Blues Videos and Blues History

Subject: Folklore: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: GUEST,MooseMoore
Date: 19 Nov 10 - 07:57 PM

There is so much history and healing in the Blues.
It really is a beautiful thing.

At the end of the day we can always choose to see things on the surface.
Music can just be music. But as an artist I know through experience the many layers in music beyond the surface.

We are all here and all fans of the Blues. I fell in love with them
by the time I was eleven. Even then, it wasn't just a genre of music.

I needed to play the Blues as I do today. I needed that space where I could just let me out.
I needed to let me out.

How do our lives get to the point when we need to create and dedicate a time and
space for letting ourselves out? To being free with the emotions that run down to our core.

I'm a real human being. I don't play one on television or in life. People got to be who they are.
That is why we are here. I'm the only one who can be me and your the only one who can be you.
Celebrate that!

Thank God for the Blues.

I created the website http://classicbluesvideos.com/ as a tribute and resource for the Blues and
what they are all about.

This is our way of saying hello :)

The article below was written by a close friend and brother of mine.
I asked him to capture what the Blues are, what is their true origin and
what is function of the Blues as it relates to spirit or the spiritual function of the Blues.
Because we know it's not just music.

Moose
http://classicbluesvideos.com/

Fragments of a Fugitive Faith
(A Cubist Portrait of the Blues in Our Time)

A.
Exhuming
a
Corpse

UNDOUBTEDLY,
…you have already delicately paced the halls of the museums (with their cubical shrines of light and glass), patiently weighing the meticulously constructed exhibits...
…you have carefully perused the pages of the histories & the chronicles, breathlessly reading between the lines, straining to hear the life scintillating behind the notes
…you have stalked the edges of the photographs, grasping behind their mute face, all the while unconsciously half conjuring a spark of life to leap from the frozen moment enigmatically captured.
All of this, as you piously entered the sepia-tinged room - on the cold etherized table - the exhumed corpse, cold and lifeless where it rests.
This is the flesh that once lived, fading away into the soil with time - leaving behind in its traceless passing the hissing and the crackled recordings - where that foreign and alien voice sings, returning to the present like a ghost wrapped in fog or mist.
Here where the primordial life of this primeval music once animated and played.
This dead music more alive than the life presently so loud and furious around you…you who are captured â€" and enchanted - by its audible archaeology.

B.
A
Haunting

BUT,
In those dreams that lead you here, in those irrational imaginings and daydreams, that was a real place that you went, a world closer to that music.
There, as in the heart, the myth outweighs the facts in the scales of meaning.
The image lays waste to the “objectiveâ€쳌 hearsay…
The sinking feeling in your chest at that first primal moan, the flutter in your flesh at the tense, sharp pluck of the choked strings. The cry and the wail…
This was always worth more than the most erudite gossip of the countless pale souled men, sulking in their safe, closed rooms, so far from the pregnant openness of the Delta.
For example, one hears their desperation and their greyness so often: ‘Robert Johnson was either poisoned by a jealous husband or knifed to death by a spurned woman.’
But this is just the vapid talk of the all too common blasphemers of the dead, vainly grasping, fighting over the material remains, unaware of what we all owe these living phantoms, that their voiceless eyes still witness and judge us.
The myth says it far more truthfully, no matter how it may seem to do violence to the world of facts:
He went to the crossroads to learn the secret, and at the end the crossroads came calling to recollect him to its source…
[…….]
and so he was pulled under by the stalking hellhound.

C.
The Blues:
A
Fugitive Faith

THIS MUSIC:
The unspoken and real fugitive faith of this stolen continent, rumbling ominously below the skin grafts, below the artificially transplanted churches and temples, like a thumping bass tone.
This faith that grows wild like weed naturally from the soil, that needs no elaborate gardener or cordoned boundary to be safe from the savage truth that this land everywhere throws up like spit or breath.
This music that resonates in the desolate and the empty places, in the vacuum left by the dispossessed, the exiled, the erased, and in our hearts, us the entranced remnant, iron-ringed by denial.
This music that sings for all that is human…
All that has been taken by theft, by cunning, and by violence.
This music for those cursed by the colonizing cadence,
Whispered by our slave drivers to the rhythmic clinking of chains,
To syncopated fate metred out of the end of a gun,
Muzzled against the shaking and the trembling of our pleading flesh.
This music for whom this curse is a silent blessing (for we are not the one’s doing the killing).
So that there will come that time â€"
At the end of this time, this time of troubles â€"
When we can return, humble and cleansed,
Before the furtive, yet attentive sky
And the deep, long enduring earth â€"
And return without the incessant white noise of selfish calculation in the saturating backdrop or the whooshing reddened voice of lust thundering in our ears.

