alan2007
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Post by alan2007 on Sept 6, 2024 13:47:44 GMT
Hopefully I have posted this in the right place.
I have a bit of a thing for the blues, it is of course acknowledged as the bedrock of a lot of music, it ican be comparatively easy for a beginner (i,iv,v progressions and pentatonic scales etc) and there appears to be an abundance of resources to teach you to play. Obviously with this in mind my playing is nowhere near the league of the blues masters, however I can string play some basic blues. The questions have is about the early blues masters and how they learnt to play, for me there is an abundance of teachers and resources, Including plenty of theory teaching and if we go back to the blues guitarists of the 60s they learnt by listening to previous generation blues guitarists, however how did the early bluesman learn? Presumably there was a lot of simply experimenting and of course sharing with other musicians? There are obviously stories of some guitarists learning and teaching from others and I also wonder did any of the early guitarists know any theory, I am assuming that the majority of what they played was "by feel" rather than how I play by concentrating more than they did on the theory?
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leoroberts
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Post by leoroberts on Sept 6, 2024 14:54:52 GMT
I seem to remember something about the earliest blues guitarists and crossroads.
Also seemed to be important to have lost yer eyesight and/or taken holy orders.
Other than that, I’m afraid I can’t help.
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Post by delb0y on Sept 6, 2024 15:07:49 GMT
Shamelessly nicked off the web - but author is unknown.
1. Most Blues begin, "Woke up this morning..." 2. "I got a good woman" is a bad way to begin the Blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line like, "I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town." 3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes... sort of: "Got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher, and she weigh 500 pound." 4. The Blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch--ain't no way out. 5. Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Blues don't travel in Volvos, BMWs, or Sport Utility Vehicles. Most Blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft and company motor pools ain't even in the running. Walkin' plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin' to die. 6. Teenagers can't sing the Blues. They ain't fixin' to die yet. Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, "adulthood" means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis. 7. Blues can take place in New York City but not in Hawaii or any place in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City are still the best places to have the Blues. You cannot have the blues in any place that don't get rain. 8. A man with male pattern baldness ain't the blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg cause you were skiing is not the blues. Breaking your leg 'cause a alligator be chompin' on it is. 9. You can't have no Blues in a office or a shopping mall. The lighting is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster. 10. Good places for the Blues: a. Highway b. Jailhouse c. An empty bed d. Bottom of a whiskey glass 11. Bad places for the Blues: a. Nordstrom's b. Gallery openings c. Ivy league institutions d. Golf courses 12. No one will believe it's the Blues if you wear a suit, 'less you happen to be a old ethnic person, and you slept in it. 13. You have the right to sing the Blues if: a. You older than dirt b. You blind c. You shot a man in Memphis d. You can't be satisfied 14. You don't have the right to sing the Blues if: a. You have all your teeth b. You were once blind but now can see c. The man in Memphis lived d. You have a pension fund 15. Blues is not a matter of color. It's a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. Sonny Liston could. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the blues. 16. If you ask for water and your darlin' give you gasoline, it's the Blues 17. Other acceptable Blues beverages are: a. Cheap wine b. Whiskey or bourbon c. Muddy water d. Nasty black coffee 18. The following are NOT Blues beverages: a. Perrier b. Chardonnay c. Snapple d. Slim Fast 19. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it's a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So is the electric chair, substance abuse and dying lonely on a broke-down cot. You can't have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match or while getting liposuction. 20. Some Blues names for women: a. Sadie b. Big Mama c. Bessie d. Fat River Dumpling 21. Some Blues names for men: a. Joe b. Willie c. Little Willie d. Big Willie 22. Persons with names like Michelle, Amber, Debbie, and Heather can't sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis. 23. Make your own Blues name Starter Kit: a. name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.) b. first name (see above) plus name of fruit (Lemon, Lime, Melon, Kiwi, etc.) c. last name of President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.) For example: Blind Lime Jefferson, Jackleg Lemon Johnson or Cripple Kiwi Fillmore, etc. (Well, maybe not "Kiwi.") 24. I don't care how tragic your life: if you own even one computer, you cannot sing the blues.
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leoroberts
C.O.G.
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My main instrument is: probably needing new strings
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Post by leoroberts on Sept 6, 2024 16:34:15 GMT
I’m reminded of a song scorpiodog performed about a Jewish blues singer, or was it just folk singer? Very funny, either way 😀
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alan2007
Strummer
Must try harder
Posts: 30
My main instrument is: LagT88ac
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Post by alan2007 on Sept 6, 2024 16:53:28 GMT
Shamelessly nicked off the web - but author is unknown. Teenagers can't sing the Blues. They ain't fixin' to die yet. Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, "adulthood" means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis. Not sure about this one, apparently Muddy Waters was playing harmonica in his teens picked up the guitar at 17. Presumably other Blues singers of that era were the same!
