Defining "art" is even more difficult than defining "sport vs. game". You think you can, but you really can't avoid (and by "you" I mean " most folks) defining it through your own tastes. My definition of art came to me while studying 5 square canvasses each painted a different solid color, at the Guggenheim several years ago. Here we're these " paintings " that had required no study or skill beyond that of anyone re-doing a bedroom. I was infuriated that I'd come to see "art" and through my own filter that says " you have to study the masters", I dismissed the exhibit as " not art". However, somebody thought it was art enough to hang it up, and so I thought about it for a while after. I came up with the following definition: "art is communication intended to create emotion". I was angry. It was art. "The people danced and were happy with a cover band. It was art. ---------- 12gagedan's YouTube Channel
@AfroBlue: I agree with your grandma about the video you posted above, which is why--and this is your mistake--I didn't post it. Take a look at the channel it was posted on. It was a mediocre performance; if I'd had the video, I wouldn't have posted it.
I posted the following video, and I'm happy to be judged by it, as a harp player trying to reinvent himself as a one-man band who had been singing the song for roughly six months when I sang it here (which was two months longer than I'd been singing it in the video above). My learning curve is steep, but I can't perform miracles and sometimes the seams show through. They're somewhat less obvious below:
Tell your grandmother that I approve of her taste! She knows how to pick out the sucky videos. :)
As for you and your claim that "all we can do is encourage": if that's true, why did you show up on this forum and boldly start a thread in which you asked for "brutal critique" of your own playing? Most players don't have the nerve to ask for honest critique that might include strong negatives--yet you explicitly requested that. But in this thread you're defending Katona from precisely that. Do you think that a talented and highly visible player like Katona, who posts videos of himself playing, should be immune from negative commentary? There seems to be an inconsistency in your position.
Last Edited by on Dec 16, 2012 8:41 PM
Defining and critiquing art is probably the most difficult thing as who is to say without direct knowledge what the intention was or is. Or is it total bullshit.
A certain shark suspended in a tank of formdehyde raises the interesting debate of is it art or shoving a shark in a tank and giving it a pretentious name like"The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living". The further debate is where the shark decayed over time and it's being replaced. Is it even the same piece anymore? It is like its own cover version now.
That piece is one of the most controversial and polarizing things that is either taken seriously or as a total joke. One thing to be said is Damien hirst does evoke an emotional response. He did something anyone could have done given the resources but "he did it first"
Music is so similar though and defining great music isn't a set of rules as the genre and approach are radically different. You can't compare little Walter, the Melvin's, swans or ymgwie malmstein by the same criteria.
Then taking it to another level and deciding how to rate a cover band to scale it's worth. How much credit should we give the Rolling Stones to contributing to what we consider rock music. When my feeling is the beginnings of the British blues influx was a huge chess records tribute orgy in the 60s. How much music was plagiarized or covered by white musicians from their black predecessors.
Ps cellphone spell check makes me angry.
Last Edited by on Dec 16, 2012 11:22 PM
Who's to say its not the spirit of Stevie Ray reincarnate in this lads body?; we all know he must have done the deal with the devil to be able to play the way he did. ---------- Lucky Lester
@JD: I'm intrigued by your perspective, which is harsher than mine but is grounded, it seems, in a more Austin-local perspective on the long shadow and magnetic pull that SRV's music has cast on that live performance scene. It's clear that you get the basic "this is a little weird" insight that led me start this thread. But I"m also grateful to others, including AfroBlue, who have given strong pushback against that (apparent) insight. At bare minimum, it should be obvious now that the title I chose for this thread was an overstatement designed to provoke thought and argument. The "dead end" assertion was an overstatement.
Tribute bands are what they are. They have their purposes, and they can--as Iceman makes clear--be great training grounds for musicians. As some have argued persuasively, they can even be places where superb musicians find deep and sustaining personal satisfaction and deliver powerful satisfactions to live audiences.
