I love to see young kids playing the blues. Remember the talent vs. experience thread? To me this kid has something beyond talent and experience. He FEELS it! The SRV influence is obvious. Is he a modern bluesman?
He is definitely good but I am not seeing as much SRV as you are, but that is just me. Stevie Ray was doing a million Albert King licks and he isn't doing that, which is essential to the SRV sound.
Maybe Stevie played many Albert King licks but he certainly created his own sound which is immediately recognizable.
Just because this kid isn't playing "a million Albert King licks" doesn't mean he doesn't have a strong SRV influence to my ears. I hear plenty of Stevie's signature riffs and phrasing in his playing.
He probably has some of his Dad in him, and plenty of rock and roll.
Yup, I'd say he's a modern boogie chil', who knows where he's headed this early in the game?
Last Edited by on Jun 02, 2010 8:40 PM
I've seen that kid before. He's gotta be close to a teenager now. He's been around and was heralded as the future a few years ago.
The worst thing that happens to these kids is that they grow up and lose some of their cuteness. When they hit 21, the talent pool they swim in gets a lot bigger and they don't sound so great.
I listen to and jam with lot of Stevie (gives me a chance to use my F#, B, Ab, Db, and E harps). Try copying his licks on Texas Flood with your B harmonica in 2nd position....but don't get discouraged.
I don't hear the Albert licks, but I do hear several SRV licks. I hear the offbeat stuff. BTW..what do you call it when you play 5 equal length notes in 4 beats? Stevie did this with the the flat 5 scooping it up. Very cool.
He's obviously very talented and will, if he wants, be able to make a living as a musician--assuming that he move successfully through the transition phase that all child actors are required to navigate, where he's no longer getting by on the magical combination of talent + youth + adorableness. Adolescence can be cruel. Sometimes a trick that works at one age--for oneself, for the world--ceases to have quite the same magical effect later on. Brody Buster is a good example of that.
For me, there's an interesting and unexplored issue here, a larger cultural issue. If you think about it, you'll realize that the "blues world"--that big shaggy administered monster that we all belong to, comprised of organizations, blues societies, record labels, clubs, booking agents, festivals, websites, and now YouTube videos--is fascinated by two specific images of "bluesness":
1) old black bluesmen, the older the better 2) white-boy wonders, the younger the better
I wonder why this is? When you pair 1 and 2, BTW, you get B. B. King back in the early 1990s declaring that Brody Buster was (and I'm quoting freely, but not making it up) "one of the best harmonica players I've ever heard.) 1 serves the role of the black elder who authenticates 2, the white ephebe. (Google the word; if memory serves, it's the right word for the junior poet who is on the way up but hasn't yet crossed the threshold into full mastery.)
What's interesting about the strong presence of these two archetypes in our blues culture is that they're our somewhat awkward way of dealing with a couple of obvious truths about blues music:
1) historically speaking, blues is black music--between 1920 and 1960, it WAS black popular music, not white popular music--but in the last 50 years it has become, in many ways, and with all exceptions granted, white people's music, located somewhere on the popular/subcultural divide;
2) both blacks and whites who like blues seem to agree that you have to suffer in some way in order to play the music well--have to "pay your dues," as the saying goes; have to survive the hard times, the broken hearts, the endless long gigs--and that that sort of experience, that weathering, makes a difference: makes you, as it were, into a "real bluesman."
Archetype #1 embodies these two principles or themes. But archetype #2, embodying the first principle--he's the very soul of an insurgent whiteness, claiming the blues for white people after 1960--also tries to short-circuit the second principle. This kid is a good example of that. One has to hope that, at age 9 in this video, he's still a virgin. A virgin bluesman! Well, why not? But that concept jostles uneasily with my second truth or principle above. There are two ways around the paradox. One is easy: Have B. B. King say you're the greatest thing since sliced bread. The other is harder: Give the virgin bluesman time to mature.
Needless to say, our blues culture is working in its own way to find a space for this second option. Charlie Musselwhite and Kim Wilson exemplify it in some sense, and Clapton exemplifies it even more profoundly. Clapton was God as a 19-year old. But he's gone on from there, and he's decidedly earned his stripes. "Layla" and "Tears in Heaven" are the fruit of that.
And yes: the "but he FEELS it" assertion also serves the function of helping navigate the large distance between archetype #1 and archetype #2. It magically collapses the distance--racial, experiential--that the virgin bluesman is required to travel. If he really FEELS it, if we feel that HE feels it, the school of hard knocks isn't required. He's (already) playing the blues. His youth is a net plus, not a debit; lack of seasoning means nothing. In fact, age and seasoning, in the case of the white ephebe, work AGAINST the magic.