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Post by delb0y on Sept 6, 2024 17:44:58 GMT
... however how did the early bluesman learn? Presumably there was a lot of simply experimenting and of course sharing with other musicians? There are obviously stories of some guitarists learning and teaching from others and I also wonder did any of the early guitarists know any theory, I am assuming that the majority of what they played was "by feel" rather than how I play by concentrating more than they did on the theory? To actually have a stab at answering the question seriously, I would hazard a guess that there were some who knew rather a lot of theory and many that didn't. The blues evolved over many decades, and I think various elements slowly came together to form the strands of blues as we know them today. To the best of my knowledge there were slaves out in the fields singing songs, many in the call and response style, and they used the blue notes, as they came to be known. Some of these slaves no doubt picked a bit of banjo (probably home made) in the evenings and on a Sunday and they probably traded licks and ideas and taught each other, and it was probably all by feel. Later, some of the blind ones who couldn't work the fields so well, or others who figured wandering around playing at dances and suppers was better than picking cotton took these songs on the road. I'm sure they continued to share songs and teach other. Those blue notes became very popular... Meanwhile marches (think John Paul Sousa) were popular with the highly schooled musicians and some of these tunes and players evolved into, and developed, ragtime. This was all rather geographical and limited territorially, but over time all this music was being heard quite widely. The ragtime syncopation caught the imagination of a lot of people - both listeners and players - and the sheet music was distributed and bought across the nation. That syncopation became very popular... In towns and cities like New Orleans the country blues and ragtime brought to town (independently) by itinerant musicians and touring marching bands and ragtime players looking to make some money all went into the melting pot down in areas like Storeyville and started to evolve into very early jazz - which was basically blues - and some of the guys playing it were very schooled indeed. I have a great fondness for early New Orleans clarinet and most of the players were classically trained before playing jazz. I forget the name, but there was one family of clarinet teachers (the Tio's, I think) who taught almost all of the jazz cats classical clarinet. They all discovered that mixing those blue notes and that syncopation sure was popular. So by this time (say 1920s) we're getting the ramblin' men with their country blues and some sophisticated jazz blues in the cities and both parties were actually cutting records and some of those rambling men headed north to Chicago and found an electric sound. Others developed complex fingerstyle blues. In the great cities of New Orleans and Chicago and Kansas City and Oklahoma there were swing bands and female "classic blues" singers with really hot and knowledgably players and arrangers. By the 1940s, at the time that Benny Goodman and Lester Young and Big Mama Thornton and Bessie Smith were playing with big bands, Robert Johnson was still playing solo blues guitar out there in the Delta. Read any interviews or accounts of the time and these guys were all talking about they taught one another - Rev Gary Days says he taught Bind Boy Fuller, for example. How true some of it is, who knows? They all liked to talk themselves up. Guitarwise, listen to Lonnie Johnson playing some very sophisticated blues as far back as the 1920s. He cut sides with Eddie Lang who was very schooled. It's interesting to listen to some of the hardcore Delta blues men from the same era to see how wide the "genre" already was. Compare Lonnie Johnson and Eddie Lang to Charlie Patton, for example. Night and day. Both are great. Django was around by the late 1930s in Europe but he famously didn't have a clue what he was playing, yet he was playing some of the most sophisticated guitar music- including blues - ever. So a bit of both, I guess is the answer... I should add, no facts were checked at all in the above account. It's just how I remember it from all the books I've read :-) Derek
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Post by martinrowe on Sept 6, 2024 18:21:53 GMT
I think this - it may or may not be correct.
In African villages there were probably families who were musical I.e. they could hear differences in sounds better than others and were taught instruments by relatives from a very early age. They were musical. Some became slaves and ended up in America - they were still musical, they were just living somewhere else. There’s the seed, I think it grew from there.
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Post by lavaman on Sept 7, 2024 8:30:50 GMT
In the very early days, slaves made simple instruments like the single string diddly bow and created sounds that they liked and related to their lives. With a single string and no frets and using a knife as a slide, they probably discovered the blue notes. At the same time they would have heard hymns at church on Sunday which may have sub-consciously imposed some ‘western’ structure to the music they were playing and the mixture developed into blues.
Woody Mann studied the early blues players and I remember him telling me that many of them had a very limited repertoire and played the same songs throughout their performing career. Also, in the early days before ‘race’ records became widely available, they learnt through experimentation and watching other local players perform. There are stories that Robert Johnson would perform facing the corner of the room so that other musicians couldn’t see what he was playing.