It's much less clear to me that tribute bands can produce valuable recordings worth our time and attention, but perhaps they can. (It's hard for me to believe, for example, that an album of SRV covers, no matter how well done, is capable of inspiring some teenage would-be guitar hero to model himself on Tommy Katona rather than SRV himself, but perhaps TK is just fine with that.)
There was a recent article in The New Yorker in which the lead guitarist in a Grateful Dead tribute band left, I believe it was, to join the Dead in the aftermath of Jerry Garcia's death.
The impulse among musicians to honor the dead through deliberate homage is a noble one, surely. Jazz guys do this periodically, and the blues world does this, too. Musicians gather in a special concert, such as Amanda's Roller Coaster, and everybody contributes a song or two in the general style of, or echoing, or otherwise conjuring the ghost of, the dead, honor-worthy musician. The great musicians of the past inspire us to emulate them, and that's good. Whether you view that as a transcendent good or as an instrumental good that has its place but can be taken too far is an important thing to debate.
Tommy Katona arguably takes the emulation-impulse about as far as it can go. He's the limiting case, you might say. It's hard to do the homage-thing more passionately or convincingly--heck, brilliantly--than he does. I thought that it was worth thinking critically about what he has achieved. I don't wholly approve of it--nurse-shark that I am--and I can't hide that fact. Regardless, I value all the push-back that folks here have given me, and I think the larger issue was worth exploring.
Last Edited by on Dec 17, 2012 5:29 AM
@kudzu "It's much less clear to me that tribute bands can produce valuable recordings worth our time and attention, but perhaps they can. "
I feel tribute bands are more enjoyed for a live show than recordings.
After all, why listen to a band recording trying to sound like another band when it is easy to listen to the original recording?
(although, occasionally, tribute recordings are good when the artist or artists put their own spin to it - for instance the House of Blues boxed set of blues artists doing Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Rolling Stones covers) ---------- The Iceman
For what its worth, I think there is more money, especially in Europe, in a tribute band than playing your own music. I met a guy who filled stadiums in Europe with his Hendrix tribute band.
Folks,shouldn't it be obvious - at least to us educated forum members here, that If a Tribute Band puts out a record, it would be "strictly for their rabid fans" and not for snobs like us.. .Did you guys think this through at all?
Last Edited by on Dec 17, 2012 5:56 AM
Some people choose music as a profession. Tribute act can make a lot of money relative to original bands. There are Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, Prince, Ozzy, and Willie Nelson acts getting paid thousands a night to play to 300+ people every weekend.
My understanding is most of those guys do their own thing during the week.
Successful tribute bands are one of the best ways to play professionally right now. If I had to choose between making a full time living playing music by either playing in a tribute band or by playing originals, I'd be in a tribute band. If I had to rely on gig money to survive vs being well respected by my peers, I'd take the money.
At the end of the day, the admiration of your peers means very very little to a successful and professional musician. In fact, if your fan base is largely your peers, you could make the argument that you are on the wrong track.
I was going to ask, "How many gigs in the book, how much per night?".
Playing a recognised set, note for note covers, how is that different from any number of working bands at corporate functions/weddings etc.? It's hard work too, if you sell yourself as a tribute, people want it played like the record, no ad libbing.
If Tommy is paying to do this as a hobby, rather than earning money at it, then that's a little creepy, but hey, it's a free world...mostly...
@ JD, Sorry, I'm really working on it - I even managed to tread on some cracks in the sidewalk on the way to work this morning and whaddya know, nothing bad happened! :-) - but my OCD forces me to point out Tin Pan Alley is a Robert Geddins song (also wrote Mercury Blues & My Time After a while).
I saw SRV 7 times just because he was playing here ,and he played his a$$ off.very enjoyable.i always looked at him as a emulator more than a creator but he still played above the the high tide mark...Now jimi Hendrix who i saw, took blues into another realm,and i`ve heard no one take it into that space since...if some one come up and played hendrix even 80% that soul i`de pay and go see it !!!
