This topic is an extended topic to kudzurunner's "the tribute-band dead end"
This question may have been asked a million times over on this forum, but I am new. So of course I apologize, but I want to ask this myself. "What is blues in respect to harmonica"?
In the "the tribute-band dead end" thread, we discussed and contemplated Tommy Katona's ability to emulate Stevie Ray Vaughan. To be sure, no one was deriding him or arguing against HIM in any way. I have study the history of jazz and blues now for three years and have been playing instruments for only two now and I am starting to get awfully confused.
Here is a few questions that puzzle me. If I know the repertoire of blues harmonica (the important players, their songs, their licks and their goals) and can call myself a blues harmonica player based on my ability, then does everything I play after that with a harmonica in my hand become blues?
I am starting to get the impression from the modern blues harmonica players that as long as we do everything with an eye on the past, it's O.K. to call it blues music?
My ears are telling me that I am hearing a lot of rock, country, hip-hop, and soul harmonica being passed off as blues harmonica. I know it is almost impossible to put an objective stamp on blues as a technical music form, but damn it, I swear that in the expanse to make blues harmonica bigger than ever, we've modified the genre a little bit rather we like it or not.
I understand the want and need to touch on different forms of the harmonica to strengthen our harmonica playing, but when does it go from us being great blues harmonica players to us being just great mulit-genre al'round harmonica players?
Personal example, I learned some of Whammer Jammer and I can play it all right. I might learn all of it if I can, but I don't yet see how that has anything to do with what I want to accomplish as a blues musician (which I hope to consider myself first before a harmonica player in some respects). I see Whammer Jammer is technically stunning to an extent, but not anywhere near what I've learned to be the blues. It may have blues licks in it, but just because it is comprised of similarly shaped bones doesn't make it the same mammal. I'm asking as genuinely and honestly as possible. Does anyone have any issues with things such as this or come across thinking like this? I'm not trying to provoke an argument, just encourage some thought and perspective.
Maybe some intellectual unearthing will be done here, M Fourte ---------- Hunger is the best spice.
Last Edited by on Dec 16, 2012 1:22 PM
This question is perennial, and continues to resurface without resolution. Here is a link to a similar conversation, and in this thread are links to other threads.
I still don't know the definitive answer. Maybe blues is an evolving verb, and not a definable noun. I like the approach of evaluating to what extent any given song is the blues rather than an either/or evaluation.
I have played harmonica for about 40 years. I always wanted to play like Cotton, Sonny Terry, Magic dick, and a lot of others. In the 70's when i began this journey i didn't care what genre it was if someone would let me sit in. After many years of leaning very much toward 2nd position, which is sort of the default blues position at least for beginners, I began to learn some things and started to work with bands, go to jams and open mics, and move in the direction I felt was the blues direction. BUT it's kind of odd, while i like playing 2nd position a lot of the time, these days i have also incorporated 1st and 3rd, and I hope to get some things going in 5th eventually as well.
My wife is one partner in one duo. We do blues, some country- old school; folk- like Dylan, and even a bit of rock. We bill as blues/roots. My playing has changed some, only in the sense that I've expanded and worked out different parts for some old chestnuts that I've never heard done before. Ala 3rd on some Jimmy Reed stuff, 1st on some Burnside or McDowell. My harmonica style is very "blues based", I play with feeling, conviction, and even some skill. But I consider myself to be a broader-based harmonica player, I play jazz, funk, folk, country, ballads, rock, swing. Mostly when I sing it's blues with a few exceptions. Mostly when i play harp it's as a blues plus....... harp player. Fill in the blank.
Maybe I have reached a point in my life and avocation where "blues" does not quite define what I play. But I remember too, a lot of what we call "blues" these days was once swing, vaudeville, etc etc etc. "Blues" is a very large umbrella and it's a very subjective interpretation. The lines to me get blurry. ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
@ibone - I think you're thinking what I am thinking. I think we're on the same page. But you feel good that you're expanded? But as a person who's been playing a lot longer than me, how come you don't use all that energy and put it back into the blues? And as a larger question directed toward you necessarily, but how come we get so great and so defending the blues? New blues in 5th and 6th positions with the lights and banners? It seems it is all right to not resemble exactly where one began because if one does, we tend to think they didn't learn anything.
