I have not noticed any talk about it around here, but Kim Wilson just released a new album in October called "Blues and Boogie" Volume 1.
Have been playing and enjoying my copy quite a bit, and it's an album of traditional blues, mostly covers. The feel is raw and unpolished - greasy and authentic.
In the liner notes, Kim says that he has a ton of tunes in the can and that this volume 1 is the first in what will be many releases from this collection of material. He says he feels like this is the beginning of his legacy (wow, and I thought he had created quite a legacy already).
Thanks for the tip, it's great. One of my all time favorite singer/harp players.
The album is mixed/mastered in a really narrow mid zone soundstage though (almost mono I'd say), which I guess is a tip of the hat not just to the genre but the recording time period.
Musically it's A1, mono mix wise it's A1...but...
I think they could have really knocked it out of the park by producing it with a much wider spatial mix, and instrument separation. There's some very cool advances in spatial mixing happening now, which doesn't just benefit EDM but any genre of music. I'd love to hear this album more spread out, like you were in the room with them front of stage.
Maybe they'll release the stems(if they have them) for a "Remix Kim" competition;-)
Here's a dry and wet version of a spatial mixing plugin (must use headphones): Dry (no effect - kind of like Kim's album)
In the world of traditional blues, Kim Wilson stands head and shoulders above the rest of the field. There are many other great traditional players and singers (RJ, Mitch, Steve Guyger, Jim Liban, Musselwhite et al) but Kim has reached the undisputed zenith in the genre. Of course, this does not mean that everybody likes him or his style.
Over the years, he has brought albums both with the Fabulous Thunderbirds and under his own name. This project Is evidently something he has been wanting to do for many years. He has assembled a very talented group of musicians, all of whom are very capable of backing him. The current album is solidly in the field of Chicago blues, with almost no nod to the west coast, despite the fact that Kim has often done this in the past and is most active on the West Coast. This album contains multiple references to primarily Little Walter, a style in which Kim Wilson is an absolute master!
These recordings were made over the last few years and there are many more to be released at some point in the future. I believe the musicians simply met in the studio belonging to Jon Atkinson and played the tunes they wanted to play. So if you like traditional and classic Chicago blues, sung and Played by the current best of the pack, this is pretty much as good as it gets. If you are looking for blues rock or for fireworks in general, this is not a record for you.
Some are not totally in enamoured with the sound quality, although this is precisely what Jon Atkinson and co want to achieve. The aim is not modern hi-fi quality but a sound which most favourably represents the traditional feel of the music. Not everyone agrees with this approach and it is not difficult to criticise, but for my ear (with the exception of the track Worried Life Blues Which has been artificially made to sound like it was recorded in the 1930s) the sound is great.
I could understand people criticizing the mixes on this album, but Kim and the guys are playing vintage old-school blues on this one, so the vintage mix fits well within the concept of their project.
As I mentioned originally "I guess is a tip of the hat not just to the genre but the recording time period.".
However I have to disagree with "The aim is not modern hi-fi quality but a sound which most favourably represents the traditional feel of the music"
The mono mix is purely a recording limitation of the time and does not represent the music as such - or "traditional feel", just the way it happened to be recorded at the time based on the constraints of the technology (ingenuity in recording techniques aside eg: chess records).
In real life (gigs & studio itself) people heard this music in full bandwidth spatial audio at the highest fidelity of human hearing. That's what a modern mix will give us.
I love the old skool, but remixing it does not detract from the musical impact at all, it can only enhance it.
Recording techniques can also be thought of as just another form of audio effect too, which is all that mono mixing is.
With a simple DSP plugin for your audio player you can easily switch a mix to mono, giving you both options to listen to it any way you like. ---------- Paul Cohen aka Komuso Tokugawa HarpNinja - Learn Harmonica Faster Komuso's Music Website
Last Edited by Komuso on Nov 09, 2017 2:05 AM
Here's a really interesting article/interview with Kim in the Ventura County Star. He says he has 500 tunes in the can for future Blues and Boogie album volumes, and apparently he's not planning to book any more solo (I think this means blues) gigs:
When, and how, did Little Walter become "traditional blues"? B.B. King, too. Both men were resolutely determined to reinvent the blues in their own time. What is wrong with us, with our era, that some of us keep losing sight of that vital truth?
I love Kim Wilson's playing, and I really love what he did with the T. Birds in from 1979 through the mid-1980s, at a moment in his life when he was perfectly poised to update the blues. I have a philosophical disagreement, though, with anybody who is determined to take Little Walter's legacy and twist it into the small circle of people--the small circle KW talks about in the article--who get it. Walter created a whole world of fans and players who grooved to his UPDATE on the blues, not a small circle.
I like KW's ethic of work though: no bad shows. That's a professional's ethos. High standards are good.
And he's right that a player needs to put his own spin on whatever he does. That's absolutely right.
I guess we have both had this discussion many times. What is traditional, can and should it develop and, if so, is it then something different etc.? Is jazzy blues more acceptable than rocky blues? The list continues obviously.