@kudzurunner - What else could I have expected from an English teacher. I knew you were just trying to offer food for thought, or how else would this forum be any fun if we just offered yes or no situations. This was indeed a fun one.
But please don't get me wrong! I've been reading things on this forum for a little while now. I came out asking for Brutal critique in the expectation that it would be brutal. Some terrible things in my opinion have been said here and elsewhere. But here is why I am not contradicting myself; I wouldn't say such brutal things myself.
How do you expect people to go on about doing what they love if one is so harsh about it? Now you weren't all that harsh in a sense simply because it was all hypothetical, I don't know if anyone here really believes you to an extent. But being brutal to someone who is learning is not acceptable. That is bullying. But it's been happening for so long that we think it is O.K. Do you think that Junior Wells was better off because Sonny Boy Williamson II cussed him out as a kid? He may state it made him better, made him want to prove Sonny Boy wrong or all of that crap. But if SBWII gave him the lessons he was asking for, he would have went off and continued to play and became just as great without that heartbreak story in his pocket. Hell, might have even tributed to SBWII like Katona to SRV, granted he'd still have his own style by far.
My point is, I personally am in the live for positive reinforcement, not off the cuff punishment. Being brutal to learner is punishment. You can't learn something if you're being punished both left and right.
If a lot of people sat around Katona saying man, you're great. I encourage you to do your own stuff. Then maybe he'd crawl out of his SRV hole and try to dabble a little something. We'd tell him, that's a good start whether it is good or not simply because it is a start, and then when he gets serious, our critique gets more serious. Or else we are wasting our time and his.
Now given, if I come on for brutal critique, find some positive encouragement as I did, and then come back here and post the same videos with the same mistakes, it's punishment time! ;D
Katona is a special case. Dude is obviously not new at playing guitar; however, it is what it is. We may cry now about him not doing his own stuff, but then we he does, we may be crying about how terrible it is. Some people here have already said similar things to that of which I just stated.
My point in the beginning was, you're gift is that you can pop out your own stuff Adam. His gift is that he can catch a person's moment of originality and recreate that moment. You're a butterfly and he is a net. Why is his gift any less than yours? (Don't worry, I know you are not necessarily saying his gift is less, but by asking this question, I hope to also provoke thought. Are we critics or haters? That is a whole debate in itself I presume no one will try to tackle right here right now.)
If by tribute we assume that we are trying to achieve an as near copy then the means to critique the performance is by how accurate it is. If it just a cover (ie all the correct notes) then the critique would be of the arrangement. If it was the original it would be the actual material that would be under scrutiny. Trying to judge each category by the others merits would be wrong.
@ Frank, I think a lot of it borders on hating. There is however something that doesn't sit right with someone recording themselves for profit exact copies down to inflections and every other minute detail.
Performing it or making videos seems more acceptable from my own point of view but recording it audio only seems like plagiarism. Despite my defense of tribute bands and copying to learn and doing covers.
I have a bit of a hang up when it comes to tribute tours of living artists and recording full albums with little to no perceivable difference to the original. Some covers and cover albums are fantastic but the issue is where does one draw the line between tribute and ripoff?
None of us can even begin to comment on the notion that he is selling himself short. Everyone plays for different reasons be it to sound just like their hero or to be as original as possible or to make a lot of money. How about the dream of doing lots of drugs and living the rock and roll life style.
Do we attack people who just play standards as close as possible to the original. The amount of work that goes into playing Django Rhinhart material flawlessly is significant and yet no one is accusing all the bands that names start with the words " hot club" of selling themselves short.
A pianist who dedicates tremendous effort to understanding and performing Chopin is considered normal or even a legitamate thing to do.
I think more stigma is attached here due to SRV being what he chose to model his playing after. If he had strived to play and or cover the work of fahey or basho would he be under the stigma of wanting to be like Stevie.