@JD Hoskins - I think it would be unfair for me to come onto this forum and describe blues as the music of my forefathers because that may immediately exclude people from my definition in a sense. I don't want to do that. I don't believe in that. But the blues is a journal of events that humans go through. As Howlin Wolf states, it's about "how they live." It is a shameless music that rubs the underbelly. To be more objective, blues is a person taking their time (the singer) to let you know how they feel. Whether they are feeling about a time or place or abstractedly about their life. More importantly, EVERYONE! in the band is telling you how they feel. That's the trick. The harmonica player (or trumpet, saxophone, or whatever) comes up and tells you how he feels. The drummer might speak, the piano player may speak. We use these instruments in other forms of music, but they don't mean anything any more. We may have a person come up and tell you deeply how they feel, but essentially, they are just hogging the story from others. Music is a human experience itself shared among humans. Does my idea of blues music de-blues someone like Blind Lemon Jefferson? No, simply because there was only one of him, and so no one else was ignored in his musical process. Does my idea of blues music de-blues someone like Madonna? Surely it does because all the music around her is just noise to sustain her voice and HER personal message. I don't believe that is right. (I am hinting at the synthesized stuff)
I'm tired of this one-man showmanship. It's fancy and all, but true music can be made among the players and their audience. Blues music was never about the notes you played, it was about how you played those notes. We had great singers, but if those singers disappeared, the music would have still been there. We lose Taylor Swift and her half-computer orchestra will dissipate in moments. We lose Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers would have taken Kim wilson and did a stunning version of Got My Mojo Working. It happens. It's just the way you swing things. ;) ---------- Hunger is the best spice.
Don't forget that the traditional bluesmen did not have access to all the music we have today. They had the radio and local performers. If Muddy or LW was born in say,1955, there's no way they would be playing the same stuff.
If we're talking what other harmonica playing blues fans consider "blues harmonica"...
Blues harmonica is generally determined just as much by how you are perceived as it is what you play. It is also largely affected by the listener's own preconceived notion of their role in blues harmonica playing.
There is no universal definition, not even by a theory standard, because of the subjective nature in which other harmonica players judge the music. All aspects - tone, note choice, gear, intent, soul, etc. are viewed subjectively.
One thing that it's extremely important to remember is that ALL the classic blues performers didn't just play blues when they played live. They played pop, jazz, R&B, country. Muddy Waters played half a dozen Gene Autry songs. B. B. King plays jazz and pop. Junior Wells wanted to be James Brown. Little Walter and many blues guys borrowed heavily from the comic R&B of Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five. Big Walter Horton--gasp!--played La Cucaracha. In 1941 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, Fats Waller was the most popular artist on the jukeboxes.
Racism in the recording industry prevented the classic blues artists, especially the prewar artists, from recording the full spectrum of what they were playing live. They were allowed only to record "race" records, which meant blues. This has left us with an idea that somehow the "real blues guys" played ONLY blues, or were only able to express themselves by playing blues. Nothing could be further from the truth. To the extent that this misunderstanding of what they were about continues to frame debates about what is and isn't blues, we're making a huge mistake.
Elijah Wald talks about all this in the "What the Records Missed" chapter of ESCAPING THE DELTA: ROBERT JOHNSON AND THE INVENTION OF THE BLUES. The key thing to remember is that there was a large common stock of songs in the South, especially in the first thirty years of the 20th century, that blacks and whites both performed. Karl Hagstrom Miller explores this in SEGREGATING SOUND. Guys like Charley Patton and Honeyboy Edwards, for example, played as often for whites as for blacks, because whites had the money. There was some market differentiation between what whites wanted to hear and what blacks wanted to hear--somewhat more blues, and a different kind of blues, for the black audiences; jazzier swingier blues for the white audiences--but there was considerable overlap as well. (The word "bluesman," BTW, didn't even exist until the late 1950s and was an invention of white folklorists.)
Early in the new year, I'll begin uploading a twelve-part series of videos entitled BLUES TALK. Each video is an informal lecture of roughly one hour. I will address in depth many of the questions raised in this thread and others. I'll explore the ideologies at work when we talk about blues; I've explore the social conditions in effect in the world that brought blues music into being. For example, I'll look closely at the claim that the blues come from slavery-times and I'll discuss three African American commentators--Angela Y. Davis, James Cone, and Kalamu ya Salaam--who disagree, along with several blues musicians who agree. I'll do my best to undercut every sort of myth that has attached itself to the blues, reconnecting the blues with American (and specifically African American) social history but also making clear why those who seek to reduce blues music to, at bottom, an expression of black pain in the face of white oppression are, in fact, reducing the broad spectrum of meanings that African Americans and others have attached to the blues in the 100+ year lifespan of the music. Stay tuned!