I'm not saying that this kid doesn't feel it, BTW. I'm just pointing out that the claim that he's "feeling it" does a very different sort of authenticating work on his behalf than it does in the case of the black elder. The observation that B. B. King is "feeling it" would seem trivial. Of course B. B. is feeling it: he's black, he's lived a long bluesy life filled with women, heartbreak, travels, Mississippi racism of various sorts, etc. But if this kid is "feeling it," all that experience-stuff and race-stuff isn't required.
Yet--and this IS the paradox--that experience is precisely what the white blues audience invokes when they're celebrating B. B.: the panorama of experiences that have made him who he is.
Last Edited by on Jun 03, 2010 4:38 AM
What's funny is, he can't sing for s--t, but I sorta like that guitar break at about 1:15. If he was MY kid, I'd be incredibly proud. But I'd make him stay in his room for another year and work on his singing.
@ Adam "1) old black bluesmen, the older the better"...I think Little Walter, Hubert Sumlin, Junior Wells, Luther Tucker, Robert Johnson (just off the top of my head) did OK for young men.
Maybe the interest with the older black men (older the better) is that they come from a time when things were a lot more difficult e.g. segregation, blatant racism. They feel these people are "real" they have been there. As far as young white kids it may just be that people find it cute. I think if you had a young white kid playing rock, or country, or... harmonica, it would be the same thing. It may even be funnier in blues music, because blues is something based on heartache, experience, love etc, and what could a kid possibly know about that? Perhaps it is the irony that makes it appealing? ---------- -Edward Tomaine http://www.youtube.com/user/HungTaoChoyMei
@5F6H: You're quite right: the performers you name did very well indeed as young men. That's exactly my point: young black men who played blues were culture heroes in the black community between 1930 and 1960. Note that I didn't say "black boys." The word "boy" was a term of racist denigration back then, obviously, and so youthful manhood, with a stress on MANHOOD, was what Little Walter and the others projected. They did NOT want to be seen as boys.
Young black men who play blues are no longer culture heroes in the black community. But VERY young white boys who play blues, with a visible emphasis on boyishness, ARE culture heroes of a sort in the white community these days.
That's a shift worth noting.
As for Little Stevie Wonder: the exception that he represents to the general trend is worth pondering. He was a crossover star in 1963-64--as popular among white youth as black youth. His boyishness WAS part of the point. In a sense, he was capitalizing on rock 'n roll integrationism through the side door of R&B/soul: Ray Charles for the youth set. Everybody loves a brilliant blind boy, and he was something new.
Adam, What I mean by he "feels" it is the fact that he can play those off-beat phrases, bend the note at the right time, cresendo, milk the instrument.etc...He plays the stuff that cannot be written on sheet music. He lets emotion take over.
SRV blew Albert King away when he was first coaxed to the stage as a young adult. Albert hid his guitar in a gesture that said "I don't want you to see this".
I don't know how tough Stevies chidhood was but he sure felt it.
You can feel it as a listener. I may not be developed enough as a player to cut loose and feel it, but many times at live blues shows(including HCH) I can't sit still.... Head bobbin, hollerin, keeping the beat.
Example....My wife and I did the blues/gospel brunch one Sunday at House of Blues In Vegas. Black performers and a few blacks in the audience. I loved it and clapped along. My wife noticed something. She asked me why I was clapping in between beats of the rest of the audiencs. I was doing what I felt and she was correct. Me and 8 or 10 black folks were clapping offbeat.
I talked to Terry "Harmonica" Bean for over half an hour at Hill Country. I asked him about black kids and the blues in this region. He said he is very saddened that very few black kids are interested in the blues. He hates rap and wishes he could influence more black youth.
I personally do not believe you have to hurt or live hard to play blues with a feeling. Yes, I understand the roots of the music is based on hurt and pain, but the music has evolved beyond that.
I love to put this DVD in and crank it up and play along. B Harp in 2nd. ....my Double Trouble cranked up. Too fun.
The off time phrase he does at 1:45 is repeated several times.
I don't dig the whole "kid" phenomenon in Blues music. The vast majority of these kids have pushy parents that shove the kids onto a public stage. Sure, it's cute when they get on stage and play, but the way adults fawn all over these kids is revolting. They tell them how great they are, despite their limited skills. The kids eat that praise up like ice cream.
Eventually, their "cuteness" wears off. They get older and have to compete with other people who are often more talented. It ends up being a real adjustment for a lot of these kids.
If their parents are decent parents, they will continue to stress education, but I know several instances where the kid ends up thinking, "I'm going to be the next Blues superstar, I don't need school."
