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Post by Jim Boylston on Oct 3, 2007 21:00:55 GMT -5
Live stuff Costello recorded with them, Jim? I'm familiar with the "King of America" sessions with Tutt, Sheff, Burton (and Hardin), but wasn't aware there were "magnetic memories" of any live dates. 'Course, that same core group served Emmylou Harris well as the basis of her early Hot Band. I wonder if Glenn Hardin still alive and kicking? I haven't heard anything about him in years. Yeah, I have something live floating around somewhere. I thought it was a commercial release, but I'll have to check. I'm not sure about Glenn Hardin. I blew a possible chance to have him on some sessions a few years ago, and I've kicked myself since. Jim
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Post by Allen Wiener on Oct 3, 2007 23:32:32 GMT -5
Allen, did you ever get to interview James Burton, Jerry Sheff, Glenn Hardin, or Ronnie Tutt, from Elvis' latter-day band? Musically, IMO, those guys walked on water. One of the top guys in my musical pantheon, Gram Parsons, also thought so: he dug deep into his pockets to hire them as backing musicians on his two solo albums. Scotty Moore and Bill Black were no slouches, either. I called several of those guys and, while they did talk to me on the phone and were very nice, they all declined to be interviewed. I think a lot of working musicians, no matter how good, decline interviews because they don't want the stars who might hire them to think they tell tales out of school. I did interview Scotty and D.J. Fontana (Black, as you know, died long ago). Both were extremely cooperative and very forthcoming. And, as I believe you said last night, Allen, gospel was where Elvis' heart really was. You watch the concert footage, even into the 1970s, and see the passion and enthusiasm he had, even when appreciating what one of the guys in the backing group The Stamps was singing during one of his songs... or listen to his gospel cuts over the decades, and it's plain to see that Elvis was one of *the* great gospel singers of all time. You said it. My daughter sings and has had a coach for ages. When she lived here at home, her coach was a former singer at the Met in New York. I once asked her about rock and blues and she was surprisingly complementary toward some performers, but her highest praise was for Elvis. She said she knew little about him or his music, but that someone had given her the 2 CD gospel set and she had played it. She said she never heard anyone sing so beautifully before and that she could feel the passion he brought to the songs just from listening to the CDs. High praise indeed. You can get chills playing his gospel stuff or seeing him do it in concert, even in his waning days when most of his strength was gone. AW
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Post by Allen Wiener on Oct 4, 2007 8:15:33 GMT -5
Slight correction -- I did interview Glenn Hardin ("Glenn-D") and he was wonderful. Tutt was a really nice guy too, but told me he just didn't want to do interviews (probably for the reason I cited above). I spoke to Burton's wife, who acts as a screen for him and was never able to talk to him.
AW
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Post by TRK on Oct 4, 2007 17:51:20 GMT -5
My vacation reading is Peter Guralnick's great little book, Searching for Robert Johnson, and there's a bit in there that pretty much sums up the cross-pollination of blues, hillbilly, and pop music that was going on in the 1930s. Guralnick quotes Johnny Shines, a blues guy who often traveled with Johnson:
"Robert could play anything. He could play in the style of Lonnie Johnson, Blind Blake, Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Willie McTell, all those guys. And the country singer--Jimmie Rodgers--me and Robert used to play a hell of a lot of his tunes, man. Ragtime, pop tunes, waltz numbers, polkas--shoot, a polka hound man. Robert just picked songs out of the air. You could have the radio on, and he'd be talking to you and you'd have no idea that he'd be thinking about it because he'd go right on talking, but later he'd play that song note for note. Hillbilly, blues, and all the rest."
There are certain musicians who are like open channels to a vast fountainhead of music, past and present. There's no doubt Robert Johnson was one of them.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Oct 4, 2007 19:25:21 GMT -5
That's very interesting and enlightening about Johnson's incorporation of so much different music. I'm glad to see he was well aware of Rodgers (I think Nick Toches once argued that a number of southern black artists actually did get some of their stuff from white country singers' the cross-pollination was not a one-way street.
I don't think you can go wrong with Guralnick. I talked to him on the phone for quite a while and he really cares a lot about the things he writes about, and I think he's almost always on the money in his observations.