Last Edited by on Dec 17, 2012 9:20 AM
It's a great question. I've never found a satisfying answer. The same question can be asked of rock and roll (I know, I know the blues had a baby, blah,blah,blah).
I bring up rock and roll because the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame just announced this year's inductees and as usual it left me scratching my head as to what the induction commitee was thinking (I mean other than another induction ceremony means more $$). There are a few inductees that may have sold a lot of records, made a lot of money, but they are definitely not Rock and Roll artists to me. But if you asked me to define Rock and Roll I'd be hard pressed to give you a great definition. For me it's sort of like The Supreme Court and obscenity and pornography.
I know it when I hear it.
Edited to add: Can't wait to view Blues Talk
Last Edited by on Dec 17, 2012 9:57 AM
Nothing honorable about that, lol. I am just a not-so-significant anti-hero of the blues, ha!
I always feel like I have to qualify myself in threads like this regarding the music I enjoy...I really do enjoy blues harmonica, including a wealth of prewar material. That being said, most my favorite artists don't have much harmonica at all. ---------- Custom Harmonicas
Think of it like horseshoes. The closer you get, the more points you get.
-Uses the blues scale -Something close to the 12 bar progression -Shuffle -Call and Answer -Guitar -Harmonica doesn't sound like folk harp -Gut Wrenching -Near rhymes
Of course, there are all sorts of blues. I've written stuff that's not 12 bar that I'd consider bluesy. I've written rock, and even country.
You know ive thought about this a few times myself ,In regard to where I catargorize My stuff on reverbnation,I have it in blues,but had it in Rock for awhile,But i allways thought BLUSEY was a good Genre to have ,Not quit blues but still close.On acid planet they have Blues rock as a Genre.But i dont think Reverb has.
I think Son House for example of blues guitar,So Is SRV blues? alot of people say hell yes,Some might say more Blues rock,
Either one is great and I myself dont get caught up in is it Blues or is it not. ---------- Hobostubs
you got country-blues,city-blues,gospel-blues,jazz-blues,rock-blues,etc.etc.etc.all these different dielects of blues.but the language is BLUES and it`s a vocal tradition started with the black folks here in america ,with field hollers and any gathering to express yourself...BLUES is the spirit of attack on your instrument,sing that song,blow that horn !!!!!!!
as Kudzu sez, the ODBG's would play dance music for their crowds in the roadside honky tonks - whatever was popular to the audience and not always "drippin' deep blues".
I got to hang with some of the real old blues and roadside gig guys at Augusta Heritage Center Blues Week in the early 90's and this is what they would tell me, too. If a song became popular, they would all learn that tune.
I remember one guy telling me the importance of having a pretty girl out front of the band, even if she wasn't that good a singer. "A pretty girl will always bring the house down" was his mantra.
It was all about making their audience dance.
hey, actually not too different from being in a "cover band" today....... ---------- The Iceman
You will encounter what I call "Blues Nazis". "That ain't blues" they'll say. Though some will acknowledge "I like what you're doing, but that aint blues" but others have this completely rigid personal definition and any time they see a harmonica player doing anything else, they're completely dismissive. For some it is a legitimate desire to ensure that we don't forget where we came from; for others it is a misguided attempt to try to keep us there.
Thanks to Adam for reminding us that even the "blues gods" weren't all about blues - and why we might not have known that. To me the definition is much looser. If its a I-IV-V then it absolutely is blues. But that's about it. It certainly doesn't have to have that progression. As said its more about feeling and can come down to the sentiment of the lyrics, or the expression of the instrumentalist. Blues is a feeling.
In the end, who cares? Here's what matters to me: Do you like playing it? Do others like hearing it? Great. Then it's yours to name. ---------- /Greg
@Greg - You've led me to question myself again which I am always doing.
@All - Excuse me if there is any roughness in my words for I somewhat bothered but not angry in any way. I think I am one of those Blues Nazis to whom you're referring. I find myself constantly saying this is blues and that isn't blues. But why does it matter? Because I call myself respecting and defending the art. I am open to blues-rock or any of that other stuff but that needs to be categorized that way in my opinion.
