The Blues???

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 07:57 AM

To be brief and to the point, from the clip you posted Kelly Joe Phelps if he plays and sings blues is a copyist.

Eric Bibb is a young copyist, he is the son of Leon Bibb who came out of the "Folk Scare" of the 1960's which differs somewhat to the background from which the music developed

Nothing wrong with either of these guys but they are far removed from the intense emotional style of singing that comes out in most of the blues.

Doc Boggs a bluesman? No way. He was an excellent singer and banjo player from the Appalachians around Norton, Virginia who's singing and playing was influenced by hearing the music of the black workers
that he encountered in the mountains.

Re Will Fly's posting I agree entirely that the music of the songsters John Hurt, Etta Baker (not Blake Will, slip of the finger)and Elizabeth Cotten says "Play Me". I play some of their material quite happily and do so even in public at times. Unfortunately I still can't get "Wilson Rag" as smoothly as I would like.

Hoot

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Will Fly
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 07:17 AM

Lots of good points there, cooperman. I myself never sing what I call "deep" blues (Delta, etc.) because I don't feel that I can bring any of the feeling and depth to it that it needs - I'm white, English, etc. However, as I said further up the thread, the blues as a musical form is very welcoming and hospitable, and I love playing it. I also feel more comfortable with what you might call the "vaudeville/jazz" edges of the blues spectrum - jug band music, Jelly Roll Morton stuff like "Winin' Boy" and "Buddy Bolden's Blues" - and also some of the lighter, Piedmont-style music from, say, John Hurt or Etta Blake, Libba Cotten, etc. This stuff says to me: "Play me!"

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 07:10 AM

Me too Steve. I saw a quote from (I think) John Lee Hooker who when asked how to play like him replied "you ain't me - you you" which I've always taken to mean put your own slant on it. I've been through the guitar tab "note for note" approach as I'm sure many others have and I've never been happier playing until I threw it away and just started to do my own thing.

I agree we're all copyists to some degree. That goes for so many folk genres though - for example how many non-Irish love Irish trad, how many shanty singers have sailed etc etc etc. Personally I don't have a problem with it at all.

Hoot - just to add to Rob's query above, do you regard Doc Boggs as a real bluesman?

Country Blues

Pete

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: cooperman
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 06:51 AM

Yes Pete - music has been a great help in bringing together people of different race.
When I sing a blues song I am not trying to sound like anyone but myself. It's different but that doesn't mean it's not valid as a form of blues. Blues has evolved into many different styles and sounds now.
I'm never going to sound like those early black guys. If we are saying that true blues can only come from that same culture and have that same sound we are consigning it to history.
I like to think that blues music in all it's forms has a great future.
Anyone who plays / sings a blues song is copying to some degree. It's the feeling you put into it that counts.
BB King plays electric guitar and that must have been pretty revolutionary at one time. What feeling he puts into it though. Still one of the very best IMHO.

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 05:43 AM

Hoot: I'm just starting to get to grips with this vast subject.

I'll be working my way through the old blues players that Bobert's been listing, but I'm also interested in more contemporary players. Some of these were mentioned in my latest "Guitar Techniques" mag, with coincidentally has as its major theme this month "acoustic blues guitar".

So your comment about what makes a "real" bluesman is interesting. I'd be interested to know if you consider someone like Kelly Joe Phelps to be a "real" bluesman:

Kelly Joe Phelps

He wasn't brought up in "the culture" and moved over to blues from jazz guitar, so by the criteria you outline, he's a "copyist". Am I reading you properly?

And if that's too straightforward, what about Eric Bibb? A native New Yorker, he's not been "brought up in the culture" of the south or the delta. Does he qualify as a "copyist":

Eric Bibb

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 05:11 AM

Leeneia,

If you believe that that the European Dixieland band that you recently posted are bluesmen then I have to say you are way off beam with the subject under discussion. Playing a blues tune or singing a blues song doesn't make you a bluesman/woman.
I can play blues and sometimes sing one or two (in private) but the blues developed in an entirely different cultural world to that in which I live. Anyone brought up outside that culture that believes he can perform convincingly in this idiom is kidding him/herself. OK there are some good copyists but that's what they remain copyists.
They can be excellent entertainers but it ain't the real thing.
I suggest that you take a look at the you tube clips of people like Sleepy John Estes, Son House, Muddy Waters etc and see if you can spot the difference between what they are doing and what that European Dixieland band are doing.