Last Edited by on Dec 17, 2012 10:05 AM
@JD Hoskins- Not sure of which time frame you speak but in the 9 years I've been in Austin I've never seen anyone refused entry to a jam or anywhere else for showing up in a big hat. Hell, this is Texas, home of the big hat, and this is Austin, home of all things weird. I've never seen anyone at anytime wear any Stevie regalia other than the notes guitar strap. I suspect the story you heard is an urban myth.
@Willspear - Proof of your point. I made a very good living in Europe fronting a Blues Brothers tribute act. For seven years we played everywhere from shoe store openings, corporate events and even brothels to large festivals and soccer stadiums. However, we were different. We never tried to BE Jake and Elwood. The act was based on a theatre piece I wrote, "On a Mission From Jake", where I created two characters, Little Sonny Cotton and Otis P. Morganfield. Cotton and Morganfield are visited in jail by the spirit of Jake Blues who decries all the wannabee fake Blues Brothers and sends our two heroes on a mission to defend the good name of the blues.
To cut a long story short, I sent a copy of our CD and the story to Dan Aykroyd who wrote back in character as Elwood giving us his full endorsement and an offer to play the CD on his nationally syndicated radio show. There were Blues Brothers acts which received endorsements from Belushi's family but as far as I'm aware we were the only BB act to receive a written endorsement directly from one of the Blues brothers. His enthusiastic approval was in large measure based on the fact that we were not trying to be clones but were truly a tribute.
We went to great pains to not allow ourselves to be called the Blues Brothers or Jake and Elwood either in publicity, posters, or even introductions. We had suits which were similar but were done in sharkskin maroon instead of black. We played songs that they had done but we had our own arrangements. We did a lot of audience participation, probably more than Jake and Elwood did and we had bits they never did. Most of these came out of my own warped imagination.
The point of all this is that I believe it is possible to be creative within the context of a tribute act. From the beginning I did not want to be Jake and Elwood and I know we achieved this while still obtaining a lot of commercial success. Success that allowed me to pursue my own career as a singer, songwriter, and musician and do it on my own terms. I'm also, as you might have guessed, extremely proud of what we created, an original work based on two icons. ---------- LSC
Last Edited by on Dec 18, 2012 9:56 AM
"Joe Carter sounded an awful lot like Elmore James. Forrest City Joe sounded a lot like John Lee Williamson. Good Rockin' Charles and Wild Child Butler sound an awful lot like Rice Miller. Little Willie Anderson sounded an awful lot like Little Walter. Big Daddy Cade is a gifted guitarist, who has chosen to be a BB King imitator. Keisha Wright does a downright creepy imitation of Tina....." and on and on.
personally, i don't consider SRV blues. it's like blues rock to my ears. a different genre. even buddy guy falls into it sometimes..but HE is allowed cuz he's Buddy Guy. at least once SRVs brother Jimmie accused him of sounding like Robin Trower. oh well.
Yah Know, there are markets for extremely well done art forgeries. also counterfeit bills and coins. the Smithsonian Intsitution has beautiful hand painted $100 bills on display. it is REAL art.
if we were all blessed, we could do our own thing and make it sound good. (making it sound good is the hard part). we are not. i got my own thing. it's on my harmonica repair videos only. i can actually listen to it. i got lucky. we should all be so lucky... ---------- MP affordable reed replacement and repairs.