Why is important? Because even though the "blues Gods" played all sorts of music, they knew where the blues resided, where to find it, and how to access it. They knew the difference and they didn't bring that pop-rock into the blues room just as you wouldn't bring your street tongue into the church. It seemed more a tacit respect than a strict code of conduct.
I'm probably a fundamentalist and too young to be anything else at this particular time. I feel as though I can love other music, play other music and let that influence my blues take but not redirect it or modify it from the blues but hopefully to a bluesier place. I think there has been so much modifying that there isn't a lot of blues left. No one wants to "do the old stuff again" and everyone wants it more new and more exciting that last time. I believe this to the point to which people have marked the blues down and gone in a different direction. I want another revival. A revival isn't going to happen through Cream's cover of Crossroads or the Rollin' Stones playing any Muddy Waters tune.
The blues takes its time. Even when T-Bone Walker is going off into a jazzy frenzy, he's taking his time. His idea of time just expands into space farther than some of the rest of us. I feel as though we're so O.K. with blues not having to be some specific thing that it has become nothing now!
If played a boogie-woogie at a classic music concert, would you get any squiggly eyes? If you ranged through power chords and heavy distortion at a country concert, would no one say anything about it? If one stands up and sings Willie Nelson's Blues Skies note for note at a rap concert, are they not asking for trouble?
I understand that making things rigid and squared can shave off some creativity. But I am awfully afraid that by being so loose. By saying, who cares if a pair of pants has to legs and covers your whole body, hell let's call dresses pants! Then we will have no pants left at all.
I feel like it's not my generation's fault they don't know what good music is or what the blues is. It was the generation before my and maybe before that one that let it all die in the first place. If I call myself a blues musician, I suppose I am giving people the impression that I play blues. If I call myself a blues harmonica player and then play Smoke on the Water, is it unfair that they may catalyze some kind of consternation? ---------- Hunger is the best spice.
Last Edited by on Dec 18, 2012 11:26 AM
there is a movement going on and it seems to be real popular in Europe,I know here in America im digging the Hell ot of it,And thats playing music on 3 string and 4 string ,cigarbox guitars,Or anything homemade,And I hear alot of people doing,old timey style of blues,Delta like,And then some are taking the simpler but very cool and bluesy sounds that the homemade instruments make and adding all sorts of effects,where it is very modern sounding but also has the old school sound,
I belive it offers alot to the Genre of Blues because it retains the old while embracing the new.There are alot of Musicians that are still doing the old school justice ,Keni Lee Burgess is one,And Sea sick steve may not be doing Blues Nazi material,But he cuts a modern edge with old school style for sure,Not to mention someone ive just started really digging Ben powell,Im loving his sound the whole band.
I know the blues may never be at the hey day it once was but theres alot of great music being done by players who love the blues.
Its funny ,around here my muisic friends think that anytime its a 12 bars in E its bluze,No matter what groove or tempo,for instance a fast ,straight time feel,,Any time a harmonica is used in a song its blues,And if they hear a 7th chord played its blues,
Now granterd all those things are used in blues alot of times,But I do look at a blues song different than a bluesy song,But the crowed I grew up with most them dont know the difference.
And to be honest I used to be just like them,I remember 25 years ago in the Army,Me and a Black friend of mine was talking about music ,And I said I love the blues,And was telling him about really digging S.R.V and George Thorogood,and Buddy Guy,Which was about all the players I knew of,And he said how about Muddy Waters? I said Muddy who? He got a kick out of that one;-) ---------- Hobostubs
@Hobostubs Ashlock - That's exactly what I am talking about. I am not one to claim that Muddy Waters is the only example of a blues, but damn it, S.R.V. although the epitome of a guitar player, should necessarily be one's paradigm of blues.
Bluesy vs Blues. If there is a bluesy tone, then there is a blues. That is how English works. You can't go around using the adjective if there is not necessarily a noun associated to that, even if that noun is a remade version of that adjective. How the hell can you have happy days if you know of no joy? How can you have muddy waters if you don't know what mud is? How the HELL CAN YOU HAVE BLUESY! If you can't tell me what blues is! I hate to start a diatribe, but I am tired of seeing this.
You've got it right Hobostubs. I appreciate it. :) lol, Right on ---------- Hunger is the best spice.
