I was hanging out on the Mississippi back porch just now, sipping a Sunday evening drink, and my neighbor's truck had the stereo cranked. My neighbor is a white native of the Delta; he's told me that he grew up on the blues, and he takes a two-week break every late fall to go hunting.
A song came on his truck's stereo and it really grabbed me. I was struck by the way that the lead vocal hammered the blue third very, very hard and repetitively. A country song, clearly, but also, by any measure, a blues song. It works the euphoric, I-feel-good end of the blues, not the I'm-down-and-low side, but it's grounded in an assertion of pride by folks who have been beaten down in the public mind: rednecks, hicks, red-state yahoos. It says "I'm OK, you're OK, just forget the sh-t and come on down and party," which I take as one of the prime motives for blues expression: Let's get the party on.
this "white" singer has serious epicanthal eyefolds which are found in asiatics, native peoples and lap lander finns. possibly melungeon more than likely some native american. id need full cranial and tooth inspection. but definatley something in the woodpile there the "redneck" family doesnt talk about.
I wouldn't consider him a blues guy, but Craig Morgan is a super nice guy and a monster talent. While I've never met him, we have some mutual friends. He is one of the good people.
My point isn't that he's a blues guy, strictly speaking, but that in purely musical terms, the melodies he's singing are drenched with blues.
This is true for a fair bit of contemporary country music. The literary scholar and African Americanist Keith Cartwright (white guy who spent a couple of years in Senegal; pal of mine) would call this the occulted connection between blues and country. We're trained to think that somehow the rednecks and the black folk they're supposed to be lynching in those backwoods would be singing entirely different kinds of music. But the truth is, the music has always had a very big common stock of melodic and attitudinal materials.
In ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, in the so-called "Raftsman's Episode," Huck swims up to a raft in the middle of the Mississipi and the dozen white backwoodsmen he spies on are "patting juba and doing a regular old keelboat breakdown." Patting juba! But lots of mountain whites do the hambone, hambone, and that's what patting juba is. The breakdown, which began as a black folks' dance on the plantation is a transracial frontier dance--it's rednecks in a clearing, black folk in a clearing, everybody in a clearing after the harvest is through and/or the work-day is over.
Occulted means that we've been taught to be blind and deaf about the obvious connections between seemingly disparate (indeed, seemingly antithetical) cultural regimes. We've been led to believe, for example, that country music is "white." Nothing could be further from the truth. All of the important foundational figures in country music (including and especially The Carter Family and Jimmie Rogers) were taught by black performers, or spent time blacking up and performing minstrel shows, or WERE black (Deford Bailey, the first star of the Grand Ol' Opry.) Many black R&B and blues performers listened to, liked, and performed country music. (Muddy Waters told Alan Lomax that he knew six Gene Autry songs when Lomax first encountered him at Stovall Plantation.) Country music has large black audiences in Africa and the Caribbean. There are several notable black country songwriters in Nashville, including Alice Randall, the woman who wrote a satire of GONE WITH THE WIND called, I believe, THE WIND DONE GONE.
And of course, as everybody knows, Howlin' Wolf and many other black performers were big fans of Jimmie Rogers's so-called "blue yodel." Rogers's early hits were all 12-bar blues. T for Texas, T for Tennessee, anybody? It's a blues. It's blues. But of course blues is more than a 12-bar pattern, and blues energies, blues attitudes, show up in unexpected places.
This is one reason why Morgan's video spends so much time watching the crazy redneck country singer try to charm black women and men in the modern office complex. He's trying to say, "I'm you and you are me; I'm YOUR unconstrained id, I'm the full-blooded life you left behind when you sold your soul to this office and moved on up and out." Not surprisingly, the women aren't easily convinced! Bonfire, you say! Mmm mmm mmm. Getting down at a bonfire in the woods with a crazy redneck and his drunken pals isn't most black folks idea of a good time. This video is a fascinating exercise in trying to push past that cliched and quite reasonable uneasiness. What helps make the push work is the blues in Morgan's voice.
Last Edited by on Jun 11, 2012 4:32 AM
yeah adam understood i also see the connection between frog went a courtin, uncle bud, and bo diddley beat. i guess i shouldnt post or speak but this is the second instance where you used the word white where white is debatable. do you mean skin tone or north europid? im just saying there are very few 6th generation or more americans who can actually join the aryan brotherhood after a full DNA test. theres several original styles of american music. blues just happens to be the best and coolest. and anyone who doesnt think so is an imbecile with shit between their ears.
it may be very country, but to me very REAL DEAL ROOTS country as opposed to most of the thousand-dollar hat nashville millionaires. i can see this guy and willie nelson having a beer. ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
I get blues out of this, but I get blues out of Cat Scratch Fever too. I don't get the white people part though -unless you mean using a lighter stick to start a bonfire. That there smells like lettuce.