Regarding the early bluesmen being professional so must therefore have been able to read music posted somewhere above. Have you never heard of the aural tradition or "Ear Musicians" as Woody Guthrie described them. That is the method by which most "folk" performers in any idiom use. If you want to compare a couple of blues performers playing "pop" songs of the time might I suggest you listen to Charlie Patton's "Running Wild" or Skip James version of "So Tired".

Hoot

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 04:30 AM

I've often wondered how much black and white musicians would have mixed prior to the rise of the recording industry and "race records".

There seems to be a lot of cross-over in some old-time music, early country etc. I'm thinking of artists such as Doc Boggs, Jimmy Rodgers, even Hank Williams.

Anyone knowledgeable on this?

(I'll probably buy Escaping the Delta too but just wondering what folks here thought)

Pete.

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 07:37 PM

Read it, Dave... I found that fact very interesting... Also that when they went to record the folks who owned the recording studios (for lack of a better term as they were real primitive) would tell the black musicans to just play them "race songs"... That what they were called... I think it would have been cool to hear Robert Johnson recording some of the pop songs of the day...

B~

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 06:10 PM

The earliest blues musicians were professionals who would be called upon to play every type of music, and this in an era before the phonograph and later gramophone became readily available, so it is extremely unlikely that they couldn't read music. If you want a fuller exposition of this, I suggest you read "Escaping the Delta" (Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues) by Elijah Ward.

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 05:51 PM

Well, fir those of you who like/love Robert Johnson, you will like/love Johnny Shines even more... I don't know why he doesn't get more recognition... He, IMO, is equal to or even ebtter that Robert on alot of his stuff and plays purdy much the exact same style... It's almost as if they both learned from the same teacher... One of the best blues songs is one he wrote called "Jim String"... Ya'll listen to that song/story... Man, geese oh pete... This is the real blues...

And the late Jessie Mae Hemphill, who lived outside Como. Ms., is a real treat... Lotta that one chord north Mississippi groove... On a some of here songs she plays a one string diddlybow... Very cool...

Hey, and I'm just braggin' on the folks who play that Mississippi style blues... There's an entire different style blues... More finger pickin' and no bottleneck (slide) played in the Mid_Atalntic region coastal areas they call Piedmont Blues... Lotta real good ones... The late John Jackson... The late John Cephas who played with Phil Wiggins (Cephas in Wiggins)... I knew/know all them guys... Jammed a little with all of them here or there over the years... Then there was Archie Edwards of Washington, D.C.... He had a barbershop up in NE where balus jams occured every Saturday afternoon... He died in '98 but the folks just kept the rent up and continued to jam there every Saturday afternoon until about 2 years ago when they moved the barberchair and everything else to a new location where they continue the weekly jams... I was a reg there for about 7 years and know all them fine players: Elenor Ellis, Mike Baytop before he had his stroke, the late NJ Warren, Miles Spicer... Lotta folks... BTW, lotta folks like Mississippi John Hurt... Hey, he was more a Peidmont style player and he even moved to DC and jamedd at the barbershop and toured Europe with Archie...

Rambling again...

Hey, ya'll... This blues thread might make it to 100!!! That would make this ol' hillbilly proud... Sho nuff would...

B~

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 05:47 PM

Lets have a bit more blues mandolin:

Mailman Blues

Sugar Farm Blues

How about some blues banjo:

Sugar Baby

Rollin and tumblin

A bit of oud?

Bamako blues

Oh - go on then - a bit of guitar:

Death come creepin

G'night all

Pete

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 05:41 PM

How about this one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG8x9lidTA0

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 11:59 AM

Bobert: As for some lesser known (at least to folks not all that familiar with the blues) artists that are definately worth as listen are: Johnny Shines who knew and performed with Robert Johnson, the great James "Son" Thomas who can thump out that Delta groove like no other, the infamous and mysterious Dan Pickitt, a white guy, who recorded some fine stuff in the late 40s, Arthur Crudupp, Bukka White, of course the great Howlin' Wolf from Westpoint, Ms., The late R.L. Burnside, Jessie Mae Hemphill (bless her heart) who recorded on some primitive instruments as well as guitars, Lightnin' "Nuthin' But the Devil" Slim, Little "Blues With a Feelin'" Walter Jacobs and another Slim, Slim "King Bee" Harpo

Thanks! apart from Robert Johnson and Howlin' Wolf, the others you listed are all new to me. I guess there's a few hours of listening coming up!

