I don't know if you guys have explored the Alan Lomax online archive, especially the videos. I've just started to drill down, and there's some stuff posted on YouTube that you'd never find unless you accidentally stumbled across it.
Here's the homepage for the "Mississippi Delta and Hill Country (1978)" collection of videos, which contains about 100 videos:
And here's one particular video of a guitar player patting his foot in very steady downbeats, playing some old-school blues. Several women start to dance to it after a while, doing vaguely Charleston-derived steps, and then somebody starts clapping on the upbeats to make what I call a two-beat groove. It sounds uncanny to me, and that's because it's the foundational groove of the OMB playing that I do. It's very simple and very compelling. It shouldn't be hard to do, but it's hard to get that effortlessly rock-steady groove. When you get it, though, it anchors everything you play over it.
Anyway, this is some good basic blues for dancing, and that's how the music functioned, way back when. And it's important to remember that.
Here's one I've posted here before. Great groove:
Here's RL doing a Delta blues. But wait: He's a hill country bluesman! That's right.
Here's Sam Chatmon, one of the original Mississippi Sheiks, playing and singing one of their biggest hits, "Sittin' on Top of the World." The video has 118 likes and 1 dislike. As one of the leading commenters wrote, "What the hell was the 1 dislike expecting?"
Its a basic "4 0n the floor" as we drummers call it. Could also alternate RLRL in a walking pattern to accentuate the backbeat Not as easy as it looks- I do it all night effortlessly when playing drums alone but have a tuff time when playing harp or guitar at the same time.
That dance those gals are doing looks like what a dance called the mashed potato from the early 60's. ---------- Wisdom does not always come with old age. Sometimes old age arrives alone.
Hope this is related...wanted to put it in the Social Function thread. Backstage on Wynton and Willie jazz/blues show. Wynton gives examples of beats in blues and jazz:
