Jump to content
Gibson Brands Forums

Uplifting songs.

DAS44

By DAS44
in The Gibson Lounge

Recommended Posts

DAS44

DAS44

Posted
Posted

In the process of doing the citations for my 7-10 pg paper on the Blues Revival of the 1960s, I need some uplifting songs. Got 7 pages ahead of me, not due for a long while but I want to hand it in to the teacher for some early editing advice.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
stein

stein

Posted
Posted

Mississippi John Hirt was an old guy that was rediscovered in the 60's blues revival. There are a few great recordings made from that time, and in contrast to a lot of blues and what we think of blues today, his music was happy and cheerful.

 

Also, try Son House. Very gospel like in a inspirational way for blues. I am not sure if he was also revived and part of the 60's blues reveval like Hirt was, but he is often associated as being in the same genre as Hirt was.

 

Of corse, you could always ask Milod, I have read stuff on this site here from him talking about being there at that time.

 

Actually, that is a better idea than even that. As papers require references to be taken seriously, I would think that an actual person would qualify as a most solid reference rather than heresay about what someone else wrote or published. Not only that, but our Milod is, or at least was, a journalist.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
DAS44

DAS44

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Mississippi John Hirt was an old guy that was rediscovered in the 60's blues revival. There are a few great recordings made from that time, and in contrast to a lot of blues and what we think of blues today, his music was happy and cheerful.

 

Also, try Son House. Very gospel like in a inspirational way for blues. I am not sure if he was also revived and part of the 60's blues reveval like Hirt was, but he is often associated as being in the same genre as Hirt was.

 

Just named two of my favorite Delta Bluesmen. Mississippi John Hurt was more easily brought to a more mainstream audience simply for the reason that his voice, and his music was soft (somewhat different than say, Charlie Patton, or Robert Johnson). As for Son House he got some good recordings in in the 60s, but died before he could influence it as fully as I believe he could have.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jN5vqEyV7g

One of my favorite Son House tunes. He suffered from a considerable hand tremor at this point in his life, and had put down a guitar for spans of over 5 years at times, never really achieving virtuosity.

 

As for MJH, gotta love I'll fly away, it's truly beautiful. As for my favorite bluesman, that'd be Charlie Patton, the recordings are early and extremely rough but his voice booms along with his single pounding guitar.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
milod

milod

Posted
Posted

I guess I wanna know what you'd consider "uplifting," especially as referenced as "blues."

 

Hurt did lots of stuff and there was a lotta music from lesser "educated" black and white musicians that got "revived" in the 60s that may or may not be called "blues," depending on one's definition.

 

For example, there's Hurt's "Candyman." It sure ain't a 12-bar blues format.

 

Then there's stuff like "salty dog" that he did, but so did bluegrassers. Frankie and Johnny has similarly been crossover with guys like Doc Watson and... if Hurt did it and he's black, and Watson did it and he's white, is one blues and the other not blues? Hurt said in interviews that he listened to such as Jimmie Rodgers "the singing brakeman" who did such as "Muleskinner blues." But ... gee, he's not black, so can his stuff as "father of country music" be "blues?" Can Hurt be "blues" if he was somewhat influenced by him?

 

Then there's old stuff like Bessie Smith and a lotta her stuff technically isn't blues if you use the 12-bar definition.

 

Then there's Rev. Gary Davis. I got to listen to him and watch from up close. So... he played Stars and Stripes Forever like I'll never forget. Izzat blues? Hey, he was black and influenced a lotta pickers - in ways, me included since that "stars and stripes forever" really opened me to more fun on guitar.

 

Honestly, in the 60s I think folks were so inclined to want to put everything in a box, just as we do now, that race and stuff really messed up some facts of American music: It's a mixture, ain't nothin' really "pure" this or that.

 

Even pretty much pre music radio, W.C. Handy who was black but brought up pretty much "middle class," supposedly was surprised, if not shocked, at hearing some pre-blues sorta stuff. That gave rise to stuff like "St. Louis Blues" that's certainly not 12-bar material.

 

Leadbelly did "Goodnight Irene" that's a waltz. So's "Little Girl" or "Black Girl," depending on who and what and when you hear about it. Yupper, a waltz with a black ex convict singing it. But then, bluegrass did the same piece, eh?

 

Ever since the 1860s "second American Civil War" as I call it (the first being in the 1770s), increased mobility brought increasing exposure to different musical traditions.

 

Poor folk, and people today have a hard time imagining real poverty, often would make their own instruments. Among other things, that kinda gave us the banjo. But how many "blues musicians" here recognize the banjo as a "blues" instrument? Or the fiddle?