PLUS....My "GUITAR TECHNIQUES" magazine came today, and guess what?....the issue's mainly devoted to the blues guitar with stories, riffs and licks from old Mississippi Delta bluesmen right up to some of the modern exponents. Something to keep me going for a while!

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Will Fly
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 11:25 AM

There are some good modern developments in blues - musicians who build on the legacy of the past but take the music forward in different ways. I've been a big fan of Little Axe, for example, ever since his first album appeared around 1990. And then there's the blues collective, Pig In A Can...

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 11:04 AM

Leeneia

I trust that you will agree with me that the blues started out as folk music and to a certain extent it still is. Like much other folk music it doesn't obey the written rules imposed upon music by the European classical players. How for instance do you write down and read off the paper a B B King solo with all those squeezed bent notes and play it just like him? Or write down, read and play a harmonica
tune by Rice Miller or Sonny Terry etc etc. So, I am still interested to know which bluesmen you know played from written music. I have never knowingly met one.

There is a well known quote which I can't remember the origin of but a well known musician was once asked if he read music and his reply was "not enough to hurt me".

Hoot

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Will Fly
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 10:59 AM

Let's not forget the flattened 7th...

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 10:54 AM

"The heart of the blues is the blue note, an unexpected minor third. To get that, you need to know what scale you are in, what the third is, and where the half-step is. It's not a complicated idea, but it doesn't come out of the subconscious either."

Wrong. It's more or a less a pure major third, which comes naturally unless you've had it trained out of you by teachers obsessed with equal temperament.

As for 1-4-5 progressions, again they come quite naturally to the ear without training.

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 10:52 AM

Cross posted, Boho...

Yeah, Skip James was in his own league... Recorded some of the eeriest songs ever that folks still arguing over... Like "Hard Time Killin' Floor"... BTW, I do that one in a Double Dropped D but it ain't a song that you can play to just any crowd...

The Scorese series is absolutely priceless...

BTW, lotta folks have mentioned Alan Lomax and some folks might be goin'. "Who is he???"... Well he did thousands of field recordings which are now in the Library of Congress... He not only recorded well known folks like Muddy Waters but also hundreds of folks who even lotta blues folks have never heard of... He was able to record on plantations, juke joints and even the penitenturies... Some fine stuff...

B~

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 10:45 AM

Well, if ya' have heard the blues, leenia, then ya' kinda know what it's 'sposed to sound like... Now traditional blues is generally in 1-4-5... The 1 chord is where you wnat to sing the song... Let's say that is in G major... So the G chord becomes yer 1 chord... Then you just start counting down from G (ABCDEFGABCDEFG) which makes the 4 chord a C and the 5 chord a D... Song in A??? Then it's A-D-E...

Now that is basic beginners blues... That will get anyone started at least from the perspective of what chord is next...

Once that is imprinted then there are lots of variations like 4-1-4-1-5-4-1 which is how "Catfish Blues", "King Bee", "Hoochie Coochie Man", etc... Doesn't really matter what key you play it in the progression will remain the same... That the nice thing about the blues is that once you get it you can bounce around with various keys in finding where yer voice best works...

B~

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Boho
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 10:34 AM

Skip James - pure genius.

Devil Got My Woman

Well worth a watch:

Scorsese blues films

History of the blues book:

The Devil's Music

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 10:34 AM

"Fir beginners it just a 1-4-5 progression..."

How could a beginner understand 'a 1-4-5 progression' without some instruction, from a book, teacher or friend, in scales and harmony?

Sure, most blues musicians couldn't sit down and play a piece of piano music if you put it in front of them. I can't either. But I know the theory, I understand the melody line, and I improvise. Just like blues musicians.

The heart of the blues is the blue note, an unexpected minor third. To get that, you need to know what scale you are in, what the third is, and where the half-step is. It's not a complicated idea, but it doesn't come out of the subconscious either.

A couple weeks ago I found a song published in 1612 with a blue note in it.

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 10:26 AM

Somebody asks me to tell the blues people that I listen too. The list would be too long but from the earliest Trixie Smith through some of the other "Classic" Blues women, the country blues of Tommy Johnson, Blind Lemon etc virtually everyone upto and including Buddy Guy. The Caucasian (is that a PC word these days?)copyists do not appeal to me at all. As Muddy Waters once told a young white guy and I paraphrase here "You can sure play it like me but no way can you sing it". Nuff said.
If you really want to know and explore the Blues there are so many books that have been written on the subject that you should be able to go to your local library and get educated. Failing this there are the used book sites on-line. If you want names of Authors try Paul Oliver, Peter Guralnick, Gale Dean Wardlow, Robert Gordon (on Muddy),
Samuel Charters , Marc Hoffman (on Howling Wolf), Giles Oakley, Bruce Bastin (on the Piedmont bluesmen)and Alan Lomax's "The Land Where the Blues Began". And that is just for starters.

