Kind of bummed that the only harmonica on the whole thing was Mick Jagger and a pretty weak solo. Mostly lots of guitar wanking, guess that is what the blues has come to. Great players, but seems strange to pay homage to the art form and leave out an essential ingredient.
This discussion got buried in the Mick Jagger thread. Have the guitar players totally taken over blues in the public's eye? I think this started with Clapton et al dropping it, for the most part, when they took up the torch. Allman brothers edited it out, the Dead lost their harp player and never replaced them, and the era of guitar in rock and blues was sealed in.
Actually, if you listen to Muddy Waters records into the 1960s you can hear that as the band got stronger at having everyone play the main riff - piano, guitars, etc., the harp gets pushed farther and farther back.
Maybe that reflects audience preference, or Leonard Chess's weirdness, or just the fact that Cotton often sounded out of tune in that band and didn't play nearly as impossible-to-ignore stunningly as LW before him, or even as well as himself once he left Muddy - Cotton's mid-'60s output far outshines his work with Muddy.
From what I understand, when the blues turned un-cool in the 60´s (to the advantage of Sam Cooke et al) the instrument that mostly, to the black American audiences, represented an outdated Uncle Tom attitude and such stuff was the harp. Not a notion I can "prove", but the decreased prescence of harmonica on records geared to that audience says a bit. L Chess appears to have been quite fond of the harp.
I attend a large and growing blues festival every summer where I live. They've been pretty good about keeping harp players in the mix, I must say, and from what I've witnessed, the crowd always loves the harp-fronted bands. But the main attractions recently have been the guitar guys, which I don't mind if it's Buddy Guy or Robert Cray, who have some subtlety to what they do. But the younger, screaming-guitar guys get boring pretty fast.
Having said that, I watched some clips from the White House concert and loved most of it. Some good harping would have made it better though. ----------
there are still many chicago harp players around and harp was and is a part of chicago blues but if they had brought in billy branch I would certainly want him to play much more than the few riffs jagger blew
It was curious how Jagger got so much stage time. My wife turned to me during his weak harp solo and wondered why they were featuring so much when Shemeeka Copeland, Keb Mo and Derek Trucks got so little. To be fair, harp playing aside, I thought he did a creditable job for most of the night but jeez this was a celebration of the blues.
to me mick's harp was just a disaster. i know he's done better in the past and i was shocked at how sloppy his whole thing was. not just the harp but his dynamics with the band and how poorly the I-IV-V was navigated when he was fronting. to do that poorly on your own song is very rough too. i know sugar blue did the original harp work on "miss you" and while mick- or me or most of us for that matter- don't have sugar's genius, plenty of us could have done better at both commanding the changes on stage and doing much more credible harp parts.
the issue of where harmonica stands in modern blues, this may be indicative. there are dozens or hundreds of guys and gals who could have put harp back on the map from the white house. yet it was really a non-issue. as was the whole keyboard thing. booker t. is a fine ivory man but he got very little spotlight. even b.b. king was upstaged early on by jeff beck. this was over all a poor showing by some people i have admired and respected in the past.
should we start a petition and see if we can get a harp-fronted band in the white house for the next party? ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
"how many musicians would have better represented the blues than mick jagger and jeff beck. it must number in the hundreds...."
And how many would be artists that the 'man in the street' had heard of?
How many of them would have careers without the 60s blues revival?
single figures... and BB was there.
Beck and Jagger might be white, middleclass Englishmen and their career's might have veered away from the blues, but they are an important part of the history.
Without the blues revival of the 60s Son House would have died in obscurity and I doubt that BB would still be selling out arenas or that James Cotton would even be in the business still.
Last Edited by on Feb 29, 2012 3:37 PM
@spider - What trouble might that be? Surely his harmonica playing isn't as bad as all that.
Besides, wasn't it the Stones who hired the Angels in the first place as security at Altamont? (Admittedly a stupid move considering the outcome; I've been told by some who were there that the Stones didn't understand that they were hiring actual violent thugs and not just dress-up posers in leather jackets who would enhance the Stones' bad-boy image.) ----------
If I remember correctly, I think the Stones got a referral to use the Angels from the Grateful Dead. If you watch Gimme Shelter, Mick and Keith saw all hell breaking loose as it was going down, but by then, it was too late, their pleas for "everyone to chill out" fell on deaf ears.
I'm not a stones fan, but I was just kidding, I didn't mean to start anything. But there must have been twenty musicians on that stage Tuesday night, and it annoyed me to see no harp players, but Jagger.
...maybe, all the harp players who we hoped were there, like; C. Musselwhite, K. Wilson, B. Branch, etc etc...WERE already asked to perform. And maybe they saw through the thin vaneer, and simply turned down the obvious political ploy for votes...just sayin.. Pistolcat, great idea...He should open every rally with "Help Me"....LOL!
