jon W.
Date: 15 Jun 00 - 07:30 PM

This sort of reminds me of something I once read. The question was, can a murderer play Othello better than someone who has not murdered? The answer was, "Yes, if he is a better actor."

Sometimes I think that those of us who are caucasian, when we sing the blues trying to imitate the vocal qualities of certain black artists, are just being actors (okay, method actors). There were a number of black bluesmen, even way back, who didn't howl like a wolf, moan like a dove, or cry like a baby when they sang - they just sang the blues straight (Blind Willie McTell for one).

Subject: RE: Can white folks sing the blues?
From: Brendy
Date: 16 Jun 00 - 09:20 AM

Subject: RE: Can white folks sing the blues?
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 27 Jun 00 - 06:32 AM

Leafing through an old magazine at coffee time I saw two cartoons by the same hand one of which fits here and the other can be shoehorned in!
One showed a "two-tone" band all shades and porkpie hats. The leader is saying: "Unfortunately all the black players play like white guys. Fortunately, all the white players play like black guys."!
The other showed a guy being chased by another (shades, porkpie hat) wielding a guitar like an offensive weapon. He is saying:"I thought I had the blues, but apparently I'm just a psychotic schizophrenic".
Rts (White boy [?boy?] lost in the blues.)

Subject: RE: Can white folks sing the blues?
From:
Date: 10 Jan 02 - 01:47 AM

They hold that rice next to ole Johnny, ta' make sure it's right. He's the whitest fucker on the planet, they can see him from the space shuttle. They sheer sheep by his gawd ugly light, they can hear his guitar wail. Johnny Winter, Johnny Winter, Ra,Ra,Ra!!

Subject: RE: Can white folks sing the blues?
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 10 Jan 02 - 08:43 AM

Bottomfeeder,

It was Johnny who introduced me to the Blues. Yeah, a cross-eyed rail thin albino is about as far as you can get from Howlin' Wolf. But his live "It's My Own Fault" is still the finest electric Blues tune I've ever heard. But it was his acoustic stuff that made me realize that perhaps you didn't need to be at "11" to play blues. His covers of "Kind Hearted Woman", "Broke Down Engine", "Goin' Down Slow", his own "Dallas" are as good as anything that I've ever heard from the original Delta guys.

Let's not forget Keith Richards, Brian Jones and those guys. They've done some wonderful blues, hell they've even done some wonderful country.

Can a 20 year old Jewish guy from Minnesota sing the Blues? Check out the first Dylan album. Brilliant versions of "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean", "House of The Risin' Sun", "In My Time Of Dyin'", "Fixin' To Die". He was the real deal.

Subject: RE: Can white folks sing the blues?
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 10 Jan 02 - 10:30 AM

It seems like the question is, can white men sing black blues? There seems to be a bbasic assumption that the blues IS black. Columbia put out a compilation of White Blues, with songs by people like Jimmy Rogers, who sang a lot of blues, songs Like Farm Land Blues... Like all forms of music, it all comes down to feeling. I've been put in blues workshops, which seems like a joke, and yet I do some blues that feel right to me. Maybe the question is, Should white singers imitate blacks? It's similar to the question of whether someone from Arkansas should do an English pub song with a broad English accent. Like "What is folk music?" there are no technical answers. There are whites who try to sound black who, to my ears, sound like a modern form of musical blackface. The Beatles sang blues.. especially John Lennon. Limiting the term blues to black music from the 20's and 30's, or Chicago blues on the fifties seems foolish.

Even Elton John sang,I guess that's why they call it the blues...

Jerry

Subject: RE: Can white folks sing the blues?
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 10 Jan 02 - 10:42 AM

Jerry, I hope that you're not suggesting that Elton John is a Bluesman.

Subject: RE: Can white folks sing the blues?
From: GUEST,Desdemona
Date: 10 Jan 02 - 11:25 AM

Or even a man at all, except in (perhaps) the most technical sense of the word.....

White folks can certainly sing the blues, just not LUTHERAN white folks! ;~)

Subject: RE: Can white folks sing the blues?
From: CRANKY YANKEE
Date: 10 Jan 02 - 11:35 AM

You bet your ass we can. For instance, Paul Geremia, (italian ancestry) and me (half Italian Half Russian Jewish ancestry) Also my son David. But then, Italy IS rather close to Africa, isn't it?