Maeve I am sorry to hear of your great loss you must be devastated.
I sincerely hope that your lot improves very soon.

Good listening

Hoot

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 08:57 AM

"Death Letter" has become a staple in just about every blues bands song list... I like to open a set with either it or another Son House song, "Preachin' Blues" which is somewhat less known... But only somewhat... BTW, Jack White and the White Stripes does a great version of "Death Letter"...

As for some lesser known (at least to folks not all that familiar with the blues) artists that are definately worth as listen are: Johnny Shines who knew and performed with Robert Johnson, the great James "Son" Thomas who can thump out that Delta groove like no other, the infamous and mysterious Dan Pickitt, a white guy, who recorded some fine stuff in the late 40s, Arthur Crudupp, Bukka White, of course the great Howlin' Wolf from Westpoint, Ms., The late R.L. Burnside, Jessie Mae Hemphill (bless her heart) who recorded on some primitive instruments as well as guitars, Lightnin' "Nuthin' But the Devil" Slim, Little "Blues With a Feelin'" Walter Jacobs and another Slim, Slim "King Bee" Harpo...

And that's just scratchin' the surface...

B~

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Will Fly
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 08:45 AM

Good stuff Greg. I'll see your Son House and raise you a Reverend Gary Davis... :-)

Rev. Gary Davis plays "Slow Drag / Cincinnati Flow Rag"

This is just how I remember him from 1964.

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: greg stephens
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 06:09 AM

Here's your really quintessential 24-carat old delta blues, the extremely wonderful Son House telling it like it was
Death Letter Blues

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: greg stephens
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 06:04 AM

Well a lot of talk, here's an example. Leadbelly, the king of the 12-string, helpfully defining the blues, singing them, and playing a mean walking bass at the same time
Good Morning Blues

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 05:57 AM

Will....thanks! That's gone onto my birthday list now. Hope someone gets it for me!

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: GUEST,essex girl
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 05:41 AM

Well I like some blues, just not very knowlegable on the subject. I listen to the old stuff but really like Spikedrivers & Kent Duchaine.
Maybe Guest I DON'T KNOW will see this thread & do a blues quiz,or someone else as this would be a good way to find out how much we really know, or do you only want threads to talk about what we all do in the playing/singing/writing of...

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: cooperman
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 05:16 AM

As someone once said 'without the roots we'd have no fruits'. It's a great legacy left to us by the likes of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, Yank Rachell.
Interesting how it crossed the Atlantic in the 60's with the Marquee Club (good CD - Knights of the Blues Table). I jumped on the blues train at this time, electric blues with Clappo, Savoy Brown, Peter Green, Alan Bown. Then into prog rock and the rest is history!
I was also a member of my local folk club at this time!!
No problem with singing - just remember the roots and put that same feeling into it.
Incidentally, I think the impetus is back with America now.
Steve

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Will Fly
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 04:18 AM

Rob - why not start by reading All Music Guide to the Blues: The Definitive Guide to the Blues - around £13 on Amazon. It's a pretty good guide to the music.

There's a wide variety of styles. To me, the great thing about the blues is the simplicity and beauty of the musical structures. It invites you in. There's something for everyone who wants to make music and use those structures. I couldn't and wouldn't attempt to sing much of it - after all, what does a white lad from Lancashire have in common with Robert Johnson - but the musical form is still open.

Mind you, I do recall, many years ago, seeing two wonderful old blues men from the Irwell Delta near Manchester - Blind Lemon Clegg and Sleepy John Arkwright (thank you, Mike Harding).

Sorry - memory laps - it wasn't Sleepy John Arkwright, it was Rev. Gary Davis at the Free Trades Hall in 1964. One of the most wonderful nights of my life.

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 03:47 AM

I'd really like some pointers towards some of the less well-known but great blues players. I'm aware of people like Muddy Waters, Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Lemon Jefferson, etc, and the "rock" blues players of the 60s and 70s who went on to fame and fortune as "global" names, but I have a strong feeling that there's a whole wealth of blues out there that I don't have a clue about.

