Thinkin' the Blues

Narrow: only Robert Johnson et al are true Blue. It's all about an authentic black experience (?) at a certain moment in history, on certain instrumentation, and it's been diluted ever since.

Wide: the blues is not one genre, more a certain impulse that can flow through various musical situations. Maybe it's about 'The Blues Scale' (anyone want to help out on the definition and specificity of this?), which for all I know may be found in soul, dance, rock'n'roll, heavy rock, etc. Maybe it's even about an Attitude - recall the way that bluesmen are always saying 'You have to live the blues before you can play it'. In that case it would be slightly akin to what 'rock'n'roll' is for Stevie T, or 'rock' for Ally - a mode of thinking and feeling as much as a particular genre.

In between the very narrow and very wide (but I'd like some clarification about *their* plausibility) come all the ambiguities of what is and isn't blues. I like BB King and Sonny Boy Williamson II - that sounds like blues to me. But maybe to some people that's RHYTHM'n'Blues, and thus different? Where does blues become r'n'b? Where does r'n'b become rock'n'roll (cf Chuck Berry)? Did the Stones play the blues, or not?

My only problem is that when I really 'got' the blues, like Jazz, it was to the detriment of my other interests. I enjoyed the blues exclusively, nothing else seemed to carry the same intensity. That state can be highly appropriate - in the wake of a relationship, when you're feeling sorry for yourself and need solidarity, but then that's if you want to dwell. Blues for me, is not somewhere I wanna hang out, it's somewhere I visit, alone. Nowadays if I'm that emotive I tend to stick on the radio, find reassurance in uplifting trash.

That sounds like a criticism, but it's not at all. Everything dies, baby, that's a fact. But we can still listen to and enjoy stuff that's frozen at a certain time. Even LOVE and draw meaning from it. But all that doesn't make it relevant now except as history.

All this is right off the dome. I need to think more about these kinds of statements, really. Take the above with a grain of salt.

Anyway, I was way into the Blues in the late 80s, and I'd be lying unless I admitted that at least part of my enjoyment sprung from the idea that these old (black) men, guys like Lighten' Hopkins and John Lee Hooker, had gained wisdom somehow through suffering, a suffering I probably wasn't privvy to in my white middle-class suburban existance. Now it feels like there was something wrong about the attitudes about "authenticity of experience" I had then, something condescending and possibliy just a little bit racist.

In terms of form, I have to admit now that I just can't listen to the 12-bar structure. It's too predictable and it was probbly ruined for me by the British Invasion groups & all the terrible bar bands that populate the U.S. Fortunately, there is more to the Blues than that, particularly in the rhythm. John Lee Hooker still works for me (I'm talking about the 50s and 60s stuff here) because of his one-chord vamp thing. It's got a trance music thing going. Same with what little I've heard on Fat Possum. The most interesting stuff to me now is the rhythmic stuff that somehow missed 12-bar structure.

2. But do you really find the blues good for times of actual heartache? That's interesting. I know that's its stereotypical meaning, but I didn't know it really worked that way. Any reason?

3. Mark - hm, your idea of blues as museum piece is cogent. I suppose I would say that tons and tons of great culture is now like that, now bound up with images of the past: whether it be the C19 novel, or screwball comedies, or early 60s folk. Or, heck, I don't know - punk! grunge! shoegazing! It seems to me a part of the richness of our current cultural situation that all this stuff is part of our archive, so to speak: there to be investigated and learned from. Then again, I think I ought to be very suspicious of myself (or anyone) talking about 'the richness of our current cultural situation'. What an idea!

I suppose my question would be: seeing as almost everything gets so 'historical' so quickly nowadays (not to say 'obsolescent'), why is the blues distinct from other genres? Is it any less vital an historic resource than punk, for instance?

Buddyhey: still lookin' for that lost chord this spring...

The whole lo-fi, person-in-front-of-a-microphone-with-instrument set- up is personal, heightens the intimacy and means to empathise. If I'm gonna indulge my misery, it's best to do it with someone who's been there already, as Tom said in a review of a Palace track - 'a workable map of heartbreak', you can find your way out again.

I've been listening to Mississippi Fred McDowell, Skip James, Junior Kimborough, Elmore James, Junior Wells...this is where you recommend blues records/performers whom you feel deserve more attention. I am quite interested in hearing more electric blues in the style of Kimborough or Fred McDowell's raucous performance of "Shake 'Em On Down".

http://blindman.15.forumer.com/index.php?s=f393a057a6af8f15d475451dc0ba7c0a&showtopic=40232

So this is where blues fans go

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junior_Wells

Wells may have been born in Memphis, Tennessee,[ 1] and raised in West Memphis, Arkansas (some sources report that he was born in West Memphis).[ 2][ 3] Initially taught by his cousin, Junior Parker, and by Sonny Boy Williamson II, Wells learned to play the harmonica skillfully by the age of seven.