THIS FUGITIVE FAITH:
Uncleansed by barren godliness, yet more pristine, pure, and deep with bone and blood divinity than countless abstracted catechisms.
This Blues, the unspoken religion of America, the one that has no identifiable insignia, no Church, no dogma, all the more magnetic in its fascination because it has remained reticent and dumb, like a young embryo under the cover of the womb.
This Blues, the music that heals and pierces. For your burdened mind and wizened skin, your breath and your muffled weight, your sterile heart, when you can no longer feel the soil, smell its dark fecund scent, or hear the awed, dismal voice of the thunder.

D.
They “Sang
as
They Went Underâ€쳌:
A
Poetic Etymology

As to the prehistory of this music and it’s birth, though the academicians and the historians may doubt and argue, the poetic traces are clear. In Robert Hayden’s Middle Passage, itself culled from the historical record, he gives us the following:
10 April 1800--
Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says
their moaning is a prayer for death,
our and their own. Some try to starve themselves.
Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter
to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under."
You see?
Some jumped the hellish exilic ships, brewing their pestilent stew of human hopelessness and death, jumped into the raging waves, to be pulled undertow, their singing voices echoing against the towering, dark surf.
When one reads this one is awestruck with recognition: this is the moment when the music is born, prophetic, right at the very beginning of the whole infernal journey, of the half-millenia toil of an accursed race, held hostage by atrocity and hypocrisy.
Oh what an elegantly deceptive mind, steeped in mantras of gentile progress &manifest destiny is this European mind which heedlessly thinks all our thoughts still…Yet how unable to overcome the siren’s refrain of a music wed so indissolubly to the fugitive dream of life and the relief of death, of a new song thrown out to birth as the body heaves itself headlong to watery dissolution. To sing as you go down, to sing as you go under, this is the genius of this music, there from the onset.
Such deadly sincerity, birthing, on that hellish passage, the secret religion of a new age to be swaddled in blood, slavery, and betrayl, so far removed from the glittering face of the ideologies of a comatose ethnocentrism still alive in our diseased present.
As origins tell us everything, etymologies and etiologies holding the hieroglyphic sigils of destiny, this music’s genesis in this moment elegantly writes its own striking caption. The genius of a race, ripped from it’s soul, no longer able to run untamed along the edges of its native expanse, becomes the mighty Samson shorn in captivity, pushing its wronged and forbidden roots deep into this new cramped and alien space. The shiftless buoyancy and shimmying airiness of West African folk music, collapses under great pressure, falls through the floor, grows a minor hue, compresses into an enigmatic sybilline terseness -the previously winged footed soul becomes involuted and compact as sullen stone - till its dense might overthrows all falsity and self-deception. This is the how diamonds are made, the secret alchemy of pressure and strain unfurling towards the absolute and the ultimate.
Like that penultimate moment in the The Egyptian Book of the Dead, the beginning of the soul’s return, when the shade first opens its mouth to sing the mantras of its return home, this music was the awakening of the African corpse in the American underworld. Black Art would thus know itself from this moment, and would lead all other artforms in the New World like an elite phalanx rushing the lines of the enemy in the spiritual war of liberation, possessed as it was of the true recognition of the secret hidden face of this supposed utopia. It would strive to articulate the essence of human nobility and dignity against the dehumanizing abstraction of narcissistic death and solipsism.
It is in this light that we should read the oft repeated tale of the Bluesman’s demonic initiation at the crossroads…This is just a natural reawakening to the truth of the situation of bondage. All the drama and the inverted deus ex machina, is on some level code for being forced to violently reject the white Jesus, whose meek blue-eyed love was, from the very beginning, stained with the subtext of empire and psychological terrorism. Consequently, this Devil is no simple Satan, and the soul given up to retail, not a clear and open entity. All this cannot be properly understood if the whole episode is painted with the whitewash of pale Christian allegory.
What then is this Crossroads?
It is the willingness to wager, with the very primal source of Cosmic Chaos, the riddle of that evil fatally inborn into mortal life, to cast away the comfort of the small self for the sake of an awful freedom.