From my interviews, I'd say that Elvis was a lot like Johnson in soaking up everything he heard. He was just so driven about music, at least in the early years. He was also a near-uncontrolable bundle of energy. He never seemed able to sleep for very long. In the early days, when he, Scotty and Bill were driving from town to town, the others would want to rest, turn off the radio, take turns sleeping, but Elvis never did. He'd sometimes actually get out of the car and walk for miles, just to burn up the energy.
Isn't it the "Million Dollar Quartet" where he describes seeing Jackie Wilson in Vegas singing "Don't Be Cruel" and says it was so much better than he (Elvis) did it. On a TV appearance just after that, he did the song Wilson's way.
AW
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Post by Jim Boylston on Oct 4, 2007 20:48:47 GMT -5
Yep, that's on "Million Dollar Quartet". Jim
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Post by bobdurham on Oct 5, 2007 3:04:05 GMT -5
Reading the above about Robert Johnson incorporating everything he heard reminds me of John Jackson, the Piedmont blues guitar player. John learned a lot of his stuff from his dad's record collection -- did a lot of Jimmie Rodgers stuff. Interestingly, he thought a few of the country artists he listened to, like Uncle Dave Macon, were black; which goes to show how heavily influenced the early country singers were by black music. Merle Travis, a fantastic guitar player, comes to mind.
Have you heard John talk about how he was "discovered?" He was playing a Mississippi John Hurt tune (Candyman) he had learned from one of Hurt's 1928 recordings and a guy stopping for gas heard him and invited John and his wife to accompany him to a Hurt concert in Washington, DC. John didn't believe him at first, didn't think it was possible that Hurt was still alive. They introduced the two of them and they ended up, eventually, playing on stage together. Jackson did a lot of Blind Blake stuff too, that he had learned from records.
Blind Blake is so complex!, I can't imagine learning his stuff from a record. I've been trying to approximate his recording of Police Dog Blues for years -- even with the aid of tablature, I haven't got close yet.
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Post by TRK on Oct 5, 2007 6:54:17 GMT -5
Blind Blake is somebody I have to check out. I take it he had a complex fingerpicking style. I fool around with Travis-style fingerpicking and have been gradually improving my speed and accuracy over the last couple of years. My weak point is still thumb coordination...picking out an alternating bass pattern, and getting the thumb to "think" independently of the fingers. The solution seems to be "practice, practice, and more practice."
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Post by Jim Boylston on Oct 5, 2007 8:57:59 GMT -5
Blind Blake amazes me. Like Bob, I've got a "version" of one Blake song in my repertoire (Diddy Wah Diddy), but it doesn't even come close to the complexity of Blake's version. It's really dumbed down, and is still a challenge. Don't get me started on the Rev. Gary Davis, either. I have one record by John Jackson, one of his later releases, and as Bob points out he's another of the "songster" school. That's the kind of stuff that really appeals to me. Some of his style reminds be a little of Elizabeth Cotten. As for the "songsters", do any of you have the Henry Thomas collection that was released on Yazoo? Thomas was one of the earliest recorded bluesmen, and his "Bull Doze Blues" is the template for Canned Heat's "Going Up The Country", including the signature lick on pipes. He also recorded one of the earliest (if not the earliest) versions of "Fishin' Blues", later covered by Taj Mahal, the Spoonful and many others. He's definitely worth checking out. Not really a guitar virtuoso, but very influential.
I switched to fingerpicks a few years ago and began learning the alternate thumb style. I found it difficult, but at some point it just clicked and I "got" it. You have to reach a point where your brain disconnects what the thumb is doing from what the fingers are doing and the movement becomes more a reaction, I think. I'm not accomplished by any means, I still find myself dropping the bass occassionally, but I'm a lot steadier than I used to be. I've used Homespun instructional DVDs and found them to be very helpful. A lot of guys swear by the DVD's released by Stefan Grossman's company too. I've never tried them, but from the clips I've seen they look very good as well. Jim
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Post by TRK on Oct 5, 2007 9:14:29 GMT -5
A couple of years ago I started using Mark Hanson's book/cd The Art of Contemporary Travis Picking and found it quite good for enforcing some discipline on learning fingering patterns, but it seems to be more for those trying to follow the styles of Kottke, Fahey, etc. I also have Berle and Galbo's Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar, which gets heavier into establishing bass patterns.
I never could get used to thumbpicks or fingerpicks so don't use them for acoustic. And for electric, anymore I'm more apt to play without a pick than with one; it almost feels more natural to pick with just the fingers and thumb, whether playing with slide or fretting.