Jack Radcliffe, an extremely able and versatile piano player, once told a newspaper interviewer that, "You got to suffer to sing the blues"
Notice, his last name is RADCLIFFE. he is a damned good blues man, in addition to stride piano, classical, ragtime, you name it. My wife, the ever lovely Donna Gibson is descended entirely from "British Isles" stock . Her family has been in Newport (as she puts it) since the earth cooled. She's got a good voice and she's a very good singer. However, we were fooling around with guitars and mandolins and recorders one day and she was trying to sing blues. It just didn't fit her Vstyle. And I told her that she was just too English for the blues. Then we remembered what Jack had told the interviewer and we commenced composing verses to a song entitled, "You Got To Suffer To Sing The Blues" Donna is a very very good songwriter. I was singing the verses into a reel to reel recorder as the verses were being composed. This is from the viewpoint of a rich never have suffered, W.A.S.P. (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) who desperately wants to sing the blues, but simply hasn't got the right ancestry.

(Any good "bluesy" blues progression melody will do"
YOU'VE GOT TO SUFFER TO SING THE BLUES
(words and music by Donna and Jody Gibson)
IMy Mama's in the D.A.R.
She wears twenty five hundred dollar Gucci shoes
My Mama's a daughter of the Oh-Merican Revolution, she wears two thousand five hundred dollar Gucci shoes.
But if she was a Barefoot Laundress, WWWOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWW, Could I sing them blues.

II
My daddy's a wall street bnker, see him on the evening news,
My daddy's a wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wall street bank-oh, see him on dat evenin' news
But if he wuz a shaaaaaaaaayer cropper,
Ouch, I could sing dem blues.

III
I got twenty twenty vision, never spent a dayay in jail
My eyesight is per perfect and I neber been in dat jail
But if God would only strike me blind, AAAAOOOOOOOWWWWW I could really wail.

IV If I could find a way to suffer, I know I could sing the Blues,
If I could only suffer some, I know I could sing the blues.
So I'm gonna tear up all my credit cards and beat myself 'till I'm black an' blue.

V
So one day I asked my Mammy," Mammy, how do you sing the blues"?
One day I asked my Mammy , "Mammy, mammy, mammya Mommoh, How do you sing dem blues?
(spoken)and she said, (with English accent), "it's not mammy, it's nanny, you ninny, and I haven't the foggiest notion".

Subject: RE: Can white folks sing the blues?
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 10 Jan 02 - 11:48 AM

Cranky,

I like that one.

Steve

Subject: RE: Can white folks sing the blues?
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 10 Jan 02 - 12:57 PM

Can an ageing white boy from Wisconsin sing southern black gospel? You bet! No apologies or explanations necessary. As long as you feel what you sing, go ahead. Can black folks sing white gospel. Sure enough. The guys in my otherthan me black gospel quartet love to sing Angel Band and other "White" gospel. And yeah, even Lutherans can sing the blues and black gospel. Having been a Lutheran most of my life.

A few years ago, my quartet was asked to repesent African-Americans at a United Nations Day. I found myself in the strange position of being a spokesman of sorts, for us African Americans. I told the gathered group of many nationalities, that we are all African-American if we trace out roots back far enough. I'm African-Danish-American, myself. That whole idea didn't go over too well. Of course, I have nothing "African" in me. I wrote a letter to one of my sons when he moved away and was struggling to be one his own. I told him not to let anyone else define who he is, and not to define himself in a way that limits him from becoming who he is to become.

My gospel quartet has sung (upon request) at a Jewish Memorial service. So, where are the boundaries? Who sets 'em? Who cares?

I ain't afraid a no boundaries.

Jerry

And no, Elton John is not a "bluesman." But I bet he's had the blues..

Subject: RE: Can white folks sing the blues?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 10 Jan 02 - 02:00 PM

Ask Charlie Pride if black people can sing Country.

Black or White, Blues is a feeling, and a structure for expressing that feeling. In the best Blues, the soul is used to produce the sound. And I think everybody's Soul is the same color.

Subject: RE: Can white folks sing the blues?
From: Skipper Jack
Date: 10 Jan 02 - 03:34 PM

Can white folk sing the blues?

Well, way back in the late 60's I was MC at the Adelphi Folk Club in Swansea and Alec Campbell was the guest.

The bar was downstairs and the guy in front of me was buying two or three shorts of what - I didn't take much notice. He was wearing a long overcoat and there was grease around the collar and he had what we term now as a designer beard although then it was the fact that he hadn't bothered to shave for a week or two!

Anyway, he asked if he could give a song and I said that if we had enough time I would call him up. He said his name was Tom. Just before Alec Campbell came on to do his first set I called Tom up and he put his drink on the mantlepiece and launched into an accompanied blues number. It was absolutely spell binding!! When he had finished there was a stunned silence for a moment before the audience showed their approval with terrific applause, during which time Tom picked up his drink and walked out of the room. I haven't seen him from that day to this.

Alec Campbell said there's was no way he could follow that and requested that it would be fitting to have an interval so that he and everyone else could recover from the obvious emotion that Tom had engendered with his song.

Tom was white!