E.
Play
These
Keys
(Watch for the Pun)

A Call and Response with Tradition:
I’m a Gambling Man…to be sure, the House always wins, you throw the dice against the pale faced foes, spinning their distorted tale around you
I Got My Mojo Workin…Better have it rollin’ when you descend step by cursed step into the void, staring for long immensities into the heart of the cold withering abyss
Born Under a Bad Sign…When you and all your brethren are born in chains I would say decidedly so
I’m So Blue…Yes, and by singing it, we join together in an exorcism that is the necessary precursor to resurrection

Know this or falsify it:
In this music authenticity and resonance have trumped technique and bludgeoned artificial ideals of classicism or decorum.
Virtuosity cannot protect you
The love of the masses is nothing but a hall of mirrors
Once one stands at the crossroads, nothing can evade the type of self-confrontation that breeds the suicidal impulse like pestilence
You are the tightrope along which the past runs headlong into a more human future, or you are chain that suffocates the human wing.
Live or die, it does not matter, but without the sharpened sword blade of sincerity your song will wilt and wither like the vanity of empire against the gaping hunger of the untrammeled abyss…
You might burn hot for a while, but against the immensity your hollowness will rise and billow like the stench of an infant’s bowels.

E.
P.S.
A
Brief
Lesson
For the
Culture

Like some Aphrodite or Hera who they say must periodically return to bathe in such and such a body of water to remain fresh, virgin, enduring (even immortal), so it seems all music (and the culture that it sings into being) for the people in America must return to the Blues, to the Delta, in order to be baptized, to be reinvigorated, or else…fade into the slick, overproduced, prefabricated kitsch that shits out of our hypermodern souls and bleeds our urban landscape the color of plastic wrapper and consumer landfill.

Written by Solomon Slowburn. A poet, musician, and philosopher; student of mysticism, shamanism, kabbalism, poetry, and myth.
For more information on Solomon and his music visit
http://www.myspace.com/solomonslowburn

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Amos
Date: 26 Nov 12 - 11:58 AM

AN interesting piece on the roots of the blues and Sears, Roebucks' part in making them grow:

http://reason.com/archives/2012/04/19/delta-dawn.

"The tragic image of the blues that originated in the Mississippi Delta ignores the competitive and entrepreneurial spirit of the bluesman himself. While it is certainly true that the music was forged in part by the legacy of slavery and the insults of Jim Crow, the iconic image of the lone bluesman traveling the road with a guitar strapped to his back is also a story about innovators seizing on expanded opportunities brought about by the commercial and technological advances of the early 1900s. There was no Delta blues before there were cheap, readily available steel-string guitars. And those guitars, which transformed American culture, were brought to the boondocks by Sears, Roebuck & Co. ..."

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 26 Nov 12 - 01:08 PM

I find it difficult to believe that no one played blues on nylon strung guitars.
=(:-( ))

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: GUEST,xbx
Date: 26 Nov 12 - 01:35 PM

Krinkle, nylon strings weren't available until 1947.

http://www.guitarstringguide.com/drupal/content/who-invented-nylon-classical-guitar-strings

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 26 Nov 12 - 01:46 PM

Ok. Gut strings. I bet folks were playing blues on gut strings. Anything else they could get their hands on.
=(:-( ))

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Bobert
Date: 26 Nov 12 - 07:05 PM

Most of the old black blues guys played resonators because they could be heard in a juke joint in those days before amplification... Plus, nylon strings and the blues just don't jive...

B~

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 27 Nov 12 - 03:50 AM

Bull bobette. Nylon strings are great for blues. I been playing blues on my new to me La Patrie. It sounds great. Very old timey. People love playing blues on nylon strung ukes. What's the difference? The classical guitar is very expressive and perfect for blues. You're musically narrow minded, bobette.
=(:-( ))

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Nov 12 - 07:08 PM

Nylon guitar strings were first made by Albert Augustine in 1947.

Segovia was staying over with friends in Washington, D. C., prior to setting off on a concert tour of North and South America. He was concerned because, due to the war (WW II), the gut strings he, and all classical guitarists, used had become scarce and hard to come by. And it was not unusual for a string to break in mid-concert and have to be replaced. Also, the quality of gut strings was not all that reliable.

