The Blues

[Frykitty]

Currently in rotation:

Bukka White, Son House-The Complete Library of Congress Sessions , Robert Johnson, and Lightnin Hopkins. . . R.L. Burnside is also worth checking out. Some consider him "punk blues" I'm not sure what exactly punk blues is but I like it..

 

[dr greg]

R L

Dunno bout no punk born in 1926, but the great RL was considered a proponent of "hill music" as distinct from Delta blues..I saw him twice and it was pretty amazing, not many similarities to Sid Vicious that I could discern

 

[Hawkhat]

Little Walter Jacobs

IMO the best harp player ever...just saw Cadillac Records and was very aggravated by his portrayal and the overall historical inaccuracies.

 

[CopperNY]

i didn't -think- i liked blues. but i'm a diehard Led Zeppelin fan. once i really got into them and discovered that some of the early stuff was simply old blues songs, i realized my folly and have since introduced many folks i know to Robert Johnson that would swear no music worth listening to was made before The Beatles.

 

[Feraud]

This might interest some folks here.
Venerable Music.

 

[Feraud]

An fyi for you blues fans. There is a new biography on W.C. Handy out called, W.C. Handy The Life and Times of the Man Who Made the Blues by David Robertson.

Here is one book review I found.

Posted on Sat, Apr. 04, 2009
Review | W.C. Handy: The Life and Times of the Man Who Made the Blues
By JAMES BRINSFIELD
Special to The Star
The reputations of many early black modernist musicians such as Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver and James Reese Europe have sunk into a historical fog filled with false legend. W.C. Handy’s profile has suffered much the same fate until now.

A new biography by historian David Robertson, W.C. Handy: The Life and Times of the Man Who Made the Blues, rescues him by carefully making the case that Handy’s contribution to our culture primarily rests on his formula of combining strains of blues-based African-American folk music and European song structure.

Handy indeed did “make” the blues, but he didn’t invent them.

William Christopher Handy was born in 1873 in Florence, Ala., near the Tennessee River in the northern part of the state. His father, Charles, was a Baptist minister who owned his farm and land in the hills overlooking the small town. This was a dangerous time and an uneasy place where segregated Jim Crow politics in the post-Civil War South sought to strip blacks of their civil rights through violent intimidation and the repeal of federal voting laws.

Stocky and quiet spoken, Handy excelled at music in his all-black high school. He said his ear was so keen that he could accurately transcribe bird calls into musical notes.

Almost on a whim he convinced an itinerant entertainer to sell him his cornet for $1.75. In 1892, armed with a horn and more ambition than wisdom, he hopped a series of freight trains headed north. He eventually arrived in Chicago with dreams of playing at the Columbia Exposition World’s Fair. There he found that the fair was only a muddy construction site, the opening delayed for a year because of a severe economic recession.

Handy’s first professional break came in Evansville, Ind. He talked his way into an audition and was hired as a full-time musician for the Hampton Cornet Orchestra. In 1896 he joined Mahara’s Colored Minstrels and traveled throughout the Midwest and south down to Texas and as far north as Chicago. Although many today look at minstrelsy as a grotesque depiction of African-Americans, Handy viewed it as a means of well-paid, steady employment.

He left Mahara four years later, eventually settling in the small city of Clarksdale in the Mississippi Delta, where he joined the 20-member Colored Knights of Pythias Fraternal Band. Under his direction the band played a sedate mixture of waltzes, Sousa marches and Handy’s adaptations of Negro spirituals.

His epiphany came during a weekend performance before an audience of white planters and merchants in a small town close to Dockery’s plantation. During intermission a rustic string band began playing what Handy described as “one of those over and over strains.” They were playing blues, and the audience rewarded them with “a rain of silver dollars.”

“My idea of what constitutes music was changed,” Handy wrote in his memoir. “I returned to Clarksdale and immediately began working on this type of music.”

Robertson slyly comments that if Handy wasn’t the “Father of the Blues he could certainly claim to be the Father of the Commercialization of the Blues.” His first efforts at writing popular music met with little success until he began to incorporate the blue note –– the minor third, fifth or seventh within a major key that subtly changed the mood of a particular song.

Handy cast himself as a great American composer. And he knew that taking the next step on the ladder of success involved leaving the Delta for the bustling, wide-open urbanity of Memphis. The years he spent in Memphis, from 1905 to 1920, were his most creative as a songwriter. They were also the beginning of his financial success, but not before he stumbled through bad copyright decisions and delayed recognition of his most famous composition.