"Its funny ,around here my muisic friends think that anytime its a 12 bars in E its bluze,No matter what groove or tempo,for instance a fast ,straight time feel,,Any time a harmonica is used in a song its blues,And if they hear a 7th chord played its blues,
Now granterd all those things are used in blues alot of times,But I do look at a blues song different than a bluesy song,But the crowed I grew up with most them dont know the difference."
nailed it Hobo! i like a man of few words who gets to the point w/ out any left turns.:-) ---------- MP affordable reed replacement and repairs.
"making the world a better place, one harmonica at a time"
click user name [MP] for info- repair videos on YouTube. you can reach me via Facebook. Mark Prados
Afro Blue, I agree with you that SRV and the like are more boogie-rock than blues, but does it really matter in the end?
What's important to me is that there's a great wide, deep river of music that came from the meeting of Africans and Europeans in the western hemisphere. Blues is a big part of that river, of course, but so is gospel, ragtime, country, (Jimmy Rodgers and Hank Williams were heavily influenced by blues players), New Orleans marching band music, swing, soul, disco, funk, hip-hop and of course the many musics that we call jazz. That river is going to keep flowing for a long time to come.
@timeistight - "What's important to me is that there's a great wide, deep river of music that came from the meeting of Africans and Europeans in the western hemisphere"
Sometimes I feel like that historical meeting is portrayed illegitimately. Sometimes I feel that the more European side of that meeting is the thing we hear today. You ask does it matter in the end.
Hell yes it matters in the end. Because in the end, what is blues if as much of the "African" part of it is washed out clean enough to be rung up on the radio lines like an old blanket left to dry. I am happy that people were deeply influenced by the blues music and their musics became greater, so on and so forth. That is not good enough to let blues lay to the wayside.
As a person (calling himself a blues musician and) trying to fight for blues music livelihood, I think it is important to make sure I am reviving the right beast. It is important to call myself a blues musician and then play blues, not some version of it.
Out of that great wide river, some of us were sold, some of us were selling product, some of us branched into new creativity within dimensions never extrapolated before; however, out of all those stories told over that deep river of music, all those stories should be represented equally and fairly.
Lol, I hope that answers your question from my side! :) Thanks for asking timeistight. ---------- Hunger is the best spice.
Afro Blue, everything you've said in the short time you've been on this forum resonates with me. We are on the same wavelength. If there's a way to find forum posts by author (don't know if there is) have a look at my posts and you will see what I mean.
You can also look at my user profile, which references two long posts I made in another forum.
Let me throw this in, because I've always believed it: some musicians are blues people through and through (it's in their blood), some are not.
If it's in your blood, everything you do is going to have a bluesy tinge to it, even when not straight blues. Etta James springs to mind. I've been listening to her sing "Joy to the World" this holiday season. It feels like I'm listening to a blues song.
-Blue Yodel No. 9 Instrumentation - Guitar, piano, trumpet. Those are all my ears can perceive. These are items used to compose pretty traditional blues. Later on, the trumpets seemed to be replaced with harmonicas and saxophone. Presentation - The vocals are sang in modest. The form of the music is very similar to St. Louis Blues and West End Blues. This is more or less a jazz composition with vocals taken from a blues. The song falls short of blues through its presentation. Suggestion - What is the music suggesting? This is where things get very subjective. I hear a song that tells us a story about a time. The trumpet appears to be played with feeling (but come on, its Satchmo). It suggests a human experience like many blues suggests.
I want to say it is an early blues song, but to be honest, it really strikes the ear as just jazz. Jazz as a genre seemed to contain many of these types of songs that it called "Blues" but in reality, it seemed to be jazz played in a 12 bar measure including some lyrics. Where's the beat? I can feel the pulse and rhythm, but there is no beat. How hard is the vocalist hitting the song? Johnny is great and all, but I don't feel the conviction. I don't think he was that guy. I think part of the vocalist is to take on the role of an actor or actress in a blues. Not simply sing a ballad.
Notice Louis Armstrong says "I said ok daddy, you sing some blues and I'm gonna blow behind you" which is probably what Jimmy Rogers did accordingly. As the father of country according to Johnny, there couldn't have been a whole lot of examples of country, so he was singing blues or something else until HE MADE it country for whatever that is worth. I can't claim this is blues.
-Whinin Boy Blues Instrumentation - I'm not even going to get started. These are clearly jazz musicians. These are trumpets, maybe a saxophone, a trombone, some piano? Drums. Presentation - A slow 20's or 30's jazz ballad of horns and such. Suggestions - A lazy day. The vocals are more compelling than the last song. I'll give this record that.
