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Who owns the blues?
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gene
286 posts
Dec 01, 2009
5:03 PM
My post about a tap dancing thread was intended partly as humor, but also to point out that the inventors of an art form do not have an exclusive moral right to it. The two posts previous to this one (by Mrverylongusername and Nacoran) have further illustrated that point.

Nacoran,
Don't forget Sammy Davis, Jr.

Last Edited by on Dec 01, 2009 5:06 PM
walterharp
136 posts
Dec 01, 2009
5:57 PM
for what it is worth, in google if you type in blues, the top 5 suggestions that pop up are
blues clues (a kid thing)
blues brothers
blues traveler
blues brothers quotes
blues music

if you just enter blues then you get mostly history related stuff and some clubs on the first page

if you type blues into google image on the first page you get stylized arsty stuff of black people playing blues, a couple blues brothers pictures, a picture of leadbelly

the statement is probably true, if you say blues to many people in the context of music, blues brothers is one of the first things they think of

So that brings a question to my mind. If you wear a nice black suit and expensive hat, and take your harmonica playing seriously, is that a disrespectful caricature or is wearing crummy clothes to perform in more disrespectful to the original blues performers who generally did wear a suit to play?
djm3801
258 posts
Dec 01, 2009
6:17 PM
OK, while we are on the subject, Who owns Bluegrass? Disco? Doo wop? Country? Western? Country and Western? When did I hear my first Mantovani record? Who was the driving force behind the phenomenal rise of Lawrence Welk?
gene
287 posts
Dec 01, 2009
6:32 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/opinion/28SUN3.html

First the Birth of the Blues, Then the Fight Over Who Owns the Baby
By BRENT STAPLES
Published: Sunday, September 28, 2003

The rap impresario Sean Combs, known as P. Diddy, had a huge hit this fall as the lead producer of the soundtrack for the movie "Bad Boys II," which included the hot party tune "Shake Ya Tailfeather." Rap fans would be surprised to know that the title dates back to the Mississippi juke joints of the early 20th century, where black field hands gathered to hear blues music after long days in the cotton fields.

Northern rap artists pride themselves on being urban sophisticates but are playing a version of the music enjoyed by black field workers in the Deep South more than 50 years ago. Stripped to its essentials, "Shake Ya Tailfeather" is a dead ringer for any number of blues tunes by Mississippians, including "Shake Your Moneymaker," by Elmore James, and "Wang Dang Doodle," by the legendary Willie Dixon.

The alchemy that transformed the blues music into jazz, then rock 'n' roll ? and later on into rock music and rap ? did its work in the speakeasies, brothels, juke joints and churches that sat cheek by jowl on the South Side of Chicago in the early 20th century. Among the millions of black people who fled the South in the Great Migration, hundreds of thousands came to Chicago, including the talismanic blues stars Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters, and the bass man and songwriter Willie Dixon, all of whom recorded for Chess Records. Depending on who tells the story, Phil and Leonard Chess, the founders, were either benevolent patrons or rip-off artists who created the paradigm for how to fleece musicians.

The seven-part film history of the blues music that begins tonight on PBS does a decent job of showing how the Delta blues came in with slaves from West Africa and changed the way that the world listened to music, thanks in part to Chess, which handled not just the blues giants, but early rock 'n' rollers like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. But the series scarcely mentions the bitter controversy over how much the Chess brothers and the music publishing company they partly owned exploited these artists. The segment that should tell this story ? the one on Chess itself ? dismisses the exploitation as a figment of the bluesmen's imagination.

The blues music that began in the Mississippi Delta was a distinctly black art form enjoyed by black people all over the South. Visit a blues concert in the North today, however, and you will find that the audience is almost entirely white. The directors of this film series took note of when the audiences turned white but seem not to grasp why. In the segment "The Road To Memphis," B. B. King, now one of the world's most famous blues musicians, painfully recalled being booed by a young black audience in Baltimore in what appears to be the late 1950's, when Little Richard was packing them in with his patented scream and hard-driving piano rock 'n' roll.