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: ichMael
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 12:10 AM

Links...

Dark was the Night by Blind Willie Johnson. Great song. Ry Cooder called it the greatest, or something like that. He used it as the basis for his Paris, Texas soundtrack. (Good movie, by the way, if you like gut-wrenching tearjerkers).

The Muddy Waters Chess Box set is the best compilation by a single artist I've ever heard. Great songs + Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Little Walter and so on. Long Distance Call, Forty Days...

Taj Mahal's first album is incredibly dynamic. Gets my vote for the best single blues album I've ever heard.

The Brits gave the world the Blues Breakers album. Eric Clapton's amazing on that.

I'm partial to Texas blues musicians. Lightnin' Hopkins, Johnny Winter, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Willie Johnson, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Bobert
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 10:55 PM

Ya'now, I think it would be great fir a blues thread to go over a hundred posts... Like when did that ever happen, if ever??? So, fir the folks who have contribted this ol' hillbilly would love it if ya'll would contuing it so that we can all one day be able to look our grandchildtren in the eye and say...

..."Hey, youngin's... Don't you ever forget that yer (granny/grandpa) was one of the folks who helped a "Blues" thtread make to a hundred at Mudcat."

I mean, that would be quite an accomlishment... Something to pass down to the next generation and the one after that...

So, ya'll... Keep the blues alive...

B~

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Bobert
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 08:21 PM

Yeah, thanks, maeve... Had to pick up the P-Vine 12 year old grandson... Think I drove about 600 miles today...

Hey, folks... Now some of ya'll have actually seen this instrument I play... It's called a Lowebow and it is made from a cigar box, two 1 1/4 inch dowel rods for a neck, is fretless, has one baig fat bass string with it;'s own electric pickup and 3 treble strings with 2 pickups... It looks like some toy but when it is plugged in it ain't no toy... Quite a few of us north Mississippi blues players are playin' 'um... Real ggod on the one chord blues... Hey, when I say one chord it ain't exactly just one chord... Ya'll Google up R.L. Burnside and give listen... He's a master... Fred McDowell was the master before him...

BTW, every year there is one super north Mississippi music gathering at the late Otha Turners house just called the "Mr. Otha's Goat Roast" and musicans from all around come and jam and party... It in Como, Ms... In August and everyone is invited... Now ya'll wnat to hear some blues, then this is the real deal...

B~

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: maeve
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 08:03 PM

Welcome home, Bobert.

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Bobert
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 07:50 PM

WOW!!!

What a nice surprise to come home from a day on the road and find that this thread that I started last year and which dropped off the bottom after only 3 posts is alive and well...

Readin' music??? Nah, not too many blues player have any interest in learning that stuff...

Fir beginners it just a 1-4-5 progression...

Lotta of the blues I play comes outta north Mississippi in the "hill country" (lol)... No hills there just the banks of a flooded Mississippi Delta... Lotta different istruments played there... Get way back in the country at "picnics" and folks play fife and drum... The late Otha Turner was prolly ther best known fife player in Mississippi... I mean, I been to picnic where folkls be out in the front yard playing fife and drum and 90 year old women doin' some dirty dancin'... I mean, I won't get into no details...

Lotta the folks I know who play that north Mississippi stuff play one chord blues... Okay, it ain't exactly i chord but it ain't far from it... Ain't no 1-4-5 12 bar... It's more a cross between traditional delta blues, rockabilly and hard driving rock 'n roll... Kinda started with Fred McDowell and then down to R.L Burnside and Jessie Mae Hemphill and then to the rst of us playin' that style of blues... Like Richard Johnston, John Lowe, Ben Prestage, etc...

More later... We got a storm comin' in...

B~

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 07:05 PM

I can think of quite a few early bluesmen who didn't read music:

Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Willie McTell ......

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Leadfingers
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 06:54 PM

And what was that old itnam War one about Fighting for peace ??

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Amos
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 06:19 PM

MEBBE writing about blues is like dancing about architecture.

A

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: maeve
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 06:04 PM

Thanks, Leeneia and Pete. Thanks to y'all who have posted; every one adds to my understanding of Blues and what they might sound like coming through my life.

Hoot, I'd love to hear any cuts you and anyone else can suggest. Our wonderful collection of thousands of 1920's disks through current cds as well as all of our instruments were reduced to ashes. I can hear some old Blues musicians online, but I don't have much time to sit and search.

