|
Post by Jim Boylston on Dec 20, 2007 17:40:25 GMT -5
I picked up the double-live last night. Love those 20% Off Borders coupons! Jim
|
|
|
Post by Jim Boylston on Jan 1, 2008 12:16:33 GMT -5
Well, my last concert of the year turned out to be the best. I caught the Derek Trucks/Susan Tedeschi Soul Stew Revival at the local HOB on Friday night, with opener Scrapomatic. Boy, it was everything I'd hoped for. An amazing blend of blues, R&B, and world music, and probably one of the most "musical" shows I've ever seen. I've rarely seen virtuousity displayed so tastefully. Scrapomatic was also very good... think the blues played through a Tom Waits filter, but with a vocalist that sounds like O.V. Wright. A thoroughly enjoyable evening. And Tom, I got "Songlines" for Christmas and completely concur with your assessment. A great album. Jim
|
|
|
Post by Jim Boylston on Jan 1, 2008 12:24:46 GMT -5
Anyone else here subscribe to emusic? I signed up again after a long time away. For $9.99 a month (the cheapest subscription price), you get 30 mp3 downloads. Not a bad price considering what iTunes charges. Their catalog is mainly small and indie labels, but I've still found a ton of stuff. Lots of blues and jazz, plenty of oddball indies...they have the Yahoo/Shanachie catalogs, Document, and JSP, to name but a few. They're worth a look. Jim
|
|
|
Post by TRK on Jan 1, 2008 12:34:02 GMT -5
Fun! Derek is one of, if not *the,* reigning slidemasters these days. He's taking the music in directions Duane Allman would have, had he lived longer.
Friday night we went to our last show of the year, too. Doug Yeomans and his band, Lo Blue Flame, from Buffalo, played down here. He's well known in the region but could be headed for bigger things, as he's been touring intensively as lead guitarist with a roadshow company, Ring of Fire (Jim: They'll be playing in various places in Florida the next few months).
Doug is a total master of the Telecaster--plus, he's a good singer and writer. He plays Americana-- a mix of blues, R&B, bluegrass, country, and R&R. He sat in with Bill Kirchen here last May, and made a comment to me the other night about an album they are hoping to do together. He plays an old Kay archtop for slide, and, for most songs, a '53 Tele through a Deluxe Reverb: sonic heaven!
Speaking of Kirchen, he's playing here again next month, plus giving a workshop earlier that day. I'll be hauling the Tele and Champ down to that for sure.
|
|
|
Post by TRK on Jan 9, 2008 12:37:20 GMT -5
The March issue of Vintage Guitar just arrived, and there's a review of a new book, The Road to Robert Johnson, by Edward Komara (Backbeat Books). It says "Komara provides a well-researched and plausible story for how Johnson could have become a great guitar player without having to meet the devil at the crossroads."
Sounds intriguing.
|
|
|
Post by Allen Wiener on Jan 28, 2008 20:26:19 GMT -5
Maybe this needs a new thread, but I got an email from my brother with the startling statement that he has always associated Louis Armstrong with the blues, not jazz. I started to try to explain the differences between the two genres, but didn't get too far. I mentioned a distinction between improvisational jazz (which I don't care for) and what can be broadly called "big band jazz," which takes in those big bands and their singers, but lots of other folks too, including Satchmo, Ella Fitzgerald and also Crosby and Sinatra. I distinguish between country and electric blues too, although it all has a common base; I told him that, in general, blues were played slower and its message was heavier (but cautioned that I'm generalizing all the time about this stuff). Anyway, the best I could come up with was "they don't call it "the blues" for nothing."
I doubt that real musicians or singers think to themselves "Now I'm doing a blues number" or "this is an early rockabilly tune or style". Elvis recorded some great blues, but it wasn't his forte and didn't give him many best sellers (maybe "Blue Christmas" is a possible exception). Buddy Holly recorded some seminal rock music, but he also cut some pretty shmaltzy ballads, yet no one would say he wasn't a rock & roll singer.