This simply is jazz imitating a blues. It is a great jazz pieces and so was the last. I love that music and it sounds great and passionate, do not get me wrong. But it seems that blues may have influenced the artists involved in making this song. But it is more a snapshot of a moment than the actual moment itself. It is more a movie of a time than a live play reenacting the time or a person with a personal story to tell about that time. This music is rich, but it is not blues. It is jazz with a feeling that is commonly found throughout the blues.
Basin Street - Jazz, what the hell is that guy doing around 1:35 This is wonderful music. I love Louis Armstrong, I have this song and I've seen this video and I have previewed a dozen Louis Armstrong albums and most of whatever I could find one him. This is a great example of jazz. This is an awesome example of how blues formed into jazz as another branch much like later blues made early rock. This definitely not a blues.
- Straight No Chaser Jazz, not blues. If a man walked in from the pouring rain, where would he fit into this? How would he be able to join in on the communal experience of their music? A question that comes to mind. That double bass solo is wonderful. Brilliant and I was grooving to it man. So it's music all right. No conviction. I have no idea what the guy is saying. He is speaking way too much. He's just rambling off into that exclusive world of jazz. Jeez, this is why some people dislike jazz. What's going on? They have no idea.
- Beal Street Blues Ella is a jazz singer. No matter how much people want to make her blues. She sings jazz ballads.
- Blues for Alice I don't know this any other way than jazz whether it's Parker or not.
I'm sorry, I love and actually know about all these artists and their songs from my study of jazz, but that's all they sound like to me. Jazz artists and jazz songs. ---------- Hunger is the best spice.
Specifically for the purpose defining blues as solid genre of music, then no. It can't be. Just like a goose can't flap its wings and become a duck. Madonna uses string ensembles sometimes, that is not going to make her a classical musician either.
What bothers me is that people treat blues like salt, add it to something to make something else better. No. ---------- Hunger is the best spice.
Well, I suppose I am not qualified to call it a ballad, but it seems very much like just singing. Soulfully misguided singing. ---------- Hunger is the best spice.
This is still jazz. She is singing the blues. She is feeling it, but the guys around here are still clearly in jazz land and they trump her.
If they backed her like that and then went into their own solos and hammered those notes harder and made it their own, then we'd be talking business. As opposed to trilling over and showing how fancy and delicate they can line a string of notes. Those are beautiful things to accomplish in a song, but for a blues, it seems like it'd need a whole lot more finesse as opposed to exact and accurate execution. Don't you think? ---------- Hunger is the best spice.
Last Edited by on Dec 18, 2012 6:46 PM
This is also why I like harmonica. I feel like a saxophone could accomplish what a harmonica does in most scenarios, but for some reason, they don't. They have chromatic instruments and they just play across the clouds, following each other in high speed fighter jet chases. I feel like here BWH exemplifies hitting a blues solo with a wind instrument should follow like. This is why I feel in some respects harmonica used that way can definitely trump a saxophone or trumpet in that ol' blues way. It seems hard for them to limit themselves to what only words can say. They can show expression, but what about talkin' the talk as well as walkin' the walk. Where's the finesse in the way a note is played rather than just which notes are picked? Stop showing me jazz. I love jazz already. I am joining our jazz combo at my university with harmonica. I hope to learn what those jazz guys do because I blues up Mercy Mercy Mercy far too much. One can hear it. I simply play Mercy like it is a blues instead of the beautiful jazz it is. I bring this up to try to show the reversal role. A jazzy blues instead of a bluesy jazz or whatever. You dig? ---------- Hunger is the best spice.
The way the instrumentation works and the way soloing works by a master B.B. King;
The way vocals and singing works by a grandmaster, Son House;
Don't gloss it up, just tell it! And if you need more, hum a bar or two. If you want to sweeten it, trying singing a note instead of a word.
Mix these two and you get most of what people consider blues today, not just the bluesy stuff. I know I am all over with the time periods, but I promise you that these things have such great things in common that it wouldn't matter what example we choose to pick, as long as it is blues, it will add up to blues. Everyone knows this, that is why the adjective "bluesy" exists. Because one can add the quality of "blues" to something because the blues is so rich. Now I am just preaching, I will end here. Excuse me for my enthusiasm!
@Afro - B.B. King almost never used (maybe NEVER) harmonica on his tunes. He often used a full hand with horns. Listen to "Bad Case of Love" - not even a shuffle - its a rock beat.