He said that if things didn't improve soon, he may not be able to complete his tour and might just have to hang up his guitar.

A General Lindenman, an avid classical guitarist, asked Segovia to loan him a set of his gut strings. He said that he had an idea, and if it worked, the string worries of classic guitarists might be over once and for all. Reluctantly, Segovia gave him a set from his diminishing store.

Segovia played a number of concerts, then when he returned to Washington a few weeks later, Gen. Lindenman brought him several sets of strings.

"Try these," said the General. "I have some friends in the DuPont family [chemicals and plastics]. I told them what the problem was, and they examined the characteristics of the set of gut strings, along with the specifications and requirements that I gave them, and they had one of their laboratories make these."

Segovia put them on his guitar, tuned them up, and began to play. After several minutes, he looked at General Lindenman and said, "I believe that this is a new day for the classical guitar!"

DuPont said that they did not wish to get into the business of making guitar strings, but they would supply the chemical materials (which they trademarked as "Novalon") to anyone who wished to make the strings. Albert Augustine took them up on it and was the first maker of nylon classical guitar strings. Other string manufacturers such as La Bella immediately got on board, and the rest is history.

The above information is from a mid-1950s issue of "The Guitar Review," a quarterly magazine (each issue a "keeper") issued, I believe, by the Classic Guitar Society of Greater New York. I have a tall stack of these magazines, and each is packed with information—and lots of classical guitar music.

####

Blues can be played using nylon strings, but the sound leaves much to be desired. I can't imagine people like Lightnin' Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, or Mississippi John Hurt using nylon strings as a matter of choice. No way!!

Don Firth

P. S. Although I thoroughly enjoy listening to blues by people who know what they're doing, I don't do blues myself. First, I'm dedicated to the kind of music and accompaniments that are appropriate to the classic guitar, and second, when it comes to blues, I'm lousy at it and I know my limitations.

Not everyone knows theirs.

P. P. S. Way back when I first took up classic guitar, someone kept saying, "You never know how good your guitar can sound with these 'artificial' nylon strings. You should try a set of gut strings. You'll see!"

So I dropped in on Broberg Music and asked Mrs. Broberg for a set of gut strings, which were still available into the mid Fifties. She looked at me as if I needed a brain transplant, then sold me a set. I tried them on my new Martin 00-28-G classic.

God bloody awful!! They were hard to tune, they wouldn't stay in tune, their intonation was inconsistent along the length of the string, and one of the strings snapped within a few hours of putting them on the guitar!

I yanked them off and put a new set of nylon strings on.

It's no wonder the guitar almost died out as a classical instrument if that's the kind of strings people had to put up with!

Yet--there are "early music" musicians, like lutenists, who insist on using gut strings for "authenticity." But once during intermission at a Baltimore Consort concert, I asked lutenist Ronn McFarlane if he used gut or nylon strings on his lute.

"Nylon," he said. "If I used gut strings, I'd have to spend half the concert changing broken strings!"

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: GUEST,Bob Ryszkiewicz
Date: 27 Nov 12 - 08:18 PM

Moose
: Hipping you to Paul Geremia...Respectfully suggest you put EVERY ONE of his vids up on your site...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjBtxVHMrjY

Paul is an old friend, and about as close as you will ever get to the original masters of the blues...bob

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: GUEST,Bob Ryszkiewicz
Date: 27 Nov 12 - 08:28 PM

Paul Geremia...Shuckin' Sugar Blues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4PU6Tu1DO0&feature=related

That should be enough to give you a small overview of Paul...bob

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 27 Nov 12 - 10:48 PM

I think John Hurt could have done very well with nylon.
=(:-( ))

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Nov 12 - 11:13 PM

But he used steel strings. I've seen him in person, at the 1964 Berkeley Folk Festival.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 28 Nov 12 - 12:09 AM

Sure. Steel strings when you saw him in 64. What about in 1920?
People play whatever's available. I think the blues was developed on gut strung banjos.
I think Leadbelly probably played on gut strings when it's what he had at the moment.
Everyone doesn't have the luxury to play on the instrument and strings of choice.
I started on a cheap Mexican classical strung with electric guitar strings.
=(:-( ))

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 28 Nov 12 - 01:23 AM

Plenty of people play blues and jazz on nylon strings apparently.
nylon blues

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Nov 12 - 02:18 AM

The kind of guitars that most people in the U. S. played back in the late part of the 19th and early 20th century were steel-string guitars. Most of them, especially in the Southern Appalachians and the South in general were $3.98 "Silvertone" guitars purchased from the Sears & Roebuck catalog. One of the things that steel strings had over gut was they were durable. They weren't breaking all the time, and they were of more consistent quality. Gut strings were made from sheep's intestines. They were often inconsistent in guage and they fret-cut easily. They broke frequently.

