manse Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 I would call that 'blues/rock", myself. J/W Never heard the guy before...but that struck me as more blues than blues/rock. Sad to see that Sean has passed on...just from that one clip he seemed like a performer who really lived in the moment of performance / creation. RIP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S t e v e Posted November 18, 2011 Author Share Posted November 18, 2011 so blues is a "racial" thing? :angry:, the ignorance astounds me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morkolo Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 so blues is a "racial" thing? :angry:, the ignorance astounds me You're not alone.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manse Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 so blues is a "racial" thing? :angry:, the ignorance astounds me I'm not sure who you think is implying that the "blues is a "racial" thing" ...but when you start a post which has race in the title what exactly do you expect? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest farnsbarns Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 You're not alone.... Yep, it's incredible that this subject is even being discussed. 30 years ago my father started taking me on trips around Missippippi and Louisiana when he worked as a travelling musician, generally playing in prodominantly black bands. During that time I saw black and white blues men playing together all the time, I saw white guys who you would think were slave descendants to hear them. This is simply a romantic generalizatiin like the idea that native Americans are "spiritually in tune with nature". What a load of bull. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich W Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 if you're talking about straight up blues, as blues was intended, white man can't play that I couldn't disagree more. This is a simple-minded cliche ... just like the older African American blues players used to dismiss the younger ones by saying that they couldn't play the "real" blues unless they spent their formative years on a plantation as share croppers or some other god awful hardship. People from all over the world can burn on their guitars, and can sing with incredible depth of feeling in the deepest of baritones ... but, for whatever reason, skin color and hardship as a prerequisite for playing "straight up" blues is an idea that people cling to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigh Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 Can blue men sing the whites? Craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FirstMeasure Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 Someone is going to have to define "Real Blues" for me. 'Cause if John Mayall's not playing the blues, then nobody else is either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silenced Fred Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 so blues is a "racial" thing? :angry:, the ignorance astounds me dude, you made it racial. i'm just saying, when someone says the word "blues" there are so many things that happen. to simplify things, i take the original interpretation. everything that comes after that era, 99% of the time, is blues rock. I'm not going to argue on this thread anymore because its not doing any good but if you're seriously going to say this is a race thing, that's just sad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluesguitar65 Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 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? Really? Wasn't Miles Davis more into avant garde jazz, bebop and later fusion in the 60s? I really haven't heard Miles Davis play anything really bluesy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JellyWheat Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 dude, you made it racial. i'm just saying, when someone says the word "blues" there are so many things that happen. to simplify things, i take the original interpretation. everything that comes after that era, 99% of the time, is blues rock. I'm not going to argue on this thread anymore because its not doing any good but if you're seriously going to say this is a race thing, that's just sad Fred, I almost posted exactly the same words as you. Good call... bravo. I'm bailing as well. Gonna break out my Studio with P-90s and wail some "blites" TTYL J/W <_< Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluesguitar65 Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 Hold on Kimosabe(s) Before this thread gets out of hand, lets first google the history of the Blues. Blues from what I have heard dates back to the cotton fields, yes during slavery. Slaves were singing the blues while they were working the fields and singing it in their quarters. Blues was about suffering. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DAS44 Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 Son House doesn't seem to discriminate by race... Ain't he right? The Blues starts on the inside Them troubles hit all of us :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morkolo Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 Yep, it's incredible that this subject is even being discussed. 30 years ago my father started taking me on trips around Missippippi and Louisiana when he worked as a travelling musician, generally playing in prodominantly black bands. During that time I saw black and white blues men playing together all the time, I saw white guys who you would think were slave descendants to hear them. This is simply a romantic generalizatiin like the idea that native Americans are "spiritually in tune with nature". What a load of bull. I couldn't agree more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JellyWheat Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 I couldn't agree more. Morkolo, you're reasonable, so let me try to explain my view to you. Purely for the purpose of illustration: I understand that the cockney accent of East London is but a single, shallow artifact of a long-standing, deeply-rooted ethnic subculture. Cockneys have their own way of looking at things, have their own value systems, priorities, and ways of putting words together to express abstract, complex subjects. A good actor of any skin color could probably "nail" the accent, and even learn some of the semantic peculiarities of the culture by rote. But could that actor, left to his or her own devices, "speak authentic cockney" fluently , autonomously, and spontaneously without first having first becoming acculturated? [i doubt it.] So, we might be able to temper the discussion and say "the extent to which white men/women can play and sing the blues authentically like their African-American counterparts is directly proportional to the degree of their genuine acculturation". Then I would buy that the "blues" does not belong to people with a certain skin pigmentation. Unfortunately, it's a too-facile way of categorizing people, that racial card. But I will always maintain that nobody can sing the blues authentically who has not adopted the culture of origin as an important element of their own personal identity. My $0.02/FWIW/YMMV J/W Peace B) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbreslauer Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 this thread needs more music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKEdlSTHjtU Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluesguitar65 Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 Watch this! History and Orgins of the Blues. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuM4Mp0LPY8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JellyWheat Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 Thank you very, VERY much for that important lesson! Got any more??? J/W Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 All kidding aside here, I think the majority of our difficulty, as suggested by Grampa, is language. JellyWheat and I are also, I think, pretty much on the same page, btw. If I try to "cover" Mississippi John Hurt doing "Candyman," I think in ways I'm a fake. If I love the song and do it 'cuz I really like it and put "me" into it, I think I'm for real. But am I a "Bluesman" in the traditional sense? First, one must define "Blues." I don't think that you really can, in ways, because the African influences added to modal influences added to... we're a stew of musical styles. There certainly are things that certain musicians and general variations have done in common that apparently were first done by various black musicians, but I think by the 1920s we simply had streams of folk and pop music that may or may not have had the word "blues" attached to them. For example, on another thread we had "bluesman" H. Ledbetter, known as Leadbelly, singing a piece that became strongly connected to his version - but which apparently is a variation on a southern white "mountain" melody and lyric. My main memory of watching "bluesman" Gary Davis was him playing John Phillips Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever. Mississippi John Hurt doing Candyman ain't a 12-bar blues anyway. Now, if you wanna say that the emotion veiled under style is a cultural artifact of the black experience in America... I can understand but to an extent disagree for various reasons. For what it's worth, I can both agree and disagree with the "cultural artifact" thing as being inseparable from certain types of music. There are those who suggest the same musical "thing" with Flamenco and there are martial artists who will suggest that no matter how skilled, a westerner cannot be the essence of an Asian martial art because it is a cultural artifact foreign to the west. There is, I think, a seed of truth in the suggestion of a cultural artifact. In fact, I think one might easily find those of different Asian cultures who might suggest that technique is irrelevant, the martial art is in the culture itself, and any technique practiced by someone with a specific acculturation would reflect that underlying reality. I'll add that although I'm convinced I've run into some real phoneys, I'm equally convinced there are "native Americans" who are as the Lakota would call them, wichasha wakan - men in touch with something spiritual, even into today's world. I doubt it's because they're genetic "Indians," because most of the tribes had no problem absorbing children fully into their cultural ethos. It would be, instead, a reflection of cultural ethos. So yeah, I think you could make a case that a middle class kid, white or black, in today's world cannot be a bluesman in the sense of John Lee Hooker or such guys. Nor that you could have a white bluesman in the sense of Jimmie Rodgers. Yet Rodgers performed with Louis Armstrong and it was... what kinda music? W.C. Handy, a black man, has been called "father of the blues," yet a look at his biography shows he likely had a musical experience far closer to a lotta white guys in the same era - but also likely approached it with a somewhat different cultural perspective as a person educated and trained in music as well as a better academic background than held by a lotta whites of the times. His cultural perspective wasn't so much that of illiterate black field hands, but it also definitely was not quite the same as a lower middle class white. And in 1900, nobody had the same cultures we live in today. Frankly I think in ways that "we" alive and on this board are part of a stew of musical and regional cultures that result in a fact that none of "us" could be a "bluesman" in the sense either of Ledbelly, Hooker, Handy - or Jimmy Rodgers or some of the southern white bands who adapted a lot of "blues" musical traits into their performances and reflected their entire being. If we play stuff we like, that speaks to us and we can use to speak to others, especially if it speaks to others well enough to get us a paycheck, we're simply darned lucky musicians. I'll take that as a title I aspire to, myself. Bluesman? I don't think so in a classical sense, regardless of our skin color. m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JellyWheat Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 INDEED, milod! INDEED! J/W [wakarimas] B) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluesguitar65 Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 Thank you very, VERY much for that important lesson! Got any more??? J/W I have plenty. Here is part 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGZGxRkPt0o&feature=fvwrel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturn Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 I read once that when one of the old blues men, maybe Howlin Wolf or Big Bill Broonzy was touring England in the mid 60s, they made the comment about all the young English musicians " these white boys wanna play the blues so badly. And most of them do." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DMichaelG Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 The real question is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw-TVrR8wZc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FirstMeasure Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 I get where J/W and Milo are coming from, but I just don't think about Blues or any music that way. Can only a Brit from Birmingham play authentic Metal? Do you have to be a hippie from San Fransisco to play authentic Acid Rock? Do you have to be from the worst parts of New York or Soho to play authentic Punk? I don't think so. If Blues Music is what speaks to you, and thereby you speak through Blues Music, you are playing Authentic Blues. All this analysis of origins, history, and locations just help us understand Willie Dixons Blues, or whichever artist you're studying. But as far as I'm concerned W.C. Handy's Blues are just as authentic as the the man who inspired Handy's Blues. By this very narrow definition of Blues, Handy was not Authentic. In fact, some of the most authentic blues will have to be relabeled since Willie Dixon wasn't "Introduced" to the blues until his early teen, therefore he didn't grow up in it. And what about all the Chicago Blues greats that didn't necessarily grow up in hard times, at least by a Share Croppers standards? Hate to get all "sub genre", but it could be accurate to say I couldn't play Authentic Delta Blues. But to say I cannot play authentic Blues because I was white when I was being influenced is absurd. To say Texas Blues is not Authentic because it's very white is also absurd. Texas Blues is Texas Blues, whether it's Jimmie Vaughan or Freddie King, it's Authentic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DAS44 Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 Also very relevant... "I've said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed." - BB King Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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