By the century’s second decade, the hits began coming: “Memphis Blues”; “Yellow Dog Blues”; then, in 1914, he wrote his most enduring number, “St. Louis Blues.” The song went unnoticed until 1915, when a white singer named Al Bernard recorded the first vocal version. In 1920 Marion Harris turned the song into a national crossover hit.

To get an idea of the lasting popularity of “St. Louis Blues,” there are 1,514 MP3 downloads currently available on amazon.com. The covers range from a 1925 recording by Bessie Smith, accompanied by a very young Louis Armstrong, which many believe to be the definitive version, to renditions by the Boston Pops Orchestra and Jim and Bob (the Genial Hawaiians).

Handy turned his attention from writing and performing to managing his music publishing business. He moved to New York City in 1920 riding the crest of a new song, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” written by Eddie Green. Times were good and then they just simply leveled off. Handy still managed to collect regular royalties on his earlier songs, but tastes had changed.

Avuncular and slowly losing his sight, Handy took to his new role as a blues patriarch and revered father figure of American music, attending testimonials and awards given on his behalf. In 1958 he died at 84 years old.

Robertson has drawn a sympathetic portrait of a subject who was all too human. Handy was vain, principled, generous and stubborn. His legacy is the bridge his music built between two worlds.

http://www.kansascity.com/238/story/1121300.html

 

[Elmonteman]

Floyd Lee Band

I just picked this up the other day, "Doctors, Devils and Drugs" by the Floyd Lee Band. I just love it. Has a tinge of the R.L. Burnside thing....

The blues is the reason I had to subscribe to Sirius/XM. It's so nice to have the 'blues' whenever you want. Not only that, you don't have to wait for the DJ to identify who's playing. It's right on the display of your radio, the artist, the song, the album.

 

[Carlisle Blues]

Right now I am pulling apart Eric Clapton's and B.B. King's "Riding With The King" and SRV's "Mary Had A Little Lamb".

 

[Talbot]

I generally don't go for later model blues artists...

...especially those that ride around in limo's, but I'm pretty impressed with Seasick Steve.

Try him.

 

[Feraud]

I have a version of Blind Willie Johnson's Dark Was the Night performed by the Kronos Quartet! Very interesting.

 

[mike]

I have a version of Blind Willie Johnson's Dark Was the Night performed by the Kronos Quartet! Very interesting.

I'd love to hear that! I love their rescoring of the '31 Dracula!

Did I post a link before to the Uncensored History of the Blues podcast?

http://www.deltabluesmuseum.org/high/podcast.asp

It is excellent, but you've been warned, not for the faint of heart!

 

[Feraud]

Dark Was the Night!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsN-N0mwAgE

 

[Feraud]

The Memphis Jug Band in NYC.

and a YouTube tune -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIgiyi1YA3o

 

[tuppence]

I third Bessie Smith and add Memphis Minnie

 

[Feraud]

These are cool..
WWI draft cards.
Louis Armstrong

W.C. Handy

 

[rkwilker]

For those interested in contemporary (electric) blues artists might I suggest Joe Bonamassa. Skilled beyond his years and well worth a good listen. Also check out former rocker Gary Moore's recent blues CD's. Good stuff.

 

[Feraud]

Has anyone heard about this?
Looks interesting.

 

[NicknNora]

Queen of the Blues

Bessie Smith, people. Bessie Smith.
Or Jimmy Rushing singing with the Count Basie Orchestra.

And every blues and jazz lover in the world needs to read Albert Murray's book, STOMPING THE BLUES, as well as his novel, TRAIN WHISTLE GUITAR.

Most certainly Bessie Smith! She's my favorite. I also like Lightnin' Hopkins, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters, Sidney Bechet, Jelly Roll Morton, T bone Walker, John Lee Hooker, Bo Diddley, Howlin Wolf, Keb Mo, Johnny Winter and Robert Cray.

 

[Barrelhouse]

Has anyone heard about this?
Looks interesting.

Welcome to my world, won't you come on in.

 

[johnny]

I love the blues, especially the pre-war stuff.

I had the honor and pleasure of seeing and meeting Honeyboy Edwards in New Orleans last year. He's still touring in his mid-90s!