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alan2007
Strummer
Must try harder
Posts: 30
My main instrument is: LagT88ac
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Post by alan2007 on Sept 7, 2024 8:49:58 GMT
... however how did the early bluesman learn? Presumably there was a lot of simply experimenting and of course sharing with other musicians? There are obviously stories of some guitarists learning and teaching from others and I also wonder did any of the early guitarists know any theory, I am assuming that the majority of what they played was "by feel" rather than how I play by concentrating more than they did on the theory? I have a great fondness for early New Orleans clarinet and most of the players were classically trained before playing jazz. I forget the name, but there was one family of clarinet teachers (the Tio's, I think) who taught almost all of the jazz cats classical clarinet. They all discovered that mixing those blue notes and that syncopation sure was popular. For me any lines of distinction between jazz and classical are very indistinct and they are very similar hence the crossover, it seems to me that a lot of classically trained musicians have an affinity for jazz., and I have the opinion that such musicians are way cleverer than I am! I enjoy listening to both butcould never be disciplined enough to learn or play either.
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ocarolan
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Post by ocarolan on Sept 7, 2024 9:45:26 GMT
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Post by borborygmus on Sept 7, 2024 17:12:41 GMT
... however how did the early bluesman learn? Presumably there was a lot of simply experimenting and of course sharing with other musicians? There are obviously stories of some guitarists learning and teaching from others and I also wonder did any of the early guitarists know any theory, I am assuming that the majority of what they played was "by feel" rather than how I play by concentrating more than they did on the theory? I think delb0y did a good job in explaining the origins - over many decades from the end of the US Civil War, influenced by work songs and field hollers of the enslaved people, spirituals and church music, ragtime and even the folk and popular music of the white population (Appalachian music partially derived from Scottish and Irish immigrants). Evolving from unaccompanied singing in the fields of the sharecroppers and farms like the Dockery Plantation; out of there, the Mississippi Delta blues became the most influential style. What helped was the development of juke joints where the blues was regularly played, maybe by itinerant musicians, and concentrations of musicians at places like Dockery from where Charley Patton, Robert Johnson and Howlin' Wolf all came. Lots of learning by watching and listening to others in the true oral tradition, and just the preponderance of home-made music (and often home-made instruments) around when there wasn't much else to do after the working day. I would guess there was very little formal theory or education, which is why there were lots of original techniques (e.g. pocketknife slide) and a highly personal, expressive style that defined the early blues - emotional and powerful. One theory about the lack of detailed history is that at the height of the blues origins, in the early 20th century in the Delta, few white people heard the blues. It was still a very segregated society, and no "decent folks" had any time for what the poor, illiterate black people were getting up to. Derek mentioned books: I hope he has some more recommendations, but I would suggest Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta by Robert Palmer. Peter
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Post by scorpiodog on Sept 9, 2024 7:53:35 GMT
I’m reminded of a song scorpiodog performed about a Jewish blues singer, or was it just folk singer? Very funny, either way 😀 Folk Singer's Blues by Shel Silverstein, Leo.
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alan2007
Strummer
Must try harder
Posts: 30
My main instrument is: LagT88ac
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Post by alan2007 on Sept 9, 2024 19:01:56 GMT
I’m reminded of a song scorpiodog performed about a Jewish blues singer, or was it just folk singer? Very funny, either way 😀 Folk Singer's Blues by Shel Silverstein, Leo. Shel Silverstein, a great songwriter IMO, I love the stuff he wrote for Dr Hook. Oh I got stoned and I missed it
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Post by 3chordtrick on Sept 10, 2024 8:21:00 GMT
Shamelessly nicked off the web - but author is unknown. 1. Most Blues begin, "Woke up this morning..." 2. "I got a good woman" is a bad way to begin the Blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line like, "I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town." 3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes... sort of: "Got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher, and she weigh 500 pound." 4. The Blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch--ain't no way out. 5. Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Blues don't travel in Volvos, BMWs, or Sport Utility Vehicles. Most Blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft and company motor pools ain't even in the running. Walkin' plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin' to die. 6. Teenagers can't sing the Blues. They ain't fixin' to die yet. Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, "adulthood" means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis. 7. Blues can take place in New York City but not in Hawaii or any place in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City are still the best places to have the Blues. You cannot have the blues in any place that don't get rain. 8. A man with male pattern baldness ain't the blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg cause you were skiing is not the blues. Breaking your leg 'cause a alligator be chompin' on it is. 9. You can't have no Blues in a office or a shopping mall. The lighting is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster. 10. Good places for the Blues: a. Highway b. Jailhouse c. An empty bed d. Bottom of a whiskey glass 11. Bad places for the Blues: a. Nordstrom's b. Gallery openings c. Ivy league institutions d. Golf courses 12. No one will believe it's the Blues if you wear a suit, 'less you happen to be a old ethnic person, and you slept in it. 13. You have the right to sing the Blues if: a. You older than dirt b. You blind c. You shot a man in Memphis d. You can't be satisfied 14. You don't have the right to sing the Blues if: a. You have all your teeth b. You were once blind but now can see c. The man in Memphis lived d. You have a pension fund 15. Blues is not a matter of color. It's a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. Sonny Liston could. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the blues. 16. If you ask for water and your darlin' give you gasoline, it's the Blues 17. Other acceptable Blues beverages are: a. Cheap wine b. Whiskey or bourbon c. Muddy water d. Nasty black coffee 18. The following are NOT Blues beverages: a. Perrier b. Chardonnay c. Snapple d. Slim Fast 19. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it's a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So is the electric chair, substance abuse and dying lonely on a broke-down cot. You can't have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match or while getting liposuction. 20. Some Blues names for women: a. Sadie b. Big Mama c. Bessie d. Fat River Dumpling 21. Some Blues names for men: a. Joe b. Willie c. Little Willie d. Big Willie 22. Persons with names like Michelle, Amber, Debbie, and Heather can't sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis. 23. Make your own Blues name Starter Kit: a. name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.) b. first name (see above) plus name of fruit (Lemon, Lime, Melon, Kiwi, etc.) c. last name of President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.) For example: Blind Lime Jefferson, Jackleg Lemon Johnson or Cripple Kiwi Fillmore, etc. (Well, maybe not "Kiwi.") 24. I don't care how tragic your life: if you own even one computer, you cannot sing the blues. Hilariously funny,but true,nearly choked on my morning cup o’ tea reading this..
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Post by PistolPete on Sept 10, 2024 9:45:53 GMT
To add to @delboy's very good answer - there were quite a few ways that pre-1960s blues artists learned to play. Most would probably have learned from friends & neighbours - Muddy Waters was taught by Son Sims, who had played with Charlie Patton, who in turn had learned from Henry Sloan. R.L. Burnside learned from Ranie Burnette, who learned from Fred McDowell. This is why regional styles are often very pronounced - Bentonia, MS has a population of only 319 people, but gives its name to the "Bentonia school" of eerie minor tuned blues you can hear on Skip James or Jimmy "Duck" Holmes records. Indeed, although Robert Johnson is often held up as the architype of the rural blues player, in many ways the most significant thing about him is that he doesn't stick to a single regional style. The fact that he borrowed heavily from Lonnie Johnson & Skip James, who weren't among the musicians he knew personally, shows he learned lots from listening to the radio or hearing records of other players the same way those 60s guitarists did.
Catalogue guitars shipped with instruction books which contained 19th century guitar pieces including one called "Spanish Fandango" which was in open G tuning and gave it the widely used "Spanish" moniker you often come across in interviews with older blues artists. Listening to these pieces today you can clearly hear the influence in the playing of someone like Mississippi John Hurt or some of the prettier piedmont blues fingerpickers. There's a blog post by Elijah Wald where says "imagine trying to sing a field holler over the chords from Spanish Fandango and you've got the blues". Whilst literacy among Black Americans in the south in 1930 was shockingly only 40%, that was still high enough for some people to learn it and to teach their friends, who taught their friends.
It's also worth remembering that blues didn't appear in a vacuum but evolved over time from earlier forms of African-American folk - the early blues guitarists were learning from the banjo players who came before them. On "I do not play no rock n roll" Fred McDowell talks about how when he was younger black dance music was called "reels" rather than "blues", which hints at the fact that Irish & Scottish folk music was a significant influence on blues. There was plenty of cross pollination between the musical traditions of the white & black populations, with black musicians finding employment playing at dances for white people and learning the expected repertoire, The banjo has become most closely associated with white bluegrass players, in spite of it being a African instrument brought over by enslaved people.
Which brings me to my final point - many Black American musicians in the early blues era were highly musically literate professional musicians. Someone like W.C. Handy the "grandfather of the blues" was a professional band leader who had taken church organ lessons as a child, could read and write musical score and taught classical music at a college before deciding that performing full time would be more lucrative. As well as his solo career as a bluesman, Lonnie Johnson picked up session work with a lot of the big jazz performers of the day. There had been steady touring work in minstrel shows & medicine shows since just after the civil war. It's romantic to imagine that early blues performers were pulled out of the cotton field a few minutes before they laid down their first recordings, but many of them were career musicians who worked hard at their craft and would play whatever kind of music the money was in that week.
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