Marion wrote:

"I've been listening recently to Rev. Gary Davis, who I thought was a bluesman, but some of his stuff (Hesitation Blues, Right Now, I Didn't Want to Join the Band) sound more ragtimey/Travis-picky than bluesy to me.

Do you (gentle readers who know the songs I mean and are into blues) consider these to be blues songs? Are ragtime and blues more closely linked than I thought - or did Rev. Davis just happen to go back and forth between them?"




Yeah, it's "East Coast BLues" or "Ragtime Blues". I consider it Blues because that's what it is. Infact, I would group acoustic Blues into 3 types that most are familiar with in this fashion....



Delta = riffs like the type you get in Rock music (Led Zeppelin, Cream, Black Sabbath, Hendrix etc..). "Dark" or "Sad" sounding

Mississippi Hill Country = hypnotic/trance like/chugging

East Coast = fingerpicking with a "happy" sound

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Marion write:

"Another song I'm wondering about is Merle Travis' "Re-enlistment Blues". I'm not surprised that it sounds Travis-picky, but again it sounds more country than blues to me (although it does have a 12-bar progression, if not other blues conventions). Do you think it's called a blues because of the subject matter rather than the musical elements?"

That could just me the name of the song more than it relating to any specific genre of music (Blues in this case) although (someone can correct me if Im wrong), the Merle Travis/ModernCountry finger pickers seem to have picked up the fingerpicking styles from Blues players with the "East Coast" sound.