We don’t have to agree and probably won’t, which is fine.
All traditions started somewhere or developed out of something that was “new” at the time. Christmas is a traditional Christian festival that is based on pagan rituals. The Christmas tree was new at some point when it the Germans spread it through the western world. Now it is simply traditional and part of the accepted. I’m sure the US families in the 19th century would have not thought so - it was probably new and exciting. Wow!
Same in all areas of art (and others) - literature, theatre, art and music.
I am sure John Lee Williamson was a major influence in pre and post war blues between Saint Louis and Chicago. He was new and exciting and took Hammie Nixon’s (among others) ideas to a new level. Exciting and new. Little Walter built on JLW’s ideas and moved the electric harp into a new sphere. Something innovative at that time.
However, time has moved on. Retrospectively we can argue that JLW and LW were such pioneers that they created a new sub-genre. This may be unfair to all the other unsung heroes of the time but I use these two as examples here in the forum. We still recognise that these two guys developed something new but therein lies the rub. Time has led to their style being absorbed, for right or wrong, by blues music culture as THE way of doing something. Little Walter’s sound, his approach, his band etc. It has become a template. Anything that adds, say, hard rock to it, or ska, or heavy metal maybe individually considered great and enriching but it is not the same thing as it was. Natural development maybe. Justified maybe. But different. So what was, becomes the “traditional” and all else a variation, something different. Not less or more. Just different. So the benchmark is the traditional.
There are not many around who play “traditional” blues. Most are either simply bad or have mixed with something else. All absolutely legitimate of course. But when KW states that he has surrounded himself with likeminded musicians, he is referring to those that also want to play the music with the intent of the template, be it DeFord Bailey or John Lee or Sonny Boy or Little Walter. They set the standard which became tradition.
As I said, I’m sure many disagree and that’s fine.
I wrote a long post and forgot to copy it before I published. Gone!
I'll just say this: my attitude toward the blues has always essentially been the attitude carried by African American audiences since the 1920s: show me something new, spiced with just the right amount of the old school. I'm just not interested in retro. I can appreciate "traditional blues," especially when it's well done, because of course SOMEBODY needs to remind us of the old styles. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band serves a function. But it's not as important a function, in my view, as the function of giving us the news--again, spiced with just the right amount of old school.
Kim Wilson is four years younger than Theodis Ealey, a star on the contemporary blues (soul blues / southern soul) circuit here in the Deep South. Although artists like Ealey make frequent reference to the blues ancestors in their songs (Johnny Taylor, Z. Z. Hill, B. B. King), which is to say that they have a vivid sense of the tradition in which they're working, I don't know a single contemporary blues artist with a significant black audience who is interested in making the sort of music that Wilson prefers.
The obvious question is why. One reason, I believe, is because that audience, a contemporary black blues audience, wants to feel free, and it hears freedom in particular kinds of sounds and grooves that leave the pre-civil rights era behind. Kim, Jon Atkinson (who recorded several of the tracks in a seriously retro way), and others who work that bag, on the other hand, WANT sounds that recall a pre-civil rights era. The 1950s is now "traditional blues."
Here's one of Ealey's recent hits. It's not a 12-bar blues, but...well, watch and listen. This is contemporary blues made by an aging black blues star. It reconfigures the blues to speak to NOW. I like that. Wilson has, of course, earned the right to make exactly the music he chooses to make. After 40+ years of playing this music, I have earned the right to point out that the audience for that backward-leaning style of blues is overwhelmingly white, and to ask, after noting that fact, exactly what "traditionalist" means if that is the case.
All I know is traditional isn't a mono mix, that's technological.
@kudzu That Theodis Ealey track is great imo, right from the get go. Got a real Crossroads movie feel in the start riff before the modern phat beat/sound kicks in. Great mix/master too. It's the groove that carries it though, just like "traditional" *cough* blues!
Reminds me a little of what Slo Leak did, mixing up the old and the new:
Regardless of what ya think about Kim’s new CD or his interview, he’s bringing his blues band to Malarkey’s in Long Beach on Dec 3rd for a Cadillac Zack show. See y’all there!
Last Edited by Sundancer on Nov 15, 2017 6:51 PM
Sundancer: KW is a must-see. Nothing that I've written above should be interpreted as saying anything other than that. He was my own teacher's hero. Go to that show.
Adam - nothing you wrote was taken as a negative. KW is a top player and from my limited experience, a friendly cat. I happen to live over the road from the church he was married in. As it happens, I was sitting on our front porch playing my harmonica as the wedding guests began arriving. I went inside and told my wife “you’ve got to come outside and see this crowd - based on their outfits either a musician or a mob Boss is getting marrired today.” I may have been correct on both counts.
Then I got to meet Kim when RJ Mischo (a very underrated player & showman IMO) played a Cadillac Zack show earlier this year. Kim was very approachable and got a good chuckle out of my story. He also played a couple songs with RJ, who told me he was quite flattered tha Kim went out of his way to attend his gig on a Sunday afternoon.
