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Post by Pickers Ditch on Apr 21, 2020 11:24:56 GMT
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Post by bonzo on Apr 21, 2020 11:36:33 GMT
What you say is so true Michael. I don't mean to sound as though I'm praising alcohol overconsumption! I don't recall ever seeing anyone drunk on stage that didn't have a known booze problem. Some of those guys are household names now. Some of the 'old school' blues guys and others did end up in a bad way. Often helped along by well meaning musicians/fans they would be 'discovered' by us blues fans all over again. Some made a good fist of it and were still capable performers while others you just felt you were 'in the presence of'. Situation often made worse by being dragged into a recording studio with the latest supergroup and having to perform songs you'd mostly forgotten. These were men (mostly) who had heard it all before, from managers, agents, promoters, club owners, record company execs and had generally been screwed by the aforementioned and had still managed to keep their dignity. Hardly surprising some ended up as drunks, but most didn't and if a few of them made some sloppy recordings, well I hope they at least got paid for it this time round! Soapbox going back in the shed now!
Best wishes and good health to you all, John
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Post by petej on Apr 21, 2020 11:38:31 GMT
The Blues is a good man feeling bad petej
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Post by slide496 on Apr 21, 2020 13:54:57 GMT
IMHO for one reason or another the style of a previous generation, for alot of reasons is not reproducible.
The blues style of the early bluesmen often re-used lyrics taken from common pools - which has often not been acceptable these days for copyright and originality reason. The licks and tunings have not been passed down, the pitch has been regularized at what is it a 440 standard?
The style that was successful among the vocalist masters accompanied by guitars - as some are noted on labels from the early eras - has not been passed down, and I believe many of the singers were started through the choir at preteen ages,espesically in the less urban areas, so that has been lost.
What I hear for the most part in early acoustic blues is a lost artform in which even if there were guitar solos, the lyrics dominated and everything and anything guitar accompaniment that supported the vocal in terms of pitch, tuning, tempo, speed, beats per measure, breaks, fills - sometimes on line on a line by line basis - was the acceptable rule. There wasn't anything decorative about it other than perhaps guitar solos in which the guitar imitated the sung portion of a verse.
So I think it would be hard to both teach or learn today, without studying the players of the eras when this was a popular artform.
YMMV
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Post by blueshome on Apr 21, 2020 14:13:35 GMT
Spot on. Why would creative musicians of the early period care about conformity they weren’t in the main, playing with others and were not musically trained. I can’t believe the variations of Charley Patton and many others were solely down to the effect of alcohol. As I said in my previous post, John Miller, amongst others, has done detailed analysis in this area and it is considered part of the performance style of each artist, not a drunken mistake, although no doubt there were plenty of them.
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Post by bonzo on Apr 21, 2020 14:56:32 GMT
Sorry ahead of time, if it does sound like I'm going on a bit! Blues idiom in particular, life and other art forms in general. Background of poverty, fear, no human rights too speak of, conditions we in our modern society can only imagine. You can sing and play music, not just what we now know as blues, but popular songs and tunes where you could show off a little, singing and playing. Feels good, maybe earn a few cents, get a meal and a drink and whatever else might be on offer! Everything else, whether its from Dochertys' plantation, bars in Chicago, clubs in Ealing or Hamburg is jam! What happened happened! Who could know? We can look back later and try to pick the bones out of it but we can never know! Watch any decent Keef Richards interview, you'll get a throaty laugh followed by something like 'I don't know how it all happened man and I was there!'
Best wishes and good health to you all,
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