Right now I'm struggling to find food and clothing for us and my husband is working himself to death to keep us safe. Winter is coming and we have just this camper for housing. This guitar is a Godsend; yet it is very different from my Apollonio; much more difficult to play. I'm sick and tired and in pain.

Got any songs/tunes relating to my blues? On account of I sure-t purely got 'em.

Links are always appreciated. Thank you.

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: PoppaGator
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 05:45 PM

I certainly enjoy the blues, whether strictly or loosely defined, and I usually enjoy reading what people have to say about it, but I don't really have much to say when it comes to writing about music myself.

Writing "about" music is tricky. Didn't someone once famously write that it's "like dancing about architecture"? Back in 1970, I interviewed for a job at Rolling Stone, was encouraged to submit articles as a freelancer, and got an introduction to a fellow who was already successfully contributing work as a freelancer.

Within about a week, I ditched the effort and gave up all ambitions to work as a "music writer." Instead, I began putting all my energy into playing music on the streetcorners of San Francisco ~ much more satisfying. The fact that I never achieved much success as a performer (never advancing from busking to actual paying gigs) does NOT make me regret that decision, not in the least.

*****************

I enjoy Mudcat a little less today than when I first encountered it, back when its focus was on the blues and related US folk-music traditions. Just a matter of personal taste. I still enjoy my visits here; I just find an ever-increasing number of discussion threads that I don't bother to look at.

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: greg stephens
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 05:20 PM

I foprgot: in addition to Leadbelly's dance tunes on the melodeon, there is also his sensational version of John Hardy.

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: greg stephens
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 05:19 PM

Hootenanny: tell us what you like. Direct us to the old bluesmen that you particularly enjoy, I think the thread is for that. If you are not interested in other's comments, suggest a few yourself. I put up a clip of some cajun blues because an earlier post mentioned the melodeon as a possible instrument for playing the blues. Many Louisiana musicians used it, and the piano accordion, to play blues. Leadbelly(a great blues man) also played melodeon, though to my knowledge he never recorded a blues on it, just two or three other dance tunes.

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 04:46 PM

I am not putting down anybody here

Hmmmm...

but does nobody on this site listen to the real thing any more?

So give us some examples then Hoot - what pulls your chain?

Pete

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Amos
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 04:40 PM

According to this article, recording the blues might explain whale speak, I dunno, though. It might work...

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 04:33 PM

This thread still doesn't seem to be referring much to blues musicians. There is what appears to be an English band playing a tune Cajun style and admittedly it is in a blues format. Clifton Chenier who played Zydeco which is Cajun with a strong dose of blues, Nathan Abshire who played Cajun. Someone else mentions an English musician that attempts to play the blues. Then there is a film clip of someone attempting to play and sound like a blues man (and incidentally I believe the Bland Blake song is actually "Diddie Wah Diddie).

I am not putting down anybody here but does nobody on this site listen to the real thing any more?

And Leeneia, which blues musicians have you met that read music. I am not implying that there are none but as someone with a long time interest in the music I would be intersted to know on what you base your non-belief.

Hoot

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 04:22 PM

By the way, I don't believe that, about blues musicians not being able to read music

I'd say some could, some couldn't. Some were completely illiterate. Didn't stop them making beautiful music though.

Also just because you don't read music, doesn't mean you don't know any theory.

And a high action is ideal for slide. Go for it Maeve!

And now for some John Lee Hooker (illiterate): Boogie Chillen

Pete

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 02:14 PM

Here's a quotation from upthread:

" Hell Man ! You dont read music , you just play the stuff!"

Unfortunately, if blues players don't read music (and presumably don't know any theory), then it's very hard for them to talk about how they play. It's pretty hard to discuss muscle memory.

Note the 'Hell Man.'

There's no need to get hostile. Yet if you start posting any music theory on a blues thread, you will soon get hostile responses.

As for Greg Stephen's Bosco Blues, (linked above) that is definitely blues. I like it.
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Maeve, go carefully with that guitar that has the strings too high. It could hurt your hands or wrists. Take it to a music store and have somebody make it right.

By the way, I don't believe that, about blues musicians not being able to read music.

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: greg stephens
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 02:10 PM

Hootenanny: sure I think Louisiana blues is blues. I love it. Clifton Chenier and Nathan Abshire, to name but a few, turned in some great French blues, whether zydeco-ish or cajun-ish.

Subject: RE: The Blues???
From: maeve
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 01:44 PM

This, dwditty?

http://www.mudcat.org/blues.cfm