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Why is it that we all just can't get along?<
Last Edited by on Feb 29, 2012 6:44 PM
There is a story when Blues Traveller opened for the Stones, Mick wouldn't let Popper sit in because, "I'm the harp player". I wouldn't put it past Mick to put "no other harp players" in the contract.
If ever a broadcast needed a very sharp musical director, this was one. Too many of the songs looked and sounded like a pretty average jam night. Jagger was mostly too big for the room. Jeff Beck exhibited all the discipline of a hopped-up, Tuesday night stage hog. The real players: Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks and Buddy could barely find time to catch a phrase and Susan Tedeschi - maybe the best voice in current blues - was mostly relegated to Mick's backup vocals.
Miss You has what to do with the Blues? It's more disco than anything remotely bluesy. Nice idea but terrible execution and a real disaster of a broadcast production.
@Mojokane - Would you turn down the lifetime honor of playing at the White House for the president? Maybe, but I doubt that any of the harp players you named would have done so.
Broadcast concerts from the White House have been going on for decades, election year or no, so I'm not convinced that such events are solely or even primarily cynical ploys to get votes. Even if they were, musicians have an equally cynical motive to feather their caps with having done that high profile gig even if they don't happen to like the current occupant.
"In Performance at the White House" has been produced by WETA since 1978 and spans every administration since President Carter's. The series began with an East Room recital by the legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz. Since then, "In Performance at the White House" has embraced virtually every genre of American performance: pop, country, gospel, jazz, blues, theatre and dance among them. The series was created to showcase the rich fabric of American culture in the setting of the nation's most famous home. Past programs have showcased such talent as cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, dancer/choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov, popular music singers Linda Ronstadt and Alison Krauss, jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk, the United States Marine Band, soul and jazz singers Natalie Cole and Aretha Franklin, leading Broadway performers, and the Dance Theatre of Harlem.
Musselwhite WAS there - he performed with Booker T at a private fundraiser earlier in the day. He personally presented the President with a custom Seydel diatonic. But he was not asked to play at the PBS show. A shame. ---------- /Greg
easyreeder, thanks for the info. My cynicism runs deep. Especially during these stressful times. It's all too easy to blame everything on the exploding Fed, inept and greedy politicians, and big government in general.
But seriously folks...all cynicism aside,
Obama would easily get my vote if he started to play harp...but we'll leave that for Mick. I actually enjoy his style. You know he was around when all the greats were hanging in England, back in the 60's. Surely, he picked up a trick or two.
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Why is it that we all just can't get along?<
Last Edited by on Mar 01, 2012 6:40 PM
@MichaelRubin: "There is a story when Blues Traveller opened for the Stones, Mick wouldn't let Popper sit in because, "I'm the harp player". I wouldn't put it past Mick to put "no other harp players" in the contract."
That may be true and Sir Mick may have some inflated notions of himself that are not so appealing -- but it´s a matter of fact that Sugar Blues plays on at least three released Stones songs. And he is credited.
You´re absolutely corret: there certainly was a blues boom. But not within the African-American group/community/ethnic stratum (or how I shall put it so not to offend anyone): it was almost entirely a white -- and to a considerable extent British -- thing. Blues was rather un-hip in black America at that time -- soul, funk, James Brown and so on had taken its place. But I´m glad ´cause this boom brought a lot of great bands and their inspirations to my atention (although I live perfectly fine without some of the British stuff). Cheers, /Martin PS The folk scare was more in the 40´s/50´s era, I would say but I won´t nitpick.
yes, you are right. Hooker was playing colleges but James Brown was ascendant at the Apollo etc.
right again w/ woody guthrie music and the labor union deal of the 40s. i was thinking Dylan/ Baez but it doesn't matter. have a good day :0) ----------
MP doctor of semiotics and reed replacement.
"making the world a better place, one harmonica at a time"
Um. With respect, I must disagree that Blues was somehow "entirely white" in the 1960s - at least not in Chicago. While many "white" rock bands were applying Blues to their music, there were dozens of solos and groups in Chicago not only achieving prominence but making some of the best music ever heard: Muddy was a regular in Chicago throughout the 60s, 70s and for the few years we had him in the 80s. Buddy Guy and Junior Wells were enormous at the time, along with Otis Rush, the brilliant Koko Taylor, Etta James and more.
While Blues has never achieved the vast reach of Rock or R&B, you couldn't swing a cat in Chicago in those decades without hitting some really brilliant Blues artists.
I think 1962, I discovered Albert King. My first exposure to blues, struck deep.
Later, moving to San Francisco during the Summer of Love, a friend turned me on to Taj Mahal.
So blues was not dormant then by any means, but the mainstream scene was pretty steeped in acid, acid rock etc. Nouveau noise. All in all tho' a creative volcano.
Well, I don't feel TOO bad. There IS SOME hope. I recently played a small Black club in MY neck of the woods (Boston area) and went over QUITE well. I was amazed. I try to do my little bit to reverse these screwed up trends.
