Real good question, Rustic: I was the one who started that thread... Two Top Tens. This would be a great companion thread. It makes me stop and think if there are any common qualities in the music that really moved me as a teenager that still move me now at 67. Those qualities are probably what determines what still sounds exciting to me from my teenage years, and what has lost it's ability to move me.

What do Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, rhythm and blues soul, boogie woogie, rock and roll, blues and black gospel have in common. That's an easy one, and I still love all of it. It's two things for me... rhythm and emotion. Why will I throw a Ray Charles CD in my machine, but not a Beatles CD, even though I have most of their stuff and still love it. It's the rhythm and the emotion. The Beatles had both, but somehow, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry or Buddy Holly still move me more. I don't think it's nostalgia alone, because in honesty my teenage years were pretty depressing. I'd just as soon not have some of those memories revived. Why did Nirvana hit me, when their songs were almost unintelligible, the lyrics were often stupid and I really couldn't identify with a lot of the topics that were important to Curt Cobain. The rhythm and the emotion. The first folk song that really blew me away was Rock Island line. If Lonnie Donegan had anything, it was rhythm and emotion. And of course, much of the rhythm and emotion in rhtyhm and blues and soul came out of black Gospel. No surprise that it does something to me, too.

And then there's the emotion of the slow dance... In The Still Of The Night, or most waltzes do something to me. That's probably why I loved a lot of the popular music of the 40's, and all the rhythm and Blues stuff. Play me Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by the Platters, and it chokes me up (not the smoke) every time. Or Twilight Time.

Factoring folk music and jazz into this equation becomes more difficult. I listened to and loved a lot of jazz and the folk that I heard, in my teenage years and my twenties. I liked the story telling in folk music, which parallels my love of reading. And I always liked energy. Don't tell anyone, but I start to doze when someone does a long ballad, unless they become so immersed in the song that I can become part of their experience. There's a whole range of folk music that I find too respectful, and just not fun.
Kinda musty and emotionless. Scholarly or revererential don't turn me on. In jazz, I liked the warmth of a saxophone, or the boldness of a trumpet, and the walking bass. I could never get in to atonal jazz, or jazz that didn't have some emotion in it.

As I type this, I can see the connection between all of those kinds of music... throw in a ton of folk music that I do like (mostly traditional) and blues, and you pretty much have my music collection.

It's no jump for Bobert from Buddy Holly to Buddy Guy. We like a lot of the same stuff, because I suspect that he responds to rhythm, energy and emotion. Being the mountain man that he is. Corn liker and all that.

So, what about you Rebel? What has held your music together, even though it has changed? What do you hear in jazz now, that you hear in blues?

I'd sure like to hear what you have to say..

Jerry