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white man can't play the blues...


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I heard it with my own ears when Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee were doing a sound check on stage at my university, and the members of my blues band (which had been rehearsing for the premier of "The Horse" ) and I had finished our rehearsal. We decided to walk onstage to meet these blues greats in person and talk a bit about playing the blues. We were told in unambiguous terms that what we were playing was most certainly NOT the blues, and that we should stick to rock and roll if we wanted to sound authentic [chuckle, chuckle] :angry: .

 

They really didn't have much use for white folks in general, and in their attempts to play the blues, in particular. I suppose, given their experiences with the caucasian race in their younger years, this is quite forgivable. [unsure]

 

J/W

<_<

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it was Fred, and I'll say it again.

 

white man can play blues rock, but if you're talking about straight up blues, as blues was intended, white man can't play that

 

that's a very bold statement fred, even being your own opinion it will still stir some feathers :unsure:

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that's a very bold statement fred, even being your own opinion it will still stir some feathers :unsure:

 

find me a white guy that can play this, and I will retract my statement. If you're talking about **** like Eric Clapton and Gary Moore, that's not blues, that's blues rock. This, this is the blues. Skip to about 1 minute for the actual song, but the first minute is pretty awesome

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ou-6A3MKow

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The definition of "The Blues" is not narrow or exact. John Hammond, a white guy, does pretty well at playing the blues. Does Fred think Buddy Guy plays the blues or blues-rock? Miles Davis played blues but nothing like Lightnin' Hopkins or Howlin' Wolf. I don't think it can be pinned down.

Can a blue man play the whites?

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find me a white guy that can play this, and I will retract my statement. If you're talking about **** like Eric Clapton and Gary Moore, that's not blues, that's blues rock. This, this is the blues. Skip to about 1 minute for the actual song, but the first minute is pretty awesome

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ou-6A3MKow

 

i can play that, so can you [bored]

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Wow. You are so wrong. There would be no blues if it wasn't for white guys.

 

In one respect I actually agree with you! - in that if the white man hadn't kidnapped the black African' man (and not treated them so savagely), then what we now term as blues, would had stayed in their mother tongue and just stayed as their indigenous music - like this clip...[thumbup]

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-FGHoYBtjs&feature=player_embedded

 

Matt

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This silly idea about "white boys" not being able to play blues was common among African American players in the 1950s and 60s.

 

After visiting the UK and playing with EC et al., Muddy revised this to "white boys" can sure play blues guitar, but they still can't "sing" the blues like he could (of course, neither could anyone else).

 

Toward the end of his life in the early 1980s, Muddy found it ironic that so many young African Americans looked down on the blues, no longer bought this music, and had pretty much abandoned it; and that the "white boys" were keeping it alive ... I think Muddy and the Sonny Boys and the Wolf would be happy to know that so many others from all over the world now love it passionately, and some can play it with the best of the post-war blues greats.

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find me a white guy that can play this, and I will retract my statement. If you're talking about **** like Eric Clapton and Gary Moore, that's not blues, that's blues rock. This, this is the blues. Skip to about 1 minute for the actual song, but the first minute is pretty awesome

 

Hi Fred,

 

I do think Seasick Steve is a man following in the tradition of the early bluesmen

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld176fLRBBc&feature=related

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This silly idea about "white boys" not being able to play blues was common among African American players in the 1950s and 60s.

 

After visiting the UK and playing with EC et al., Muddy revised this to "white boys" can sure play blues guitar, but they still can't "sing" the blues like he could (of course, neither could anyone else).

 

Toward the end of his life in the early 1980s, Muddy found it ironic that so many young African Americans looked down on the blues, no longer bought this music, and had pretty much abandoned it; and that the "white boys" were keeping it alive ... I think Muddy and the Sonny Boys and the Wolf would be happy to know that so many others from all over the world now love it passionately, and some can play it with the best of the post-war blues greats.

 

This is very true... but Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee didn't think the Chicago bluesmen played the blues, either. They accused players like McKinley Morganfield of "selling out" to the white man's electric music. Mr. Morganfield was very open-minded about white players, as long as their feelings for it were authentic, but you are quite correct when you say that he would never concede that a white singer could get it right!

 

It's a very interesting topic, because if one defines the "blues" as the "whole nine yards" of both playing AND singing, my opinion is still that I don't know a white man dead or alive that could hold a candle to the likes of Howlin' Wolf or Willie Dixon.

 

But it's just my OPINION, after all!

 

J/W

:mellow:

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I wonder why there aren't more modern black blues musicians?

 

A complex issue, I think. In the 1960s, many young African Americans looked down on Mississippi delta blues as lower class and associated with impoverishment and a sad part of American history that they wanted to move on from. More contemporary musicians like Vernon Reid have suggested that African Americans are now being channeled by music companies away from rock and blues, and toward rap and hip hop.

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