Help: Types of Blues

Subject: Types of Blues
From: GUEST,bboy
Date: 01 Feb 01 - 07:22 PM

Hi, I'm ignorant in the ways of blues, but I know what I like. My problem is, I don't know how to find it. The kind of blues I like are songs like:

I can't quit you Texas flood Since I've been loving you (Zeppelin) Traveling Riverside Blues (")

Sort of the slow, rolling, kind of blues. Can anyone categorize this type of blues, so I can find more like it? At the very least, could someone suggest artists that have the same feel as the songs I've described?

Thanks!!

Bryan

Subject: RE: Help: Types of Blues
From: ddw
Date: 01 Feb 01 - 11:05 PM

Bboy — You're not really giving us enough to categorize anything. I suspect you're into urban blues and/or blues rock (you mention Zepplin, presumably as in Led Zep).

Generally urban blues is associated with Chicago originally, then spread to other places. Chicago just happened to be where a lot of the Mississippi delta players went in the '40s and '50s to record and it became the center of things.

Being "slow, rolling" doesn't really help pin things down. All blues forms had some of that, but they also have up-tempo and driving and wailing songs as well.

If you're interested in something other than blues rock, let me suggest (staying in the urban blues area) Sonny Boy Williamson II, Willie Dixon, James Cotton, Muddy Waters, B.B. King and Bobby "Blue" Bland. Almost any music store either has them or can get them for you pretty quickly (I'm assuming you don't live in the Australian Outback or the Gobi Desert).

If you get into those guys pretty well, then you might be ready to graduate into the older guys — those old country black men who learned to be a whole band with just their voices and one old beat-up guitar. That, in my opinion, is where you really start to learn about how wonderful the blues are.

BTW, welcome to Mudcat.

cheers

david

Subject: RE: Help: Types of Blues
From: Homeless
Date: 02 Feb 01 - 08:50 AM

bboy - I asked a similar question a while back and this is the thread, in which I got quite a few suggestions.

Subject: RE: Help: Types of Blues
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Feb 01 - 12:13 PM

A new young cat, Dave Johnson, continues on in the Stratocaster tradition, but somewhat more conservatively than Stevie Ray. He plays more precisely - hard to describe, but the eight and sixteenth notes are more evenly spaced, if that helps - yet still retains a lot of intensity. Got to love a guy who wipes down the neck of his axe with WD-40 to increase speed, and uses a quarter for a plectrum. Little Dave and Big Love: sounds like roadhouse blues from a roadhouse band. Not too many slow songs, though (just one on the aforementioned disk actually gets down and dirty).

Subject: RE: Help: Types of Blues
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 02 Feb 01 - 02:22 PM

You might want to listen to House of Blues Vol 2, a collection of songs by artists in the Chicago Electric Blues Tradition. Its a great sampler featuring one tune by each of the selection of greats who grew up in the Chicago scene or migrated there from the Mississippi Delta. Its got stuff like Evil Goin On by Howlin Wolf, Mannish Boy by Muddy Waters, Goin' Down by Freddie King, and Juke by James Cotton.