"making the world a better place, one harmonica at a time"
click user name [MP] for info- repair videos on YouTube. you can reach me via Facebook. Mark Prados
There's a record of Townes van zandt songs, called the poet. That's a tribute, but a different kind, not a copycat tribute. Some great recordings. Covers aren't necessarily tributes, you might love the song. Or, you might admire the performer and do the song from that perspective. Or a combination. Imitators aren't necessarily tributes from that angle either, they might just be making a quid. I'm pretty crabby every time I see that Dirty Deeds song in my iPod, because I bought it thinking it was ACDC, and they tricked me with their tricky name. I thought I was buying an akkerdacca track off their dirty deeds album, not a track by a tribute band who had recorded copies of their songs. Compared with willy nelson's version of Tvz, you know, it's a whole different bag. ----------
Those who love seeing tribute bands have lost their love of music, it seems to me. The Katona clip is entitled "how to play like Stevie Ray Vaughn" , an irony since the miracle of Vaughn is that he is one of the very few players who has been saturated, stylistically , by Hendrix who emerged as a distinct and original voice all his own. The point of the clip should have been, in my unsubtle opinion, about how SRV came to sound like SRV . The lesson from that discussion should be how learning musicians can focus on basics and the mastery of their influences only as a means of producing a sound that is memorable, fresh, and not merely competent simulacara . I remember an interview with Paul Butterfield in Downbeat from the 60s where my principle and greatest influence Paul Butterfield, was talking about his influences, going to Chicago blues clubs, getting to sit in with the house bands and head liners, and I remember also something that I can only paraphrase. Still, this point has stuck with me ; Butterfield shared that he was greatly influenced by the likes of Little Walter, James Cotten, Sonny Boy Williamson but that he wasn't able to learn their styles exactly, that couldn't perfectly replicate their riffs, note selection, or effects. But these geniuses inspired him all the same that he kept playing, kept playing along with the records and on the bandstands when he could and learned the grooves and the feelings in ways that made sense to him. The result is evident in the music he recorded and performed, that being one of the most profound contributions in the development of blues harmonica style. As much as I am obsessed with the singular genius of Butterfield's legacy, I don't insist that the harp players I listen to sound like Butter or that they play his licks with mechanical perfection. Music, especially improvised music in the African-American tradition, is the "sound of surprise", a phrase coined by jazz critic Whiteney Balliett. Blues, jazz, any music worth listening to is not a rote demonstration of another person's art. It dishonors the original artist by turning his or her work into fossils and plays the audience for fools. Ted Burke http://youtube.com/watch?v=-VPUDjK-ibQ&feature=relmfu
If it's a tribute then by definition it should be a rote demonstration and judged for competency and accuracy not artistic interpretation. If they just played the music the way they felt, then it would be "improvised". The playing of music shouldn't be a competitive sport, but just demonstrating technique is not without worth. If you went to see a SRV tribute you'd want to judge the worth by how accurate the SRV playing was, not how well he made it up as he went along.
I don't think that's the definition of tribute at all. If its a tribute its done with deferential or reverential intent. That doesn't mean the same as rote demonstration. ----------
You'd hope it was done with deferential or reverential intent, but it may be done for simply for egotism or cold hard cash. I don't think there's any exact definition on that point. To me that is what this thread has been all about. Does an ability to mimic another player have any worth?
Yeah ok, I'm talking about a tribute act rather than a copycat. I'm saying its not the same thing necessarily, and the word 'tribute' has a meaning which should be used correctly. So you know, as I'm mentioning the TVZ tribute album, no one is trying to sound like him on that record, everyone does his songs sounding like them, but its a tribute to his songwriting you dig. But then a cat like John waters dresses up like John Lennon and tours his show 'glass onion', and that's a tribute act of a different type. I don't pay much attention to copycat bands so I can't name many, but it seems to me some are rather like drag acts, just dress up shows that are more parody than tribute. All of which is probably straying from the point of the OP soz ----------
If all you are playing is rote recitations and the person you are copying is dead, what more is there? How do you grow from there?
If you are copying a living artist at least you may wake up next week and find a new album. I'd get bored. That's not to say I wouldn't do a cover or two as true replications of the original (I used to do a pretty decent Kurt Cobain) but then I'd want to incorporate what I'd learned into my own music and move one to stealing from a someone else. What is that old saying, 'Good artists borrow, great artists steal'. I'm not going to pretend to be a great artist, but I'm going to at least try to come up with something new. Creativity is a muscle that needs to get worked to get stronger.
But that's my thing. I want to create. That's what gets me excited. If an artist is gone, there is something to be said for hearing a tribute that sounds like them. If no one did it you'd never get to hear the way it was 'supposed' to sound live. Sure, you could listen to the recording, but where are you going to get a bar full of people to sit and listen to a recording with you?
