Since I believe that every harp player needs to make at least a token attempt to sing the blues, and since my own blues aesthetic has been partly shaped by jazz players and singers, I thought it might be worth starting a thread on blues singers from the swinging, jazzy side of things--at the opposite extreme, in some sense, from the Wolfs and Muddys.
Joe Williams is one of my favorites and this is as good a place to start as any. What strikes me, apart from his incredible smoothness and control, is how natural and yet tricky his line-placements are relative to the bar line. He's always either anticipating or delaying, and then he finds seamless ways of catching up or slowing things down. It's easy to miss this unless you keep a steady beat with your hand or foot and try to sing the lyrics yourself, phrasing them in the most obvious ways. You'll find that Joe is either ahead of or behind you:
Jackie Ryan is a gem of a singer. This moves from 12-bar to a bridge, back to 12 bars. It's more vocalese, and I can't say I've been influenced by it. I just like it:
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Nov 03, 2015 3:03 PM
That's great music. Back when I was a young guy we called that type of music swing music. ---------- Wisdom does not always come with old age. Sometimes old age arrives alone.
Doesn't swing? I just don't know what to say, except that I suppose there must be a few places where, as they say, the sun don't shine.
If you google the words "Joe Williams swing," you'll find an album entitled "Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings." I don't think that the concept of the album is that Basie--one of the hardest swinging bandleaders in the history of jazz--made a terrible mistake in hiring Joe:
Lou Rawls. Most people think of him as a 70s R&B/soul singer, but he recorded a great blues album. This particular cut was in very heavy rotation in my house:
And then there's James Brown! Holy moly! I put James Brown blues into the YT search engine and found this. Did you guys know about this recording? I'm going to buy the album. Note: it takes a while for the singing to come in:
He's definitely stoic, but I think that's the persona he's putting across. You're right: he's not grinning, snapping his fingers, swiveling his hips. Here's an amazing clip in which he does battle, in a sense, with Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross on the same song. THEY swing. They swing in the way that I suppose most people expect when they hear the word "swing." Joe, by contrast, is extremely restrained. But to me, he still swings hard--and I think that's his point. It's possible to swing hard, to float like a butterfly across the groove, and still remain urbane, unflappable. It creates tension, and that's a good thing in showbusiness.
And yes: Sugar Ray is a perfect embodiment of the swinging jazz spirit in the blues. I guarantee that he's a fan of Joe Williams.
Actually, I just went searching for proof of that and found the following. His four chief influences were Nat King Cole, Joe Williams, Muddy Waters, and Bobby "Blue" Bland:
https://books.google.com/books?id=qYtz7kEHegEC&pg=PA428&lpg=PA428&dq=sugar+ray+norcia+%22joe+williams%22&source=bl&ots=AO5Pr-4xc2&sig=fsvyTiQBeQ5kHdA8Uc00sI8djPs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAWoVChMIpPXu7pr3yAIVD99jCh2cKgE3#v=onepage&q=sugar%20ray%20norcia%20%22joe%20williams%22&f=false
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Nov 04, 2015 8:42 AM
"And then there's James Brown! Holy moly! I put James Brown blues into the YT search engine and found this. Did you guys know about this recording? I'm going to buy the album. Note: it takes a while for the singing to come in: "
I probably have wayyy too many LP's and CD's but I have known about and owned that JB Messing with the Blues CD for years!
Theres a ton of great singers like Ray Charles, Jimmy Witherspoon... you could add here but man for that jazzy/blues voice the late great Lynwood Slim is an obvious choice.
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"Those British boys want to play the blues real bad, and they do"
