You will not like what I have to say on this, I think. But I think blues is absolutely dead as an idiom. The period of country blues between the advent of the first recordings around 1924 and the mass migration to northern urban areas in the 30's produced raw, authentic, genuine expressions of the human soul that were the culmination of African and European influences mixed together with the poignancy of aspiration amid suffering. This led directly into its urban counterpart in cities such as Chicago, where the electric technology transfered that same spirit into a new context with new instrumentation. Just as authentic and powerful, the urban blues produced between the post war 40's and early 60's is some of the greatest American music ever made.
After the blues became the official basis for white rock music (particularly in England) it stopped evolving and growing. It became something to mimmic, to copy, and to asshimilate. As an artform, after the mid 60's is became nothing but a a caricature of itself, which is what it is today. The old LP's prove this when compared to the crap played in New Orleans clubs which offer the musical equivalent of a civil war re-enactment. The innovation and human creativity that made the form great is long long gone. It can be copied, even mastered (as a copy) but it no longer grows. Just listen to Charley Patton, Robert Wilkins, Robert Johnson, Sonyboy Williamson, or Howlin Wolf and compare THAT to anything after the British blues explosion. |
Grimace: unfortunately, the same applies to visual art, architecture, and other aspects of high western culture. My wife says I am a pessimist, but I cannot help but conclude that our culture has been degenerating for quite some time.
Possible reasons: the corporate media, corporate control of every aspect of life, multiculturalism, the political structure as a vehicle for yet MORE corporate control of life. |
Cwlondon: I could not agree more. The examples you gave really make the point hit home. Comparing Keb Mo to Robert Johnson is like comparing Shakespeare to the Smurfs. |
I'm sorry, but your examples of Marcia Ball and Susan Tedeschi only prove my point. They are gifted craftspeople, they have mastered a form. They are not producing innovation on the level of those who forged the genre. Respectfully, I cannot listen to their stuff without thinking 'why listen to this when I can have Freddie King, T-Bone Walker, Otis Rush, or even Ike Turner'. In those guys the innovation crackles out of every nuance. With the artists you mentioned all I can think is 'heard that before'. |
It might even be valid to say that the synthesis of african rhythmic patterns (which became field hollers) with european melodies (evident in early negro spirituals) was in a sense 'anti corporate' . It certainly was a reaction against the status quo of the plantation system and the society that preserved that way of life. Blues was in direct defiance to that system, and allowed soulwrenching human creativity to flourish in the face of that brutal and oppressive degradation.
Today no such oppression exists. The thread from Africa to the plantation, and in the post-war period to northern cities, is broken. The blues was not a luxury; it was a NECESSITY. It preserved the dignity and vibrancy of a people who had no other outlet. No such equivalent exists today. Just as the traditions of Celtic and Italian music died with assimilation, so black culture has been 'mainstreamed' to the point that it is now part of the system it once reacted against. Don't believe me? Ask the president! |
That, Grimace, is something we CAN resist and reject! I am not saying that the corporate media is another plantation system (much), but I am saying that we can be vocal and annoying about what we will and will not support. Will it change the world? No. Will it create an underground shift in taste? Maybe. What else can we do? |
Buddy Guy and Robert Cray, like some others you mentioned, are masters of the form. I would never dispute that. However there is a difference between mastering a form and creating and innovating new developments. Those guys are rehashing the glory of the past. Even though they produce new variations, which involve creativity for sure, it is not real authentic adaptation. In the 20's the idiom was continually changing out of a need to express new things. Same with the electric ensemble stuff of the 50's. The need came first and artists filled that need with work that either did the job or failed to do so. I think Buddy Guy's Chess work is remarkable, but now he coasts off of his mastery to accolades that are often uncritical.
As for the white bluesmen you mentioned, I think their innovation was to take those delta roots and bring them into contexts that were amazingly diverse. They were musically aware of Stockhausen, Schoenberg, Cage the Beatles, LSD, and world literature. Page, for example, was highly educated and literate. You can't compare him with a dirt farmer who could not read or write. It is a totally different music for a totally different context, and it was fantastic. Blues-rock is great for what it is, as is country blues and chicago blues, etc. Everything has its place.
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I never said "no good blues have been played since 1965".
I said artistic growth in the idiom had turned from radically creative and innovative to the perpetuation of a rather static form. Get your facts. |
For pre-war the best way is to do a run of the south by region, starting with the delta. The fine work of Samuel Charters can inform this process quite a bit. Here is a partial bibilography:
1959 - The Country Blues. New York: Rinehart. Reprinted by Da Capo Press, with a new introduction by the author, in 1975.
1963 - The Poetry of the Blues. With photos by Ann Charters. New York: Oak Publications.
1963 - Jazz New Orleans (1885-1963): An Index to the Negro Musicians of New Orleans. New York: Oak Publications
1967 - The Bluesmen. New York: Oak Publications
1975 - The Legacy of the Blues: A Glimpse Into the Art and the Lives of Twelve Great Bluesmen: An Informal Study. London: Calder & Boyars.
1977 - Sweet As the Showers of Rain. New York: Oak Publications
1981 - The Roots of the Blues: An African Search. Boston: M. Boyars.
1984 - Jelly Roll Morton's Last Night at the Jungle Inn: An Imaginary Memoir. New York: M. Boyars.
1986 - Louisiana Black: A Novel. New York: M. Boyars.
1991 - The Blues Makers. (Incorporates The Bluesmen and Sweet As the Showers of Rain) Da Capo.
1999 - The Day is So Long and the Wages So Small: Music on a Summer Island. New York: Marion Boyars.
2004 - Walking a Blues Road: A Selection of Blues Writing, 1956-2004. New York: Marion Boyars.
2006 - New Orleans: Playing a Jazz Chorus. Marion Boyars. |
Onhwy61, the blues stopped evolving as a form in itself because the needs it served became depleted. The rural black country culture that was a product of the Jim Crow south used blues almost like an emotional newscast. When those same people and their children (the generation of WW2) migrated to northern cities the needs changed yet again, but the emotional barometer remained the same. The form of both phases innovated highly emotionally charged ways to express a very specific sociocultural set of feelings and ideas. Those periods (1924 through the depression, and the migratory period after 1945 to 1965) became the basis for all blues of any kind that followed.
You cannot call the morphing into other forms an extension. Yes, the needs changed. R&B, jump, rock n' roll, and blues rock all grew from the 2 models I cited. If you want to say that blues extended itself to become those other forms it is you who is being simplistic. I think categorical distinctions are made for a reason, and those later forms did leave the pure blues behind. The only exception might be the British blues explosion, but in my opinion we can write it away as a wholly derivative venture from the outset. |
I'm with you Tomcy6. Well said indeed! |