The Northern black community's rejection of blues music was partly a matter of aesthetic evolution. But by turning their back on the blues, black urban audiences were also distancing themselves from a rural Southern past that had come to seem backward and shameful to many of them.

B. B. King describes the rejection he experienced during this period as like "being black twice." Mr. King persevered, crisscrossing the country year after year, until blues came back into fashion ? but this time for a white audience that discovered it during the folk revolution.

The real money came into play when British rock bands ? like the Rolling Stones and Cream ? began to rerecord blues standards, paying out millions in royalties that should have gone to the blues artists who wrote the songs. Many bluesmen found that the rights to their work belonged to publishers associated with their record companies.

The lawsuits flew hot and heavy in Chicago, where the big artists associated with Chess Records filed nasty claims charging that the publishing firm owned partly by the Chess brothers had swindled them. Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon received undisclosed settlements and eventually regained ownership of the disputed songs. Howlin' Wolf died while his case was still tied up in litigation ? a lesson to other musicians to settle while they could.

Those interested in this aspect of the story should begin with "Spinning Blues Into Gold: The Chess Brothers and the Legendary Chess Records," by Nadine Cohodas. The film in this series on the Chicago blues, titled "Godfathers and Sons," does not mention the lawsuits. The director inexplicably allows Marshall Chess ? whose father and uncle started Chess Records ? to dismiss the royalties issue in a few, glib lines. Marshall Chess describes the blues artists as childlike men who were interested only in Cadillacs and beautiful women, and who needed what he unfortunately describes as a "plantation owner" to look after their affairs.

The decision to let these remarks go unchallenged was grotesquely irresponsible. Even rappers fresh off the street who couldn't name a blues song if you paid them know that many of the musicians who came before them were cheated. These rappers show up at the record company door demanding deals that allow them to own their works, which allows them to get rich ? and to sing about getting rich. These songs, too, are a legacy of the blues.

Last Edited by on Dec 01, 2009 6:37 PM
The Gloth
191 posts
Dec 03, 2009
2:37 AM
Ok, the old bluesmen got ripped by the record companies, but was it a racial thing, really ? I wonder what treatement was applied to white musicians in those times.

For example, the Rolling Stones got ripped off by their manager and lost the royalties of their first albums. Many other bands had problems like that.
apskarp
71 posts
Dec 03, 2009
5:56 AM
This has been interesting discussion indeed - and so were the articles this thread emerges from.

This is also important discussion in my opinion as when I started to play blues I was asking myself the very same question - am I really allowed to do this as I'm nowhere near where blues was born and raised. I live in Finland, I was born here. Scandinavia is certainly far from Africa and USA.

But on the other hand, I haven't walked the mainstream in other areas either. I have f.ex. forsaken the main religion here, Christianity. But actually it isn't the original religion here but was imported from middle east somewhere in history. I follow a religious tradition that has travelled from India to China to Japan to US to Sweden and finally to Finland. So is it surprising that I find my musical tradition also elsewhere?

Actually I have tried to find my musical roots from ethnic traditions, my great grandfather was a gypsy and thus I have listened lots of gypsy music too. But I don't get any kick from the european gypsy music, instead I find the "finnish" gyspy music much closer to me. It is truly sad music which makes blues sound like cheerful march music. ;)

And what about the history of harmonica? Where did it come from, how did it end up to be distinctively associated to blues? (Well actually here it is associated to traditional folk more, really.)

I think we live in a times where everything is ever more rapidly mixing with everything, feeding from everything. The cultures are mixing, internet, globalization etc are feeding it more and more. Everything is developing and getting influences on everything.

I actually found out few days ago about fellow harpist in Finland who uses overblows in his music. He's actually studying middle-eastern tunes and how to apply harmonica in that kind of music.. :) Here's an interview of his. He had bronze on the last HArmonica Festivals in Europe:

http://www.blueswebzine.com/interviews/jantso_jokelin_jay_sinister_triple_jay_interview.html
The7thDave
17 posts
Jan 23, 2010
8:31 AM


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