 

Poor black people, poor white people, and just folks hanging somewhere above that, loved to go to dances, to be with folks, to listen to music... and they heard and were influenced by lots of stuff. A "band" in the teens, 20s and upward might play anything from ragtime to waltzes to some crazy new fast-time stuff and the Cakewalk circa 1900, the Charleston in the 20s...

 

The lesser the dance's audience average income, the fewer musicians and the simpler the instrumentation, but also perhaps greater creativity at combining stuff their audience wanted to dance to. To dance to. To dance to. Hopkins' Smokestack Lightning has one chord. Is it blues? I dunno, but you can dance to it. Ditto a lotta fiddle tunes more or less from a different tradition...

 

Ah, I'm just ranting here, I guess. Bottom line is that the 60s got a lotta kids my age (Clapton is a cupla months older) exposed to a bigger range of self-made music from white and black folks that often included crossover and solo guitar attempts at playing full "band" or "orchestra" music as well as stuff that grandpa had done in their youth. If it was "black" or "exploited Appalachian miners" stuff, it seemed to be more "valuable." Yeah, I sound cynical.

 

Cynical me would suggest certain stuff got adopted 'cuz you could dance to it; and that's 'cuz something that extended 1930s-50s dance styles paid better than Gary Davis got paid with Stars and Stripes Forever or Leadbelly got paid for "Irene, Goodnight."

 

Less cynical me still would suggest it was stuff you could dance to. Dance to. And dance to in a less formalized style than the "waltzes" and stuff done by country in the 60s. So... <sigh> Also, guys like Chuck Berry and Bill Haley and "rockabilly" and R&B singers had set the stage for a little less structured "pop" music.

 

To me the "blues revival" was no revival at all, but another stew of old ingredients redone in musicians' minds that one could ... dance to.

 

Does that help any?

 

m

Link to comment
Share on other sites
DAS44

DAS44

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Always an interesting read Milod, I guess I'm more looking for your definition of uplifting. I'm not too picky. I have to run pretty soon, so I can't respond to all of that fully quite yet, I'll get to that tomorrow :P.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
milod

milod

Posted
Posted

Walter played the same college folk festival one year (spring of '64) as Gary Davis and Sunnyland Slim. And Big Joe Williams. And Ian and Sylvia. And...

 

<grin>

 

I've no idea who mighta been there listening, though.

 

m

Link to comment
Share on other sites
rct

rct

Posted
Posted

Revival is an absolute gem, his first writing credit I believe, and the actual birth of Southern Boogie! He hates them two words, but oh well, hope he's readin this.

 

Don't laugh, but Presence Of The Lord. Maybe not so much the recorded on the Blind Faith record version, I know that ain't most peopleses favorites. But the live Dominos and especially the Rainbow Concert are great versions. And for an abject lesson in overwrought 70's An Evening With God, there is always EC Was Here, still one of my favorite records and my very favorite concerts I was every lucky enough to see.

 

So, Presence Of The Lord. Maybe.

 

rct

Link to comment
Share on other sites
milod

milod

Posted
Posted

I guess I really don't know how to define uplifting.

 

Bottom line is that I think danceability was likely the big thing regardless as to what would be successful.

 

As pickers we can love John Hurt and Gary Davis and their stuff, but it didn't get people dancing and neither really made much of a living from it. Upbeat? Yeah, but... Blues? Again, how does one define such?

 

I saw the "blues revival" frankly as material I really enjoyed, but as kinda a lie, at least in terms of ethnomusicology.

 

After the Beatles, about anything Brit was going to have an entry to North America, at least, and finding older black blues stuff kinda fit the bill for many Brit bands.

 

But I note that "Nobody knows you when you're down and out" and that sorta non 12-bar blues didn't get used much. When did Clapton finally record it as an acoustic thing? Somewhere in the '90s? I was doing it in the 60s - he probably was too - but there just wasn't a market except for more raucus material, so we did just that sort of thing in our own ways. Chicago electric blues variations worked. Older acoustic blues had a far smaller audience.

 

Again, "Uplifting?" How about a happy stylistic song about people getting killed by trains? ("His head was found in a driver wheel... his body, it never was found.")

 

I really don't know how to put some of this stuff into a box.

 

m

Link to comment
Share on other sites
milod

milod

Posted
Posted

Chan...

 

I dunno... I kinda liked the head being found in a driver wheel. <chortle> Especially in the bluegrass versions that seemed to have even more of a grin behind the pickin'.

 

Then there were triumph/hero things like John Henry, even though he died n the piece.

 

DAS... you might wanna at least toss in a term like ethnomusicology. <grin> I'll tell yah, my old copy of Lomax's "Folk Songs of North America" is very well worn.

 

m

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 3 weeks later...
DAS44

DAS44

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Just finishing the paper up, if anyone wants to give it a read (and prod me with some recommendations) just PM me.

 

I couldn't work everything you guys mentioned in unfortunately.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...