Even some of the classic-type guitars from Mexico that made it into the Southwestern U. S. were strung with steel strings. Again, steel strings were durable. Gut strings just didn't last very long.

Segovia and other classical guitarists changed strings before every concert and hoped that he could get through it without one or more breaking. But the advent of nylon strings in 1947 changed all that.

People such as the early blues singers could not afford to be buying strings constantly.

Serious note, Henry:   don't try to argue with me about the history of the the guitar. This is something I'm rather an authority on.

Don Firth

P. S. By the way, Lead Belly played a 12-string, all steel, that he got used for $15.00. A Stella. You can buy a Stella 12-string nowadays just like the one Lead Belly played, but it will set you back $3,000.

Also--early banjos, which were often home-made, were strung with usually steel wire. Same problem. Durability.

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Nov 12 - 02:17 PM

Further:

The clip of Karlie May randomly playing "blues chords" on a classic (nylon-string) guitar is not much different from long-time jazz guitarist Charlie Bird (CLICKY), who used a classic guitar to good effect for jazz.

Sure, blues can be played on a classical guitar. No reason why not. But that's not the kind of guitar the early blues men played.

Don't try to revise history just to make yourself feel good.

By the way, there were gut-string banjos, but as I said above, the first banjos in the U. S. and A. were undoubtedly homemade, in an attempt to duplicate a West African instrument, the mbanza. They were fretless. And nobody knows for sure what kind of strings they had. It's hard to imagine a Negro slave, or an ex-slave, having access to a source of gut strings, and they certainly didn't have the means to convert sheep-gut to any kind of usable string. So they undoubtedly used whatever was handy. Possibly some sort of animal sinew, or more probably, wire of some kind. Various kinds of wire have been made for various purposes since ancient Egypt, Second Dynasty.

The 4-string plectrum banjo and tenor banjo (steel-strings) were used in early jazz bands and dance orchestras. And there was a move (on the part of some white musicians) to promote the banjo to a classical instrument—fretless, gut-strings—but it came to naught, largely because, unlike the guitar, nobody had written any "serious" music for the instrument.

Years ago I knew an old fellow named Percy White, who was determined to elevate the 5-string banjo to classical instrument status. He looked down his nose at folk banjoists, referred to frailing or clawhammer styles as "nigger-picking," and was generally considered by most people to be simply eccentric if not downright loony.

You ain't never heard The William Tell Overture until you've heard somebody play it on a fretless, gut-strung 5-string banjo!

It took me several days to recover!!

Don Firth

P. S. Congratulations, Henry, on your acquisition of a La Patrie classical guitar. I've never actually seen one, but I've heard very good things about them. Since, at present, I need a small-bodied guitar for when I play in my wheelchair, I seriously considered a La Patrie Motif, a parlor guitar-size classic. Lower bout still a bit too wide, so I'll continue using my nylon-string "Go-guitar" travel guitar, which does the job nicely.

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 28 Nov 12 - 08:40 PM

La Patrie guitars are solidly built. A very thin finish. Good guitars that don't cost thousands. I got an Etude model. In a trade.
Jerry Reed and Chet Atkins used classical guitars.
I bet Merle Travis would have been happy playing one.
=(:-( ))

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 29 Nov 12 - 08:14 AM

So what were ukeleles strung with before nylon came along?
=(:-( ))

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Bobert
Date: 29 Nov 12 - 08:43 AM

BTW, ya'll...

There are some old videos of Son House and Bukka White out there... I own the VCR tape but no longer have a VCR player...

Very good stuff...

As for nylon strings??? If anyone wants to play blues with 'um then knock yerselves out...

Back when I was a regular at the Saturday afternoon blues jams at Archie Edwards Barber Shop (Google it up) hundreds of blues players stopped in at least once (John Hurt played there many times) and folks would bring is every conceivable instrument that can be imagined and I can honestly say that the one instrument that I never saw being carried thru the door was a nylon stringed geetar but, hey...

