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[DAS44]

I'm s'posed to be writing a 7-10 page paper for two classes (counts for 20% of my grade in both). I've decided to do it on the Blues Revival of the 1960's. If any of you have a good book, or other source to recommend please do! I figure this forum is full of nice, music intelligent people so I'd appreciate it.

 

(I'm looking for causes and effects, yes vague but I want to get a very broad idea of it before I really hone in on it)

[Guest FarnsBarns]

There was a very good British documentary about it called Can Blue Men Play The Whites. You might find it on YouTube or something.

[milod]

I don't know about official documentation, but I was living through a lotta that stuff.

 

So... it seems to me that the "Folk Revival" in the US had a lot to do with it, along with more racial "integration" in music. For example, Chuck Berry was doing what we might call Rock, but a black guy playing electric guitar sometimes sent other young pickers into the "race records" of the time that included folks like John Lee Hooker and such.

 

At a 1964 "folk festival" at a pretty "liberal" and artsy college in the US midwest, we had the folk duo of Ian and Sylvia - Ian decades later helped spur a "cowboy music revival" - a Canadian girl singer Bonnie Dobson, Blues/whatever fingerpicker Gary Davis, 9-string bluesman Big Joe Williams, and Sunnyland Slim and his Chicago blues band.

 

You can get an idea of how the blues up through electric stuff was hitting simultaneously. The Beatles and Stones were hitting American about the same time with Brit versions of American rock and Blues...

 

I think counterculture politics had something to do with it too - what middle class white guy would go for music from 30s black acoustic bluesmen and 50s black electric bluesmen? <grin> So... it all kinda fit together, folkie, politics, "integration" and "civil rights," "counterculture" and decent relatively inexpensive "record players."

 

They could only barely find enough guitars to sell to kids like me regardless what kinda music we wanted to play.

 

Granted, this is just opinion, but... it's from listening to John Lee Hooker in the 50s on an old console radio to hanging out in a folkie coffeehouse at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts with many of the biggie folkies there, to college as the folkie thing turned increasingly political and blues/"black" music became part of the culture...

 

m

[freak show]

I recently read Keith Richards' autobiography "Life". It's a great book, but Keith also spends a lot of time in the first chapters discussing the Blues revival and the role the Stones played in this movement. For example, when the Stones first started playing, their main goal was actually to try to bring the Blues to a wider audience. For them it wasn't about becoming stars or even writing their own music. They just wanted to turn people on to songs by their Blues heroes from the USA.

 

This book won't answer all of your questions, but it does contain a good bit of information on your subject from the perspective of someone who was actually part of the Blues revival. It's also a fun read, and Keith is very cool.

[Duende]

I'm s'posed to be writing a 7-10 page paper for two classes (counts for 20% of my grade in both). I've decided to do it on the Blues Revival of the 1960's. If any of you have a good book, or other source to recommend please do! I figure this forum is full of nice, music intelligent people so I'd appreciate it.

 

(I'm looking for causes and effects, yes vague but I want to get a very broad idea of it before I really hone in on it)

 

Hi

 

Here are a few recommendations for a reading list, do try looking at http://scholar.google.co.uk/ too. It is an academic search engine for fellow geeks

 

This is an online book called The Cambridge companion to Blues and Gospel, it has lots of useful information to read for free

http://books.google....%20blues&f=fals

 

Check this link for Charles Shaar Murray. He has written some great academic/journalistic books on blues including a very important book called Jimi Hendrix and post world war pop (I think check the link)

http://charlesshaarmurray.com/books/

 

This is a little off the beaten track but talks about the British invasion

http://www.jstor.org/pss/763906

 

Another one about The British blues invasion

http://books.google....20blues&f=false

 

Matt

 

 

 

 

 

[stein]

Hi

 

Here are a few recommendations for a reading list, do try looking at http://scholar.google.co.uk/ too. It is an academic search engine for fellow geeks

 

This is an online book called The Cambridge companion to Blues and Gospel, it has lots of useful information to read for free

http://books.google....%20blues&f=fals

 

Check this link for Charles Shaar Murray. He has written some great academic/journalistic books on blues including a very important book called Jimi Hendrix and post world war pop (I think check the link)

http://charlesshaarmurray.com/books/

 

This is a little off the beaten track but talks about the British invasion

http://www.jstor.org/pss/763906

 

Another one about The British blues invasion

http://books.google....20blues&f=false

 

Matt

References

Sear, Matthew. scholar, Gibson Forum.