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Post by Jim Boylston on Oct 5, 2007 13:07:29 GMT -5
I thought I'd never get used to them. It took a couple of weeks of solid use and determination before they felt anything close to normal. My trick was to wear them around the house when I wasn't playing and I got used to the feel. The thumb pick was the most difficult for me to get used to as the angle felt all wrong. I tried tons of them before settling on a plastic Kelly speed pick. For fingerpicks I use metal Pro-Piks on three fingers. These have circular cut outs so your fingertip can also make contact with the string. I found them much easier to adjust to than full coverage designs like Dunlops. I still play with just fingers most of the time when I'm playing for fun, but I get a lot more volume with the picks, and I like the "bite" of metal on steel. I also find the fingerpicks are far less forgiving...I can play a lot sloppier with my fingers and it isn't as noticeable. I have to stay sharp if I'm using the picks. Jim
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Post by bobdurham on Oct 5, 2007 23:16:33 GMT -5
I've used Homespun instructional DVDs and found them to be very helpful. A lot of guys swear by the DVD's released by Stefan Grossman's company too. I've never tried them, but from the clips I've seen they look very good as well.
I got a DVD from Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop not too long ago -- The Guitar of Blind Willie McTell by Ernie Hawkins; excellent instructional DVD, I'd rate it the best I have. I'm going to order another with the music of Elizabeth Cotton -- I hope its as good. I have several Homespun DVDS -- my favorites are a couple of Robert Johnson instructionals by Rory Block. She's a fantastic player and performer, I see her every time I get the chance. The John Jackson and Robert Hammond DVDs are interesting to watch in their own right, they both tell a lot of stories. I didn't think they were as useful as some of the others I've seen though. When I first started learning guitar, back around 1967, I picked up a book and record, Country Blues Guitar, by Stefan Grossman and Sunshine Kate (really Rory Block). The record contained their instrumental versions of the songs and I still love them. They did a lot of them as duets. Some real blues classics, M&O Blues, Candyman, Old Country Rock, Future Blues, Mississippi Blues, Brownsville Blues, Police Dog Blues, Vastapol, etc. A few years ago, I watching a baseball All Star game and they went to every commercial with a cut from one of the songs from the record -- knocked me out. Its still one of my favorite albums, have it on tape and CD too.
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Post by bobdurham on Oct 5, 2007 23:17:46 GMT -5
How DO you people get those nice little blocks around quoted material???
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Post by TRK on Oct 6, 2007 9:01:35 GMT -5
How DO you people get those nice little blocks around quoted material??? To quote an entire post, just click "Quote." If you want to quote just a passage, you'll have to delete the parts of the original message you don't want to include. Maybe someone else knows a better way to quote just an extract.
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Post by TRK on Oct 6, 2007 13:39:37 GMT -5
Having quickly disposed of Searching for Robert Johnson, I'm well into volume two of my vacation reading, Nick Tosches' 2001 book, Where Dead Voices Gather. It is a biography of Emmett Miller, set inside the greater milieu of the American minstrel show tradition, of which Miller was the last great practitioner. Probably his best known song was "Lovesick Blues," which Hank Williams later had a huge hit with. Long a forgotten, near-mythical figure, Miller became an obsession of Tosches', who, with the help of researcher Brett Wood, finally was able to flesh out his story.
Tosches makes a case for Miller as a sort of "Rosetta Stone to the understanding of the mixed and mongrel bloodlines of country and blues, of jazz and pop, of all that we know as American music." In his inimitable prose (I suspect some of you have read some of Tosches' other, never boring, books, including his bio of Jerry Lee Lewis, Hellfire, and Country: The Biggest Music in America, which is sort of a Hollywood Babylon of early Country & Western music), he makes some good points on the profligate cross-breeding of blues, country, jazz, and pop music, such as:
"The songs and music of the minstrel shows, and of their smaller and tawdrier counterparts, the medicine shows, were as important an influence on Southern black music, on what came to be called the blues, as on white Southern music, which came to be called country. Minstrelsy was the common blood, inspiration, and breeding ground of both these inchoate forms."
Tosches has interesting things to say about the nature of American popular and traditional music, the imaginary "masks" performers wear, and the manner in which performers borrow and steal ideas and lyrics from each other.
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