I've got to say,
This cover puts me into a frenzy. It's possible he sounds more like Kurt than Kurt did.
"Those who love seeing tribute bands have lost their love of music, it seems to me."
don't suppose you're overgeneralizing a wee bit?
years ago, before i started playing, there was this local band called Hoppkorv. they were a Hot Tuna tribute band, but specifically paid homage to their "rampage years" from '75 - '78 or so.
we saw 'em a couple of times, and it was great fun. we got to hear a bunch of songs and a style of playing (wild, over the top electric tuna) that you couldn't hear anymore, as the actual Hot Tuna had moved on to acoustic music.
it wasn't note for note kind of stuff, as jamming was an integral part of that music. but it was a pretty faithful re-creation of an experience that was otherwise long gone. i didn't think much about the artistic integrity, i just enjoyed it for what it was.
It's important to underscore again what the crucial question as to "tribute" to an artist v adopting someone's style, licks, mannerisms as influence and then "adapting" those influences. "Adapting" is the next phase, I think, where the rules of the game that have been learned from one's mentors get tweaked, altered, added on to, or set aside completely as one discovers their own personality in the form. The early white performers of black American blues--Butterfield, Musselwhite, Canned Heat, Johnny Winter, Mike Bloomfield--were considered by many in their initial recordings as imitators and mediocre aspirants to a tradition they had no right messing with. I and others, though, vigorously disagreed and considered what was going on with these artists , in large part, a needed and briliant extension of blues music as a vital and relevant music. While these artists had gone to school on the recordings of their masters, learning nuance, phrasing, timing, it wasn't long before the records of Butterfield, Musselwhite and Canned Heat (especially Canned Heat) expanded their stylistic vocabularies. As was the case during this rich period, bands were boldly eclectic and often times came up with splendid blendings of variant traditions, whether blues, straight ahead jazz, raga, classical, bluegrass. Not everything worked musically--there was a pretentiousness during the time I noticed as a teen ager--but the result, finally, was that blues had been reinvented by a new generation that had discovered the old stuff and sought to make it relevant to their own lives. This was a case where one could detect , in large measure, where an artist got their inspiration and yet also bear witness to how a younger artist took somene else's aesthetic and made their own; you get to see how tradition works, how one aesthetic evolves into a another. This is the same sort of excitement I seek when I listen to new blues artist: what new verve are you bringing to the tradition you have placed yourself in? "Tribute", these days, has come to mean Memorex perfect sound-alike performances--there was a local band in San Diego called the Steely Damned that performed music by....well, you guessed it. They were all superb musicians who had decoded the intricacies of Dan's recordings and performed as near perfect replication of the original as I have ever heard, yet it was oddly sterile. It seemed an act of arrogance than tribute, these perfect renderings being like that one socially-retarded jerk some of us might have known in school who memorized passages of Cattalus in the original Latin and recited it for no good purpose other than to convince you of his intellectual supierority. Beyond amusing the middle aged singles during a speed dating happy hour for a paycheck, I cannot see the appeal of this. ---------- Ted Burke http://youtube.com/watch?v=-VPUDjK-ibQ&feature=relmfu
Well, it was pretty cheesey. Fortunately, they were not charging a cover charge, but that debunks the big money in tribute band theory.
Throughout the first set I felt like I needed to leave immediately, out of respect for the dead, and go home and take a shower. Tommy has invested as much time in wardrobe and mimicking stage movements as he has in copying guitar licks.
For the second set I relocated a little closer to the stage and was rewarded with a big wood column which obstructed my view of the guitar player so that I was spared the visual aspect. What I heard was someone playing SRV songs without the jaw dropping magic that was SRV's guitar playing, which seemed to make Tommy's stage show all the more perverse.