By your definition I wonder if this is blues. It sure as hell is to me.
The point is "what's blues to me might not be what's blues to you" but MY blues are just as valid. There is a continuum of music from the most basic Robert Johnson all the way through Monk. There are examples to be found at very single stop along the way. You can't just drive a stake in the ground somewhere along that line and say this is, that isn't.
Greg, you confuse me. These horns are not doing anything extraordinarily different from my BWH example... I think you misunderstood my praise for harmonica as something else. If you go back to what I actually wrote about horns in blues, I am sure that will clear things up, no?
Also... none of the horns are given solos... so that may disqualify this example from half the things I said about horns anyway. Please help me come to understand your meaning sir. :) Thanks! ---------- Hunger is the best spice.
Last Edited by on Dec 18, 2012 8:32 PM
Maybe I misunderstood you. But I went back and edited my post to add "There is a continuum of music from the most basic Robert Johnson all the way through Monk. There are examples to be found at every single stop along the way. You can't just drive a stake in the ground somewhere along that line and say this is, that isn't. " I THINK that is my point...... ---------- /Greg
All right, that I can agree with Mister Heumann. I just find it baffling that other genres can sometimes have those stakes and not be budged. I can definitely agree with you sir. I just figured that something has to define this music because if nothing can in any kind of way, then how do we know when something is not blues. It is a philosophical question really.
If someone lies to one of us and claims that they play blues, on what grounds can we say they don't? If we cannot claim someone does not play blues under any grounds (for we've staked none), then that lets any person playing anything water down the music for which we all here have a deep appreciation. None of us wants to see that I believe. And as a guy just beginning, it seems fitting to find ground. To find the Descartes of blues harmonica or else I am afraid whatever I end up playing won't be blues and I'll be content with it simply because I think it is blues when it is not. It may seem like a personal problem, but on the larger scale, if we let people pretending to play blues influence other artists, then there won't be any blues left perhaps. That depends of course on what you consider blues.
I thought I'd go ahead and try to define it myself, at least not permanently, but based on my own findings with timeistight's examples. It wouldn't be fair to ask everyone to come together and do it if I didn't endeavor to do it once. ---------- Hunger is the best spice.
Last Edited by on Dec 18, 2012 8:43 PM
I'm always interested in this perennial topic, though I know others are heartily sick of it. Afro Blue's comments remind me of a post I read in another forum in 2009. Here it is. I love the line starting, "Blues just isn't in everything":
"May I step in here, a new member who is a jazz musician with a basic and solid grounding in blues?
I know what blues is. Don't you? Don't we all, pretty much? And it isn't rock 'n roll and it isn't hip hop.
Probably it's a lot easier to talk about what blues isn't. To me is just isn't Marshall amplifiers and bashing drummers who've never cared to take the time to learn how to play a shuffle.
Blues just isn't in everything, it's just not everywhere. If we agree that it is then we must also agree that rocks are grass and beef is chicken.
Blues doesn't really stand up to definition, in my opinion, but the question of what happened to blues is valid as far as I'm concerned. As much as I love to play blues I very much doubt that I'd ever try to start a blues band playing my idea of blues music. Who would want it? Who would want to listen to that "old" music?
All the blues bands I've heard lately are really more like rock 'n roll, or they're all dressed up in fifties clothes and haircuts and playing some sort of modern jump blues style. Crowd-pleasing rubbish. Inevitably the guitar or harmonica player will walk out into the audience while playing his well-studied licks.
What happened to the blues? The people who play it happened to it, and people are always seeking the easy route to take, and who can blame them?
It's very difficult to play in the understated yet intense way that the masters did. Somewhere along the line bombast took the place of, well, coolness.
I hope this doesn't come across as too bold for a newcomer here, but blues is something that I care very much about, I started playing it 40 years ago and I'm still learning how to play it. Anyway, I sure don't mean to cast any aspersions. It's just my thoughts on the subject."
I'm sorry MrV but your blue third is 0.7% sharp of the definition given by the manuals of the Reichsstelle für Bluesforschung
It's all a bit ridiculous trying to impose discrete boundaries on anything that is organic and constantly evolving.
Genres of music are nothing more than convenient labels so that in the glory days of vinyl, record shops could put albums into the right rack. Try and apply a Pencil Test to those labels and they quickly become nonsensical.
I hear bluenotes in English, Scottish and Irish folk music but it doesn't make it blues. Trace back the lineage and you'll find the link, but when was the moment that it crossed the "Stake in the ground"?