...like I said, whatever floats yer boat...

B~

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 29 Nov 12 - 08:57 AM

Maybe a new avenue of self expression.......
=(:-( ))

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Bobert
Date: 29 Nov 12 - 09:55 AM

Hey, why not???

Heck, I play a Lowebow (cigar box, two 1 1/4" dowel rods for a neck and 4 strings with 'lecrified pickups and play a 5 string 'lectric geetar made from a slab of wood so like they say, "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones"...

BTW, for anyone interested, John Hurt's daughter attended Howard University in Washington, D.C. and she stayed with Archie Edward and his wife... John Hurt later spent a lot of time in the D.C. area and toured with Archie in Europe...

B~

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Nov 12 - 12:59 PM

Has everyone seen Tony Palmer's blues episode from BBC's ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE? Killer footage. Doug Saum

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Don Firth
Date: 29 Nov 12 - 01:47 PM

The ukulele is a Polynesian version of the Portuguese Cavaquinho, brought to the Hawaiian Islands by Portuguese explorers. The Cavaquinho was strung with either wire or gut strings. What the native Hawaiians strung them with, I'm not sure. Probably gut of some kind.

Incidentally, the lute in its various incarnations and permutations was strung with gut. Considering that lutes were double-strung in what were called "courses" and generally had at least six courses (11 strings, the top string, called the "chanterelle," was single) and sometimes as many as eighteen (or more)—and were tuned with one-to-one ratio push-pegs—must have been real fun to keep in playing condition.

Desmond Dupré, the lutenist in the Alfred Deller Consort, quoted a passage from an old instruction book for the lute, which said, "If the the lutenist lives to the ripe old age of ninety years, he will have spent sixty of those years tuning his instrument!"

CLICKY.

Don Firth

P. S. I tend to think that the lute is probably not all that suitable for blues.

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Bobert
Date: 29 Nov 12 - 06:00 PM

A few years back the IBC (International Blues Challenge) solo winner showed up with just a violin and won it all???

Go figure???

B~

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 30 Nov 12 - 03:27 AM

Nice sound on nylon
nylon guitar

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 30 Nov 12 - 07:55 AM

how did you get from all that stuff by the OP to the point where we're talking about nylon strings?

Please forgive for I am a bear of very little brain.

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 30 Nov 12 - 08:07 AM

Oh, we're just prattling on.
Do you ever play on a classical guitar?
=(:-( ))

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: GUEST,Mavis Enderby
Date: 30 Nov 12 - 08:25 AM

The Arabic lute (Oud) can be an excellent instrument for blues:

One of my favorites: Bamako Blues

I think being fretless as well as very deep and moody sounding it's an instrument that is very well suited to the blues. David Lindley makes great use of his!

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 30 Nov 12 - 01:49 PM

Very good. I liked that. Alot.
=(:-( D)

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Nov 12 - 04:22 PM

On the Jorge Nolla clip, he's plugged in and running the sound through an amp. At first, judging from the sound, I would have sworn that he has a couple or steel strings on the top, mixed with nylon basses below. But then I figure he probably gets that steel-string sound by pre-twiddling the knobs.

Definitely a more piercing tone than one can get from bare, undiddled-with nylon trebles, even if one is playing with a lot of nail and very close to the bridge.

That bit on the oud sounds pretty good.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 30 Nov 12 - 05:10 PM

Yes, but with nylon string guitars becoming more sophisticated,we can look forward to more than just the stereotypical musics you've come to expect.
=(:-( ))

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Nov 12 - 06:45 PM

True. There's no reason that one can't or shouldn't do blues with a nylon-string guitar. It isn't "traditional," but then I don't think that would bother anyone but the "ethnic purists."

Early on, I stopped worrying about the more stiff-lipped ethnic-purist types because it would be a losing battle right from the start. I was born and raised in big cities, and my father was a professional man (physician), so right off the bat, I was not a member of the "folk," as defined by Johann Gottfried von Herder, the first man to use the term "folk song" (volkslieder), referring to the songs of "the rural, peasant class."

Also, I didn't learn the songs I sing from my aged grandmother, I learned them from other singers such as myself, from records, and from song books. Also, as a teenager I had developed an interest in opera, and took some singing lessons. It was a few years later that I became interested in singing folk songs and ballads. By then, it was too late. I already sounded like a trained singer, not as if I had just fallen off the turnip truck on the way into town.