"I have earned the right to point out that the audience for that backward-leaning style of blues is overwhelmingly white, and to ask, after noting that fact, exactly what "traditionalist" means if that is the case."
...seems very nuanced. Does this imply that people who prefer "traditional" blues look fondly back to the pre-civil rights era and therefore hold racist attitudes?
Yeah, I was thinkin the same thing harpoon man. I had a boatload to say, but figured it would only get me suspended, banned or warned..or at a minimum the thread would be locked. For that reason, I will hold my tongue, though we're probably headed down the locked thread road anyway. It's nice to know I wasn't the only person thinking this, harpoon.
Last Edited by Honkin On Bobo on Nov 16, 2017 8:53 AM
Wow, I took it very differently than Harpoon and Honkin: I got the impression Adam was implying that black audiences might have, either conciously or sub-consciously, negative associations attached to pre-civil rights era blues, hence their lack of interest in it currently, which makes some sense.
I got absolutely zero sense that Adam was in any way suggesting that white audiences or musicians somehow had racist attitudes related to their interest in the music.
Last Edited by LSB on Nov 16, 2017 9:05 AM
Short answer this time: LSB is right. I was speaking about why it's much easier for white blues traditionalists to embrace the black music of an earlier era without giving much thought to the sociohistory--and specifically, the everyday oppressions--that accompanied and helped push black creators to produce those sounds way back when.
Many years ago, a black friend of mine tried to set me straight. "Adam," he said, "you have to understand: many of us are embarrassed by the concessions that our parents and grandparents had to make in order to survive in those earlier periods. The music they listened to back then reminds us of those concessions. That's why black people are always coming up with new musical styles, then moving on."
Things may have changed a little in the past five years or so. I sense a new consciousness in the air, coincident with BLM and the highly public racialized excesses of American policing; I've noticed a marked desire on the part of some younger black musicians and journalist/archivists (like my friend Lamont Jack Pearley) to take the older blues back, in some sense. My hunch is that the blues FEELS relevant to some of these people because they find it easier these days to connect with the spirits of their parents and grandparents (and more distant relatives and ancestors) who were over-policed, disrespected, stigmatized. Just a hunch.
Interesting and I agree. Generally we don’t appreciate our own culture and traditions. It takes others. We see this in many countries but in the US it tends to be the white audiences and players that embrace black music, often after it has begun to disappear from the originators. 80s and 90s rap was soon adopted, even hijacked, by white audiences. Same with blues. Adam is right when he says white people are not held back by a history that is not directly theirs. So yes, most “traditionalists” in Blues today are white. And so are the audiences.
Of course that doesn’t diminish its value or importance. Not does it increase the value of the music currently played by contemporary black blues musicians for predominantly black audiences. There is space for all.
PA I happen to love the clip you posted Adam. I didn’t know him but it has some cool vibes. I don’t care whether we call it electronic or hip hop blues - “You can call it Jemima if you want!” :-)
R
Last Edited by Little roger on Nov 16, 2017 10:49 AM
"Nor does it increase the value of the music currently played by contemporary black blues musicians for predominantly black audiences. There is space for all."
In principle I agree with you. Problems occur, however, when the white traditionalists (and other whites) say "Black people don't play or listen to the blues anymore." That's simply not true here in the Deep South. Black people play and listen to a music that they CALL blues; they have "blues radio shows"; they are significantly invested in the word "blues." So quite naturally they are put off by white blues lovers who, generally out of ignorance, end up writing them out of the contemporary blues equation.
It has always seemed to me that anybody who says "Mississippi is the birthplace of the blues" should pay close attention to the music that black people in today's Mississippi listen to and call "blues." You'd be amazed, though, by how many white blues fans listen to that music and say, "That's not blues."
They reason they don't recognize it as blues, even though that's what the black fans and musicians and promoters are calling it, is that black blues people have, in some profound way, left them behind. They've reconfigured and modernized the music.
I'm fascinated by this disconnect. There nothing wrong with liking the older blues styles, but it's a mistake, I think, to leap from that preference into a situation where you're saying, "Black people in Mississippi don't know what the blues is. They're calling stuff blues that's just not BLUES." That's a problem.
I appreciate the last two posts, kudzu. I have a much clearer understanding of what you were saying in the posts above those.
EDIT: After further reflection I deleted a section here which questioned who had the right to be the arbiter of what is called blues and what isn't. I felt nothing productive could come from it, and had the possibility to inflame the thread, an outcome I certainly didn't want to bring about.
Last Edited by Honkin On Bobo on Nov 16, 2017 12:23 PM
@Adam: That makes sense that black people might hear traditional blues and have a visceral reaction/association with worse times in the US.
Styles change over time, and "blues" covers a lot of territory and sub-genres, so it would be ill-informed for anyone to generalize that black people in 2017 are not into blues music.
Finally, kudos to all for having a race-based conversation that didn't go off the rails (hopefully I'm not speaking too soon, hahaha)!