This all brought me back to the discussion about how anyone can fully distinguish genres from one another. Trying to define jazz and comparing it to blues is a good start, if anyone thinks that isn't loony. I'd love to hear views on it.
I should note that I still have not seen Ken Burns "Jazz" series, although I'm tempted to buy the CD box at Costo if it's still there. I keep procrastinating, but I've checked it out and there's some good stuff on it. I've been getting more and more interested in jazz the past few years (I even sent Jim a jazz Christmas CD). Do we outgrow music we once liked? Or do we just "grow out" and begin appreciating musical forms and styles that never resonated with us before?
AW
|
|
|
Post by bobdurham on Jan 29, 2008 21:56:35 GMT -5
Many times, its hard for me to separate jazz and blues. A lot of jazz musicians also played blues. There are many traditional jazz songs, like St. Louis Blues, that have also been picked up by blues musicians and vice versa. And of course, there are a lot of jazz songs with the word "Blues" in the title, that have very little genuine blues feel.
The earliest blues singers, who could just as easily be called jazz singers (Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith, Ma Rainey), performed with jazz combos. Even many country/rural blues singers, did not hesitate to record with jazz combos -- Satchmo himself played on at least one record by Jimmy Rogers (a traditional white blues singer). And some later singers who called themselves blues singers or shouters, like Jimmy Rushing and Big Joe Turner, performed exclusively with jazz bands. There are also a few traditional blues musicians (Lonnie Johnson comes to mind) who have been influenced strongly by jazz.
There is so much cross fertilization between jazz and blues, I don't know where the line could be drawn.
|
|
|
Post by Allen Wiener on Jan 30, 2008 0:23:09 GMT -5
Great way of summarizing it. When you mention Joe Turner and the shouters, I think of how that was really the start of rock & roll; it's different from jazz and blues, although it clearly grew out of them, and the lyrics of many of those songs went in a different direction, like "Shake, Rattle & Roll," which Elvis later covered, albeit with more sanitized lyrics. All of this music, to me, is like a great big melting pot. I was surprised when I listened to a lot of that outtake crap from the Beatles' "Let It Be" filming. They knew a lot of American songs that I wouldn't have expected them to, like "Honey Hush" and Hank Williams' "You Win Again." I think they got some of this stuff from early U.S. rockers, like Jerry Lee Lewis, who covered songs like Honey Hush, but there's no question that they were also very familiar with American blues and no strangers to jazz. They were avid record buyers and got their hands on everything they could find, hence they'd even incorporate the occassional obscure B-side into their repertoire.
AW
|
|
|
Post by bobdurham on Jan 30, 2008 8:34:11 GMT -5
B side -- what's that? When I was buying 45s in the early sixties, my friends thought I was weird because I actually listened to the B sides -- most people never turned their records over. I remember how surprised everyone was to discover that Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" also contained a great song on the other side, "Don't Be Cruel" -- the only 45 I know of that had a hit on both sides. I bet the Colonel kicked himself in the a-- over that one!
|
|
|
Post by Allen Wiener on Jan 30, 2008 9:31:01 GMT -5
I think it may actually have been the only single where both sides reached #1! It was also the best-selling single in history until the current system of CD singles and, I believe, a new way of calculating sales. Pound for pound, given the size of population and number of record buyers who were around in 1956, it's still the biggest hit single of all time.
I was also one of those odd-balls who always played the B-side and was often pleasantly surprised. Sometimes a friend would come over and I'd play the B-sides and they'd think I'd bought some new records that they hadn't heard yet.