Later in the second set a more center stage table opened up so I relocated again. By this time I was on my 3rd beer and feeling a little less skuzzy about participating, I only had $9 into it, and the crowd was having such a good time. He was really very well received by the audience. It was starting to sound pretty good to me and I was having a good time mingling with the drunks, but towards the end of the second set he got into a little bit of call & response with the (guest) keyboard player and he had nothing to respond with. The keyboard player would lay down something colorful and Tommy would respond with 3 or 4 measures of the song. This went back & forth 2 or 3 times too many and then they decided to move on. Coincidentally, that's about the same time I decided to move on.
I was hoping to catch the last set of a Skynard copy band playing at another bar down the street.
Last Edited by on Dec 23, 2012 4:28 PM
My two cents... I grew up a HUGE Stevie Ray Vaughan fan, long before I played harmonica (I started as a vocalist and bassist). I played football in college, and during two-a-days a friend came up to me and told me that SRV had died in a helicopter crash. I was a zombie during afternoon practice, and that night after dinner I went back to my dorm room, put on "Riveria Paradise" on repeat, and cried while I listened to it over and over.
Today, I can barely listen to SRV. Why? Because of all the clones who decided that was the only way to play guitar. Has nothing to do with SRV's music itself, which I still -- deep down -- think is fantastic. These others ruined it for me. I got exhausted seeing them at jams, or clubs where I played on other nights.
So -- for ME, and I know that YMMV -- clones cause more harm than good, regardless of how good their intentions may be. Has nothing to do with their talent or lack thereof... in fact, the more talented ones are the ones who cause the most damage.
How many people would watch an actor who did his best to adopt George Clooney's every mannerism and stylistic element, or Brando's? No one.
Talent is precious. Use it wisely.
Last Edited by on Dec 24, 2012 6:33 AM
Iv'e seen 2 tribute bands, well 3 seen the Beatles Tribute twice...Those three shows were all critically acclaimed and NOT in a bar...But in the same venue were you would see the Symphony Orchestra perform in a delightful huge auditorium. You needed to buy tickets for these concerts, no freebies here :) Most of the time you will get what you pay for!
Ted: That's a really interesting and valuable narrative you've laid out--serious critical thinking about the blues, and white blues in particular, during the 1960s. I happy to agree with you: the white artists of that time were, in their own ways, very creative in the way that they interacted with the African American blues tradition.
So what happened? You know from my many posts on the subject here that I'm not a fan of recreationism, which its advocates often call traditionalism. Why did that form of blues performance swell to encompass so much bandwidth?
Here's a thought: in the 1960s, blues performance was still so new to so many white musicians that few of them were CAPABLE of truly performing in a black style, so they let themselves and their blues be caught up in the general electrification and acidification of the hippie movement. There was a freedom to experiment: the white players COULDN'T be "black," so they took the music and did something new with it. Later on, in the mid-1970s, there was a retrenchment and rapprochment between Old Black and Young White, exemplified by Muddy Waters and Johnny Winter on the one hand and....well, Muddy Waters and the Fabulous Thunderbirds at Antone's on the other hand. Crucially, there was also a West Coast thing centered on George Smith, with Piazza, Estrin, Gary Smith, all those guys. White blues players began to seriously study the music and began to truly master the deep stuff--sonically, stylistically--even as they gave up, or actively rejected, the idea that they might push the envelope.
The one white American artist of the 1960s and early 70s who strikes me as having truly mastered the deepest blues--at least the singing part of it--is Bonnie Raitt. But Butterfield was close. Actually, Greg Allman had it. Joplin was something else altogether.
Anyway, I'd be interested in your take on this.
Last Edited by on Dec 24, 2012 6:03 AM
I got into John Hammond (son) about 2 years ago and started listening to his first recordings on up to more recent ones.
Here was an example of a white guy struggling w/the blues at first - obviously he loved the music, but had to evolve a bit.
It is amazing to hear the evolution over his first few recordings - white guy awkwardly trying to sound bluesy/black - and eventually getting there in his own right.
His later recordings are excellent.
I believe this was during the early Bonnie Raitt period as well.... ---------- The Iceman
Last Edited by on Dec 24, 2012 6:03 AM