If someone says they make blues music - then that's a good enough definition for me. My liking it (or not) is an entirely different matter, but it's human nature to try and arbitrarily compartmentalise the stuff we like and exclude that which we don't. Personally I love hearing music that crosses genres and blurs the boundaries and I have to confess to getting a kick out of watching the purists squirm when a hip-hop beat gets thrown in, or some Ricci style garage-punk-funk frankenblues assaults the stereo.
I'm starting to understand where AfroBlue is coming from with his line of questioning. And I think it's an entirely valid inquiry.
If we're approaching it as philosophers, then one way of approaching it is comparative: What are some ways in which people have defined the blues? In my own teaching, I take the blues apart into blues conditions, blues feelings, blues expressiveness, and the blues ethos. Blues conditions are the social and/or personal situations that lead blues feelings, whatever they are, to arise. A wife or lover who cheats on you, poverty, racism, a hurricane that floods you out: those are all blues conditions. Blues feelings tend towards the negative, but there are some positive blues feelings, too: most of them are indexed in "I'm Ready." Blues expressiveness is what this thread seems to be about. We might think that blues expressiveness is only about the music--a 12-bar structure, a way of edging notes with microtones, certain familiar syncopated rhythms (shuffle, breakdown/2-beat, rhumba), an insistence on emotionality--but Kalamu ya Salaam insisted that to define "the blues" only as blues music was a Euro-American misunderstanding. He included blues humor and "stylization of process" (which might show up in dress styles, for example....WalterTore knows about such things) as part of blues expressiveness.
Finally there's the blues ethos: the blues philosophy of life. A stoic persistence in the face of disaster. "Toughness of spirit."
I'm discussing all these things at length in my "Blues Talk" series of videos, which I'll begin releasing shortly after the new year begins.
I do know that jazz has had its own related debates and disputes about what jazz is, or even if the name "jazz" should be used. One thing that both blues and jazz have in commmon, according to commentators such as Leroi Jones, is that they are African American art forms that have been appropriated, coopted, by white Americans (or "mainstream culture," if you want to be less confrontational), so that black innovation and the progressive transformation of the idiom has been continually stimulated by an effort to stay one step ahead--to reconstruct and reclaim the art form. One prime example of this is the emergence of bebop in the middle of World War II, even as "swing"--once the province of black bands out of Kansas City--had become a mainstream American style exemplified by "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" sung by the Andrews Sisters. Bird and Dizzy basically said, "That sweet big-band shit ain't jazz. We need to create something new that the white boys can't play." So they created bebop. And the white jazz critics were merciless. They said, "That's not jazz! That's NOISE!" In fact, a bunch of white revivalists said "Neither bebop NOR swing is real jazz. The only REAL jazz is that early stuff from New Orleans." They retroactively called it "Dixieland." They found Sidney Bechet and dragged him out of retirement. Lots of white guys in boater hats and bowties played the stuff. Traditionalists!
I know that hip-hop has struggled with its emergence out of the black/Jamaican/latino Bronx around 1980 into much broader acceptance, in part through a whitening process (starting with Vanilla Ice!) that saw Eminem achieve mainstream prominence.
But it isn't just black musics gone mainstream, so to speak, that struggle with definitional boundaries. Bluegrass also struggles. It struggles with the legacy of Bill Monroe--a rare instance when a whole idiom seems to trace back to one origin figure. Is "New Grass" still bluegrass?
Country music wrestles with the same issues. Lots of older country music fans wrestle with the "pretty boys in cowboy hats" syndrome. Merle Haggard once famously said (I've got the article in the NY Times), "I'm getting so disgusted with what country music has become that I'm thinking of putting together a little tour and taking my music to black people, who still understand what real country music is about." I'm quoting freely, but that is more or less what he said.
Last Edited by on Dec 19, 2012 5:10 AM
The Merle Haggard quote comes from an article in the NY Times dated August 21, 1994. Here's the quote. (Lexis-Nexis fulltext search is a great thing):
"Some of this stuff I hear sounds like rock-and-roll strained through milk toast," said Mr. Haggard, whose furrowed features and populist sensibilities weren't made for video. "Everything sounds like the same line dance tempo. I don't give a damn about line dancing. There's no soul; there's no feel; there's no story. I'm just a little blacker than that. In fact, I'm thinking of doing some tours through the South only for black people."