AW
|
|
|
Post by TRK on Jan 30, 2008 9:38:30 GMT -5
There may have been a time when you could differentiate between "the blues" and "jazz," but it's long since been melded together to the the point that labels don't mean a lot. Both forms had similar roots and cross-pollinated over the decades. If I were to label him, I would call Louis Armstrong a jazz, rather than blues, musician. However, listen to something like "Blue Yodel No. 9 (Standing on the Corner)," which he and his wife, Lil Hardin, recorded with "The Singing Brakeman," Jimmie Rodgers, and it's clear to see that Satchmo fully understood what the real blues was all about. Sort through his record catalog, and you'd probably find that Armstrong recorded a raft of plain old twelve-bar blues. "Duke's Place," which he cut with Duke Ellington on that great album they did together in the early 1960s, comes to mind.
T-Bone Walker was a good example of a guy who walked both lines; he was identified with a type of jazzed-up blues that took the 12-bar, I-IV-V chord format to new levels by throwing in an extra chord or two and using jazzed-up 9th and 13th chords. Go looking for a copy of his album "T-Bone Blues," and you're as likely to find it in the jazz section as the blues. Chuck Berry, a very good blues musician in his own right, took the T-Bone Walker playbook and turned it into one of the greatest hit-making formats. B.B. King is another guy with one foot in jazz. He took a lot of his playbook from Louis Jordan, a musical giant who has been categorized as jazz, blues, swing, rhythm & blues, and proto-rock and roll. Like all the best blues artists, Jordan knew how to tell a sad tale with a twist, with the net result that the song actually wound up making you happy.
Some will tell you that the blues is this type of chord structure and that sort of scales, but in the end it's all in the feeling and the delivery.
|
|
|
Post by Allen Wiener on Jan 30, 2008 20:58:40 GMT -5
I agree; it's often hard to tell or label things and it can get tiresome when people swear they can do this and know what they're talking about. There are close similarities in music I've heard classified as blues or jazz. Sometimes I hear a song and instantly recognize it as jazz, but the very next track, by the same performer, can just as clearly be a blues number to me. It's often "in the ear of the beholder." Maybe it's like that judge once described pornography -- maybe I can't really define it, but I sure know it when I see [or hear] it."
AW
|
|
|
Post by TRK on Mar 23, 2008 15:38:10 GMT -5
The new Smithsonian Magazine says Quincy Jones is starting a club in Vegas, to be called "Q's Jook Joint." Cool name, alright.
BTW, the article on Q in that issue is pretty interesting. He's been associated with more hits and classics than you can shake a stick at.
|
|
|
Post by bobdurham on Mar 23, 2008 20:30:49 GMT -5
Did you see this?
"B.B. King Buys Club in Miss. Hometown "AP "Posted: 2008-03-23 15:30:55 "INDIANOLA, Miss. (AP) - B.B. King is the new owner of a juke joint in his Mississippi Delta hometown. Mary Shepard has owned Club Ebony in Indianola for the past three decades. King and other artists have played there throughout the years.
"A Mississippi Delta Blues Trail Marker outside Club Ebony says Count Basie, Ray Charles, James Brown, Ike Turner are among the musicians who have played there since 1945.
"Shepard says she sold the club to the bluesman because she wants to relax and spend time with her family.
"Indianola is about halfway between Jackson and Memphis."
I made a pilgrimage to the Delta a few years ago; interesting area. Friar's Point, Lula, the Delta Blues Museum in Greenville -- places of legend. After all I've read about it, I had to experience it at least once for myself. Couldn't find the Crossroads though -- I could use a shortcut, instead of the slow method I've been using to learn Blues.
Bob
|
|
|
Post by bobdurham on Mar 24, 2008 14:05:49 GMT -5
I just picked up a copy of "The Road to Robert Johnson" by Edward Komara. Its a Hal Leonard book and I picked it up in a music store. The sub-title is "The genesis and evolution of blues in the Delta from the late 1800s through 1938." Not strictly a biography of Johnson but an exploration of the music that influenced him. Has a lot of examples (in music notation and tablature). I wish it had an accompanying CD.
|
|