|
Post by delb0y on Sept 10, 2024 10:43:43 GMT
That's a wonderful answer, PistolPete. I'm put in mind of Scott Joplin's background which I'd previously read about. The fact that Scott Joplin wasn't a blues performer is sort of beside the point. His father, Giles, was a former slave, and we're right in that post Civil War period. The following extract shows that there was indeed quite comprehensive musical teaching to be had. Wiki (with a few snips for brevity sake) says: By 1880, the Joplins moved to Texarkana, Arkansas, where Giles worked as a railroad laborer and Florence as a cleaner. As Joplin's father had played the violin for plantation parties in North Carolina and his mother sang and played the banjo, Joplin was given a rudimentary musical education by his family, and from the age of seven he was allowed to play the piano while his mother cleaned. At the age of 16, Joplin performed in a vocal quartet with three other boys in and around Texarkana, also playing piano. He also taught guitar and mandolin. According to a family friend, the young Joplin was serious and ambitious studying music and playing the piano after school. While a few local teachers aided him, he received most of his musical education from Julius Weiss, a German-born American Jewish music professor who had immigrated to Texas in the late 1860s and was employed as music tutor by a prominent local business family. Weiss had studied music at a German university and was listed in town records as a professor of music. Impressed by Joplin's talent, and realizing the Joplin family's dire straits, Weiss taught him free of charge. While tutoring Joplin from the ages of 11 to 16, Weiss introduced him to folk and classical music, including opera.
|
|
|
Post by borborygmus on Sept 10, 2024 11:00:20 GMT
That's a wonderful answer, PistolPete . I'm put in mind of Scott Joplin's background which I'd previously read about. The fact that Scott Joplin wasn't a blues performer is sort of beside the point. His father, Giles, was a former slave, and we're right in that post Civil War period. The following extract shows that there was indeed quite comprehensive musical teaching to be had. That's a lovely story, and how wonderful that some charitable endeavour helped produce great music that we still listen to today. But I wonder if this type of thing was very much the exception. Peter
|
|
|
Post by borborygmus on Sept 10, 2024 11:06:07 GMT
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". Because I was curious about this:
|
|
|
Post by delb0y on Sept 10, 2024 11:37:13 GMT
Here's a video I've gone back to time and again when trying to learn to play in Open G. Watch the first nine minutes or so. Tom plays the regular parlour arrangement and then he and Stefan talk about how putting the same piece into 4/4 time created a blues. John Renbourn gets a mention, too. It's a superb video to watch all the way, as well.
|
|