@Littoral: No mystery here. I like the song! And it's not hard for me to figure out why: the whole damn song is an ode to the blue third and all-night-long partying in a context of interracial fellowship. I thought I'd share that insight.
Billy, you're 100% correct. Most self-styled "white folks" have some black and asian gene-stuff in there. The word "white," used in casual American conversation, is an excellent example of the occulting process--a way of naturalizing something that isn't, in fact, nearly as true and explanatory as most people think it is. I used the word here in part because the video dramatizes Morgan's attempt to transcend the white/black thing through his repeated attempts to charm dubious black females who aren't sure that they want to be pulled into the bonfire clearing. So it represents the attitudinal aftereffects of racism--"Who, me? You must be joking, white boy!"--only to dissolve them in the shared groove, ending with the black male who grins and cracks up as he accepts Morgan's fellowship. The overt dance of "white" and "black," though, masks (and also ultimately endorses) the melodic and attitudinal convergence, the blue-third rapture that is what this song is all about.
Here are some links to other version of the music video:
Being a West Tn native myself.....and jackson tn / Nashville player from time to time, I've had many conversations with the influences of different artist. The late Carl Perkins and Hank Williams jr who I've played shows.....the similarity is that they both had black mentors growing up that taught them how to play the guitar.....mr Carl told me his story of how he started playing blues....but his interpretation of his blues formed as rockabilly only because he played the twelve bars faster with the country influence added......Well it's one for the money, two for the show..is along muddys starts lot hoochie coochie man...etc.......every show we did ...2 of Carl's signature songs were I've got my mojo working and matchbox blues..... Just Played with a west tn rockabilly legend this weekend....Rayburn anthony.....his first sun recording 1959 was a song he wrote called St Louis blues....definitely a strong mixture of black/white influence with west tn . The Muzik Mafia in which I was part of was formed for that purpose...to revolutionize Nashville country as we know it and mix the music up like Cowboy Troy, Big and Rich, Colt Ford...Craig morgan is a true west tn native with these same influences....he was at many mafia shows in the early days of its formation and your seeing this in the song Bonfire..
Last Edited by on Jun 11, 2012 5:57 AM
Ack! {putting on my grumpy old man persona). Here in rural Western Pa.,that kind of country is king. I've heard what is basically the same song in 100 variations. To me,it's cookie cutter Nashville. Skynnrd with more twang and a little fiddle thrown in.
@ Billy:'This 'white' singer has serious epicanthal eyefolds which are found in asiatics, native peoples and lap lander finns' you seem really hung up on race and appearance.
I have epicanthal eyefolds and dark skin; darker than many of my aboriginal friends. Maybe I'm in with a chance at being a blues man, but my ancestry is entirely Scottish/Welsh.
where do you live didj? and what is your last name? no im not hung up on race. as for appearance i find the human face absolutely beautiful i have been drawing and painting them since the age of 4. i also like travel and worked at a hotel in europe where i saw a wealth anthropological information i like cultures i like faces sue me. and i would appreaciate if adam would say africoid, asiatic and north europid. there are actually no white people well maybe albinos but theyre not really hung up on color. as person with tri racial ancestry i have never been hung up about race appearance a bit but if its pretty and female i will surely attempt to mate with it.
@ Billy: far north queensland Australia. As for my surname, I like to keep a fairly low profile on the net (big brother and all that) but it is a typical welsh name that can be traced back for centuries, is hard to spell and even harder to pronounce properly. Sorry for my assumption about your interest in human diversity; I find it interesting too. ---------- Lucky Lester
@Isaac: Fifteen million hits. No, that's definitely NOT white folks blues, but it's fun as heck--unless you're a member of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), in which case you're gritting your teeth through this one. No blue notes at all. But then again, it does owe something to the talking-blues form, one that Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash used.
Toby Keith represents all things evil and skill-less about country music today. Red Solo Cup is the most unintelligent, uninspired piece of shit trash that has ever come out of a speaker.... ---------- Kyzer's Travels Kyzer's Artwork "Music in the soul can be heard by the universe." - Lao Tzu
ok i posted a big long thing didj but read this http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mtnties/physical.html
the huns were turks their closest living relatives are now in yakutia russia. the sakha tribe. there are many turks in europe esp prussia which no longer exists. the laplanders are turul asiatics but lack the anatolian bump. peking man did have one.
