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Post by PistolPete on Feb 21, 2020 11:07:30 GMT
An act I saw recently talked a lot about how he played 'authentic' delta blues but performed almost exclusively what I'd consider piedmont material - steady alternating bass under a melody (Mississippi John Hurt and Rev Gary Davis type stuff). Whereas I tend to associate delta with repeated bass notes and sudden jump in rhythm (in the mould of Charlie Patton or Robert Johnson).
I'm just curious what you see as the differences between the two styles?
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Riverman
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Post by Riverman on Feb 21, 2020 13:12:46 GMT
I think the differences are exactly as you describe Pete.
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Post by lavaman on Feb 21, 2020 14:09:10 GMT
I think the differences are exactly as you describe Pete. I agree. I'm never too comfortable describing types of blues music. The music is blues and the names are just names Iain
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Post by martinrowe on Feb 21, 2020 18:29:36 GMT
That's the accepted view that I've always heard. 'names are just names' I agree with lavaman . There's all sorts isn't there - big difference between Blind Lemon and Skip James as well.
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Post by delb0y on Feb 22, 2020 11:41:51 GMT
I agree, too. You basically have you country blues, and your delta blues - which of course comes from the same country, but isn't country blues. Then you have your ragtime blues, which is played by people from the same country but not from the delta - although some may have come from the delta and a lot probably passed through. Your Piedmont blues is, of course, from a different country (Italy) but that's a red herring where blues is concerned, because the Piedmont players are from the same country as the country blues players and the delta blues players (who don't play country blues). Then you have your Mississippi blues which is a catch all, so long as you're from Mississippi - and the delta, of course, isn't there, despite the name of the river - rather like the Texas blues is from Texas (a side note - there is no alternating bass in Texas because of the great D string famine of the 30's and 40s - the reason so many of the Texas Blues players headed towards Louisiana where D strings were available, only to discover the blues there was played on trumpets). There is no Florida blues because of the alligators; and the first musicians from Alabama were actually white kids with pick-up trucks and more lead guitarists than Iowa and Indiana combined (although they (the white kids) actually came from Florida, where there is no blues, just alligators). The Carolinas have a lot of blues - the aforementioned ragtime blues - but several of the best pickers left the area and moved to Mississippi and Louisiana and even Texas (but not Alabama (because of the white kids with lead guitars and guns in their pick-up cabins) and not Florida (because of the Alligators)) because that's where a lot of the country blues fans were heading on the pilgrimages to find country blues players (a lot of whom never played country blues, but delta blues, and occasionally Piedmont blues) and they (the ragtime blues pickers - are you keeping up?) stood a better chance of being signed by John Hammond Jnr. there than back in the Carolinas where there was an in-flux of bluegrass players coming over from Kentucky (where there is no blues because everyone is happy - despite Mr Peabody's coal train). Of course, all of this is moot, because the real blues is only found in Chicago, which is where it started in 1989 when a city boy called Stevie Ray Vaughan played at the County Fair (it used to be called the Country Fair - but of course the great R famine of the 1980s didn't finish until the winter of '89). From there, the folks retiring to the warmth of the southern states took the blues on railroad trains, on Greyhound buses, and in huge SUVs, down south to everywhere except Florida - because of the alligators - which is where we started. Clear?
Then there's your bottleneck blues...
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Post by thewanderer on Feb 22, 2020 15:09:19 GMT
I only have two classifications of music. Music I like, and music I don't. I don't tend to analyse either too deeply. It's like explaining a joke, or knowing how a magic trick is done, and lessens the effect.
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doc
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Post by doc on Feb 23, 2020 1:25:40 GMT
Oooooh thank you delb0y. You’ve cleared up a lot of my misunderstandings there. Now, about them there bottleneck blues. You were saying.............................?
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Post by vikingblues on Feb 23, 2020 20:05:07 GMT
I only have two classifications of music. Music I like, and music I don't. I don't tend to analyse either too deeply. It's like explaining a joke, or knowing how a magic trick is done, and lessens the effect. Absolutely. 150% agreed.
Most bands or artists I like are usually "defined" by some sort of genre. But I often dislike other bands or artists in the same classification. A lot of my favourite music is what would be regarded as crossover.
I view, in my curmudgeonly way, any classification of a particular style of music as a straitjacket for the artist.
But yes Pete, the way you describe the two styles seems about right to me. Certainly with Piedmont. Delta Blues is almost such a wide definition that it stops being a precise definition.So many hugely contrasting players / singers get shoehorned into the genre. I have some sort of recollection of seeing some blues history that suggested "delta blues" was just a label used by record companies when they realised there was a market a way of making lots of money in the African-American marketplace.
That was some post above Derek - had my head spinning the way insurance documents usually do!!!
Mark
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Post by martinrowe on Feb 23, 2020 21:46:53 GMT
I never knew about the D string famine - thanks for that
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Post by malcolm on Feb 24, 2020 2:45:57 GMT
I only have two classifications of music. Music I like, and music I don't. I don't tend to analyse either too deeply. It's like explaining a joke, or knowing how a magic trick is done, and lessens the effect. 100% agree with this comment, but also that the definitions of delta and Piedmont blues are as described here. That performer was probably just waffling, trying to impress the audience.
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Post by andyhowell on Feb 24, 2020 8:50:16 GMT
I agree with you as well Pete.
I always find this odd. Of course, some players were steeped in one style but there were many who could straddle a rnage of styles. This weird categorisation is made possible I guess because we know so litlte abiout manyof the best players.
Blind Blake is associated with a clear style but clrarly had the abilty to move across genres as did Blind Willie McTell. Perhaps, Blake's style was veyr defined by playing with an orchestra. I was fascinated when I first read this but listening to him closeley I can see how his style really worked for accompnyment.
Is it too difficuflt to assume that as the acoustic blues developed that the second generation of players were technically more adept, helped by moving around the country more often?
But perhaps the biggest problem with this kind of analysis is that what we now think of genres was heavily influenced by the music that the collectors wanted to collect. They were intersted in the blues. The players, however, made their way by playing at dances and almost certainly had a wider range. You can see this with Robert Johnson's collected sides. He could clrearly rag a tune but probably was not asked to record it.
I'm always suspicious of this kind of definitive categorisation. I suspect it is more to do with the guys who started documenting it in the 60's. It helps the sales of tutorial books!
My favourite, other than Blake, would probably be Joseph Spence from the Bahamas. His music was not the blues but a joyous music that had a lot in common with Blake. His inclusion on soem of the blues revival tours showed that acoustic music actually had few real barriers.
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Post by Matt Milton on Feb 24, 2020 19:41:18 GMT
I feel I know what Piedmont is but have never really known what delta blues really is. All the blues men who were very prolific like blind Blake, lemon Jefferson, Gary Davis, tampa red and others dabbled in other styles once in a while. Then there’s players like Charley Jordan and peg leg Howell that drift towards a folky music at times that isn’t really anything, it’s African American folk music
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Post by andyhowell on Feb 24, 2020 22:22:35 GMT
Peg Leg Howell is an unsung hero.
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doc
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Post by doc on Feb 24, 2020 22:38:43 GMT
Peg Leg Howell is an unsung hero. Not any more.
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Post by Onechordtrick on Feb 25, 2020 6:52:46 GMT
Piedmont blues, I would never have thought that a region of Northwest Italy would be one of the homes of blues.....
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