I adopted the view of Richard Dyer-Bennet, a trained singer and classical guitarist, who maintained that he was not a "folk singer" (for the same reasons I was not a "folk singer"), he was a "modern day minstrel." Minstrels and troubadours were professional singers and musicians who made their living by singing for the nobility in castles and manor houses or for anybody in village squares and taverns. These days, it's concert halls, clubs, coffee houses, and perhaps nearest to what the minstrels of eld did, it's singing in peoples' living rooms (house concerts) and busking.

I didn't try to imitate Dyer-Bennet (among other things, he was a light, lyric tenor and I'm a bass-baritone), but I felt his approach to the material is valid.

Also, I don't "classic up" the songs, I sing them straight.

It works for me and I've made a living at it, and I've introduced a lot of people to folk songs and ballads, and that's what counts. If playing blues on a classic guitar works for you, then, what the heck! Have at it!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 01 Dec 12 - 01:41 AM

Have you ever tried a Godin Mulitiac Don?
I haven't. They seem very versatile.
=(:-( ))

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Don Firth
Date: 01 Dec 12 - 05:38 PM

The only guitars along the Godin, La Patrie line that I've actually seen live was a Seagull (steel-string) packed around by a young woman who was busking her way around Canada and the U. S. a few years ago and who stayed a few days with Bob (Deckman) and Judy Nelson before moving on.

Good singer. Nice guitar.

As far as I can see, the Godin Mulitiac relies a lot on electronics, and that's an area where I will not go.

Years ago, I was meeting a friend one afternoon at a local bar that offered music in the evenings. The bartender, whom I knew, told me that my friend phoned and asked him to tell me that he would be a bit late. The bartender, who knew I was a singer-guitarist, asked me if I'd like to favor them with a few songs while I waited. I didn't have my guitar with me, and he said that the guitarist in the band had left his guitar on the band stand and he was sure that the guitar's owner wouldn't mind (?). He flipped the switch on the amp and said, "Have at it!"

The guitar was an archtop f-hole model, covered with more knobs and switches than warts on a toad.

I accompanied myself on a few songs and then played some classical stuff. I'd never played an electric before, and it was a lot of fun having ALL THAT POWER right there at the twist of a knob! I started thinking dangerous thoughts. . . .

. . . followed by the realization of how much $$ money $$ would be involved in electronic equipment:   guitars, amplifiers, speakers, and such, not to mention the logistics of lugging all that crap around—along with the fact that, for the kind of music I did, an acoustic guitar and/or a lute would be far more appropriate.

I quickly set the guitar aside and muttered something like, "Get thee behind me, Satan!!"

About that time, my friend walked in.

####

Right now, I have three full-size guitars, one classic and one flamenco, both made in Spain, and another classic made in Japan (which is actually a better guitar than the Spanish classic that I have), plus two Go travel guitars made by Sam Radding of San Diego, one nylon-string, one steel-string.

What I would like is a small guitar-like instrument (not a uke) that I could play comfortably while sitting in a wheelchair. A Renaissance guitar would be just about the right size, and it has the additional panache of being the kind of instrument a wandering minstrel actually might have used.

But two problems with the instrument:   essentially only four strings. Or "courses:"   first string single, second, third, and fourth, doubled like most plucked stringed instruments of that era. Kind of limited compared to a modern six-string guitar. But—the fellow in the video clip seems to get a whole lot of music out of it.

The second problem is that the only places you can get them are from luthiers who make period instruments, which means they are very expensive!!

So I'll stick with my nylon-string Go for the time being, but I'm keeping my eyes open for possibilites.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Bobert
Date: 01 Dec 12 - 06:33 PM

Well, like a lot of blues players, I play a lot of slide geetar and you ain't gonna slide no nylon strings...

That much cannot be argued...

B~

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Dec 12 - 05:11 AM

Regarding Bukka White, many of those videos are available on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bukka+white&oq=Bukka+&gs_l=youtube.1.0.0l10.363.799.0.3719.3.3.0.0.0.0.388.948.2-1j2.3.0...0.0...1ac.1.dUX8zOCi5kc

Stefan Grossman has a compilation of bottleneck and I believe its now on DVD

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: GUEST,Mavis Enderby
Date: 02 Dec 12 - 07:50 AM

Until very recently I'd have agreed with you Bobert but I had a go on a friends cheapo classical that he's set up for lap slide with (I think) high tension nylon strings and it sounded pretty good...