[cookieman15061]

Also check out Clapton's autobio.

He was at the forefront of the British blues scene and goes into much detail on the what, where and why it happened for him.

[DAS44]

 

Granted, this is just opinion, but... it's from listening to John Lee Hooker in the 50s on an old console radio to hanging out in a folkie coffeehouse at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts with many of the biggie folkies there, to college as the folkie thing turned increasingly political and blues/"black" music became part of the culture...

 

m

Very insightful posts, never thought of the chuck B one at all, thanks. I was in Harvard square not a week ago! :P

 

Hi

 

Here are a few recommendations for a reading list, do try looking at http://scholar.google.co.uk/ too. It is an academic search engine for fellow geeks

Thanks for the links, I'll check them out later on (I'm sposed to be getting ready ain't I?)

 

Cookie, I did read that, it was pretty darned interesting.

[milod]

I think it's easy for young people today to have little clue about "segregation" in the US in the 1950s and the impact of "rock" and other pop "black" music that played on the radio and some significant reaction to it.

 

The term "race records" largely were blues sorts of things that had been directed specifically to black audiences.

 

That's all hard to imagine now, even as it's hard for today's folks to imagine what it was like in Europe and in the UK in the aftermath of of WWI after so many millions of their young men were killed in that war. Americans and Canadians, I think, never realized that impact.

 

Social forces of various sorts all were part of the blues revolution of the 1960s, but it came about also with the post WWII environment. Clapton's father a North American soldier? He wasn't the only one in that situation and frankly a little-told tale of my pre-baby boom generation is that there were more than a few similar situations in North America.

 

Now, well over a half century later, the social changes are hard to imagine. They also were somewhat regional in effect, but communications tech was bursting thanks to television and low-cost but higher quality record players.

 

In America - I include Canada in that for this comment - the pop music scene had been gaining "integration" from the 30s, but really brought a burst of that sort of thing with combo music and black entertainers. Parents hated it and the more they did, the more that the kids went for it...

 

m

[stein]

This is a very interesting and important subject. I think it would be great for all of us if you post the finished paper on here so we can all read it and learn something.

[stein]

Molid;

 

Its great to have someone you was there to be able to remind us of this perspective that is actually part of the make up of our history and music. I think it is more connected to us than we realise.

 

Racism is actually still alive and well in music, and I think we still feel the after-effects and there is also a degree of resentment and it sometimes goes the other way around.

 

AT the very least about 10 years ago in the Jazz hotbed of Philadelphia, It is very dangerous for a white man to be in those places, and there is prejudice both toward white poeple and musicians by the black/Jazz community there as well as fear and misconceptions by the white community regarding such places. They tend to feed on each other.

 

I also have witnessed in when I lived in LA times when I was turned away by bands that I wanted to be in because I am white. it may not seem like a big deal or even true, but you can feel it. A person who is unaware gets the run around and is allowed to spend time and effort when it is already decided it is going to stay black, but no one is allowed to say, and you won't be told.

 

As recent as a few years, there was a jam at a club where I happened to be one of the favorites, and I was encouraged to play. The band leader had a headphone mic and was walking the place asking, practically begging for someone, anyone, to come up and play. I went looking for him, and when I finally found him at the front of the stage and told him I was game and wanted to come up, he looked right past me as if I wasn't there to a black man and asked if he wanted to. When he refused, he said it was time to go home sinse no one wanted to play. When to everyone's surprise it wasn't going to happen and they asked me why, I just called it like I saw it. It caused a little stir, and even then, this "black" man confronted me with anger, but never once addressed the race issue. It's supposed to be obvious and unspoken.

 

It actually does hurt. But still I can only imagine what it is like for a black man.

 

Speaking with black musicians from the post-bebop era, there is still sadness and resentment and a feeling of the music form (jazz) being hijacked from the black community. Most of these I have spoken to embrace and encourage whites and integration. But there is obvious and well known racism to them that we don't see, and they don't talk about. The popularity of Brubeck and Getz are perfect examples. Nearly all I have come into contact with have good things to say about them and thier music, but when they can hand you a record or recording of something they did that was done right before and virtually the same thing, I am in awe anyone could take it so well.