Those kids end up screwed when they learn the harsh reality of living the blues lifestyle. I've known some kids that have spiraled out of control ended up addicted to drugs.
Personally, I think it's a horrible decision to shove your kid in that direction at a young age.
Plus there are the parents that think their kid needs the "proper gear" & they end up blowing out their ears with a twin reverb, in their bedroom, before they're 20. I remember a kid who had a 100W amp for gigs, "just" a 50W for practicing at home! :-0 Paper rounds must pay much better these days, perhaps I should get one. :-)
Some never grow older either...guys who take to the stage in their teens seem to be referred to as "that 18yr old kid" for at least the next decade! :-)
However, once in a while there are young players who thrive in a real world environment, who are real team players, utterly professional, just lap up the music & want to do it justice. A good example is Rob Pokorny, a young drummer from London, whose playing has developed at a terrific rate over the last few years. A real asset, irrespective of his age.
Lucky Peterson is an interesting exception to all this, too. He was a child prodigy. I'll see if I can find some videos. But he matured into an absolutely fantastic player. I saw him live in NYC's Central Park in the mid 1990s; he came right out into the audience while it was RAINING and played his ass off. He had a strong father, James Peterson, who also played the blues and obviously anchored him in the facts of life.
Here's a video from 1990, when he was 26 years old.
I may be a little oversensitive. In Austin, where I'm from, there probably isn't a single person who listens to radio who couldn't pick out SRV or the T-Birds, we've been quite saturated for years.
Austin's always proud of anyone it considers it's own!
lucky is like a poor version of the late great luther allison whom, at the time of the above vid, was with motown.
cross reference allisons little red rooster. notice similar er sounds as in roost-er. notice he takes allisons whole trick bag. at least he's not playing guitar.
that kid in the first clip is playing jibberish. Actually most of the young kids are playing shit.
There's no feeling there, just mimicry of their chosen heroes.
Six years old and with feeling. Where did he end up? On top of the world for a brief moment. All of the kids in the above clip will amount to nothing. I can hear it already.
@Buddha: I don't judge them quite as harshly as you do. I think the verdict is still out on what they're actually going to achieve. That's what I love about the blues. You never know when the blues--some entirely unforseen disaster or spiritual challenge--are going to kick you in the ass and make you play for real. Occasionally a white boy comes along who comes at the music for the wrong reasons, or for mixed motives with a lot of ego involved, and then something happens and the kid actually start to take the music very seriously indeed. I think it's important to hold out a space for that: for a fundamental shift in one's spiritual relationship with the music. So I don't know what the future holds out for these kids. I just know that while they may be talented in various degrees, they've got a long road to travel, and being cute and talented, admirable as it is, just ain't enough. Why should I froth at the mouth and call them the salvation of the blues? That's ridiculous. Talk to me in a decade and tell me if you've figured out how to live and if you're still pushing the boundaries of your talent. Be the next Clapton, but understand that he actually managed to beat his addiction AFTER the God-phase and keep on living and growing.
Sonny Rollins's life is interesting in this regard. He's gone through many, many changes. I remember reading in the late 1980s that he lived in upstate New York, practiced 4-6 hours a day in his barn, and was happily married to his wife. That impressed the heck out of me. A guy with that kind of track record, still working that hard. And not suicidal, self-destructive, or hopelessly egocentric. Just a working guy, and an artist, trying to honor his gift.
Last Edited by on Jun 04, 2010 6:57 PM
What gives me chills is the song, very haunting, never heard it.
Held up against the conversation, what it has me think of is the dangers of being a star shining bright so early...
I definitely agree that the obstacles in life are the opportunities to grow in all directions, and bring more wisdom of experience into one's expression.
I wish the best for these kids, it takes a strength of character to deal with a lot of attention early on in a powerful way.
I judge them as "real" musician. It's not fair but their parents tout them as such so why not judge them on that level?
There's no way any of those younglings could carry on for a whole night and keep their audience captivated. Heck I couldn't stand an entire 3 minute song. A six year old Michael Jackson or Stevie Wonder could be judged at such a level at that age and they could carry a night on their own. And at that young age they were identifiable then as they are today. None of those young guitarists had a distinctive style and if they don't now, chances are they won't in the future.
I say it's jibberish because it's not real music. One may argue they have the abilty to inject emotion at such a young age but we all know even 2yr toddlers can show anger so adding a bit of feeling to music, which is really just another language, is no big deal.
It's very possible they could get their ass kicked and then choose to focus on their music. I hope so, because the world needs better musicians and these kids have a good head start.
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"Musicians are the architects of heaven"
Last Edited by on Jun 04, 2010 10:53 PM