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Bobert
Date: 02 Dec 12 - 08:18 AM

Well, gol danged!!!

Looks like I stand corrected... I might try seein' if I can slide on my wife's classical just to see what it sounds like...

Thanks, Mavis...

B:~)

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: GUEST,Matt
Date: 02 Dec 12 - 10:33 PM

I also play slide on a classical, with a bowed neck(high action), Tuned down to an open C chord. CGCEGC Low-to-high. Sounds nice to me.

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 03 Dec 12 - 12:52 PM

I was thinking slide might not do well. But now I'm going to try it.
Get my transducer out. Plug in........
=(:-( ))

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 03 Dec 12 - 03:39 PM

Nylon gives more options
this guys ok

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 05 Dec 12 - 07:08 AM

This guy has it down, I think. Good to see others see the great possibilities.
Mississippi Blues

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Dec 12 - 04:25 PM

That ain't no "Mississippi Blues", Krinkx... That's pure "Piedmont Blues", son...

B~

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Dec 12 - 06:12 PM

I gotta give you that one, Klinkle. Although I'll defer to the more knowledgeable Bobert as to which flavor of blues the fellow on the clip is playing, it sounds darned good on a nylon-string guitar.

A couple of things about the guitar being used in the clip:   judging from the light color of the wood used for the sides of the guitar, my guess is that it is Spanish cypress rather than the traditional rosewood or mahogany—which means that this is a flamenco guitar (although it's only within recent years that anybody is making cutaway flamenco guitars).

A flamenco guitar (I have one, made by Arcangel Fernandez in 1961—vintage, and a collector's item!), and flamencos have considerably more "bite" to their tone than a standard classical guitar, which has a somewhat more mellow, warmer tone.

Nylon (or gut) strings, as opposed to steel, is definitely not traditional for blues. But then, there are compositions such as solo pieces and song accompaniments written by John Dowland for the lute, and Bach's works such as the Chaconne for the cello that, these days are frequently played on classical (nylon-string) guitars, and although hard-nosed "purists" may gnash their teeth, I say, "Wotthehell! Have at it!!"

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 05 Dec 12 - 06:46 PM

It's a Willie Brown tune. It's a well known tune. And it's Mississippi.
Tommy Johnson type stuff.
Mississippi Blues

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 05 Dec 12 - 06:51 PM

Here it is:
Mississippi Blues

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Dec 12 - 07:10 PM

Yo, Krinkx... Please provide us with your blues credentials...

Me??? I've played Piedmont blues at the Archie Edwards Barbershop where I was a regular for about 7 years and where my latest CD was recorded...

I have also been on pilgrimages to Mississippi three times for extended stays where I played with Mississippi blues players including the Burnsides, the Kimbros, Jessie Mae Hemphill, etc...

There is a world of difference in style...

It doesn't matter what song you are doing... Yes, it can be a n old Mississippi written song but done 100% in the Piedmont style... BTW, Mississippi John Hurt was a Piedmont style player...

For the difference Google up and listen to R.L. Burnside and then John Jackson...

End of blues lesson (for now)...

B~

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 05 Dec 12 - 08:15 PM

Yea, I know. I don't have much credentials.
Worked at a community radio station in Atlanta spinning blues and western swing.
Other than that just a living room player. I had to make a living.
But here's more info:
Willie Brown

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 05 Dec 12 - 08:24 PM

I saw R.L. Burnside in a little club here. About '92.
Pretty good.
I know John Hurt was Piedmont.
I know the difference.
=(:-( ))

Subject: RE: Blues Videos and Blues History
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Dec 12 - 08:54 PM

Cool, Krinkx...

Didja know that Willie Brown played with Son House???

Very interesting story... Willie Brown died in 1948 (I think) and when he died Son put his geetar down and moved to New York where he worked as a porter on the New York Central Line... It wasn't until '62 or '63 when a few white folkies tracked Son down where he was livin' in New York... The plied him with alcohol, promises of fame, women, etc. to lure him back to playin' the blues... That's pretty much the way it went down.... You can Google it up for the details...

Son's "comin' out" was at the '64 (might have been '63) Newport Fold Festival... I read somewhere that he was real nervous... I mean, yeah... He had never played to more than a hunnert folks in a juke joint...

B~