He moved to Chicago in 1948 with his mother, after her divorce, and began sitting in with local musicians at house parties and taverns.[ 4] Wild and rebellious but needing an outlet for his talents, he began performing with the Aces (guitarist brothers Dave and Louis Myers and drummer Fred Below) and developed a modern amplified harmonica style influenced by Little Walter.[ 4] In 1952, he made his first recordings, when he replaced Little Walter in Muddy Waters's band and played on one of Muddy's sessions for Chess Records in 1952.[ 4] His first recordings as a bandleader were made in the following year for States Records.[ 5] In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he recorded singles for Chief Records and its subsidiary, Profile Records, including "Messin' with the Kid", "Come on in This House", and "It Hurts Me Too", which would remain in his repertoire throughout his career. His 1960 Profile single "Little by Little" (written by Chief owner and producer Mel London) reached number 23 on the Billboard R&B chart, the first of his two singles to enter the chart.[ 6]

Wells's album Hoodoo Man Blues, released in 1965 by Delmark Records, featured Buddy Guy on guitar.[ 4][ 7]

when i was younger i used to be really into interconnections between musicians, bands, etc. who literally had shared working relationships

i'm surprised i never really appreciated how much of this there was among the biggest blues names

Impressive.

Here's a collaboration I am curious about. Not big names though--

http://www.clarionledger.com/story/magnolia/entertainment/2016/12/01/barretta-natchez-blues-come-light-collaboration/94695706/

Natchez is one of Mississippi’s cultural treasures, but its rich blues heritage is often overlooked. Evidence of it is plentiful on the recent CD “Natchez Burnin'” (Broke and Hungry Records) by veterans Hezekiah Early and Robert Lee “Lil' Poochie” Watson.

Early and Watson have played together regularly in Natchez over the last decade, but their collaboration goes back to the 1980s, when Watson performed with the Early-led Hezekiah and the Houserockers at festivals in Chicago and Toronto. The duo’s music is refreshingly loose, tackling mostly blues standards in a style true to the sounds of the house parties where both men started their musical careers....

Liking Jimmy Duck Holmes latest album, Cypress Grove. He lives in Mississippi and has his own place , the Blues Front Cafe in Bentonia, Ms.

The album reminds me more of RL Burnside style blues than city of Chicago 12 bar blues

Listening to tons of Bob Dylan tracks that draw on old blues produced this thought:

In the history of Blues (or R&B, if you prefer?) there is a major tradition of bawdy, of desiring sexual gratification or lamenting that it's been lost:

"Come here baby, put some sugar in my bowl"
"Ain't got no fur slippers no more"
"Press my button (ring my bell)"

etc.

But what I don't hear, at least in what Dylan revives, is love, or romance. Either it exists in the genre's history, but Dylan doesn't touch it; or it wasn't really part of the genre -- and was rather something that belonged to other genres, like Tin Pan Alley songs.

Maybe it's as if the Blues narrator has to have a certain toughness, to survive, that precludes him saying things like "I loved her so much, my heart is broken and I can't go on without her".

A whole list of "Dirty Blues" can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_blues

Maybe it's as if the Blues narrator has to have a certain toughness, to survive, that precludes him saying things like "I loved her so much, my heart is broken and I can't go on without her".

Come on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BkPm8JIJJQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rd9IaA_uJI

Sure, Sund4r -- happy to be corrected -- I was just creating tentative hypotheses on the basis of what I happen to know.

Would you say, then, that the emotion of romantic love IS prevalent in the blues, compared to other genres?

From that first song:

When the train come in the station
I looked her in the eye
Well, the train come in the station
And I looked her in the eye
Whoa, I felt so sad so lonesome
That I could not help but cry

When the train left the station
It had two lights on behind
Yeah, when the train left the station
It had two lights on behind
Whoa, the blue light was my baby
And the red light was my mind

Those last lines are good!

Is this the song that the Stones recorded in about 1969?

Yes, the same, and, yes, songs about romantic loss, heartbreak, and betrayal are so common in the blues as to be a cliché!

This is a fantastic proto-rock-n-roll electric rhythm and blues from the mid-40s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzCEOINEjng

I agree with pinefox that when Dylan wants to convey romantic loss or longing in his recent work, he tends to pastiche Tin Pan Alley songs; his blues songs tend to be picaresque or apocalyptic scenarios.

Probably someone will come up with a bunch of counter-examples, but with a lot of the blues artists I've been listening to recently, it seems like "consistency of artistic persona" is not the priority it would become in modern music. Like the same singer will do a sad, resigned song about a breakup, and then a song about loading up his shotgun to get revenge on a scornful lover. There are a lot of modern artists who do one or the other, but fewer who would do both.