Blues People: Negro Music in White America

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This is a tough book to get a bead on and I can't say I am moving on with a full understanding of all the arguments. Despite the clarity of writing, some of the points were obscure to me. Bohlman, Philip V. (1999). "Immigrant, Folk, and Regional Music in the Twentieth Century". The Cambridge History of American Music. David Nicholls, ed. Cambridge University Press. p. 285. ISBN 978-0-521-45429-2. Other recordings that are still available were made in 1924 by Lawrence Gellert. Later, several recordings were made by Robert W. Gordon, who became head of the Archive of American Folk Songs of the Library of Congress. Gordon's successor at the library was John Lomax. In the 1930s, Lomax and his son Alan made a large number of non-commercial blues recordings that testify to the huge variety of proto-blues styles, such as field hollers and ring shouts. [41] A record of blues music as it existed before 1920 can also be found in the recordings of artists such as Lead Belly [42] and Henry Thomas. [43] All these sources show the existence of many different structures distinct from twelve-, eight-, or sixteen-bar. [44] [45] Storytelling was the primary means of education within the slave community, and folk tales were a popular and useful means of passing down wisdom, virtues, and so on from the elders to the youth. These folk tales also became integrated into their music and American culture, and later began to appear in the lyrics of blues songs. One of the most heartfelt blues ballads, “It Hurts Me Too” also became synonymous with slide guitar. Tampa Red played some tasty acoustic slide on the original 1940 version. But it was James’ electric lead on his 1957 cover that inspired a large cast of guitar masters to have a go at “It Hurts Me Too,” including Jerry Garcia with the Dead, Eric Clapton in his early solo days, and Ry Cooder on the Stones spinoff album Jamming With Edward. – Brett Milano Otis Rush – All Your Love

Christgau, Robert (June 15, 1972). "A Power Plant". Newsday. Archived from the original on April 26, 2019 . Retrieved September 10, 2018. BLUES PEOPLE was born during the pandemic… but the band members have authentically lived their truths - as lifelong working musicians, producers and recording artists for over 30 years. Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) and Sonny Terry are well known harmonica (called " harp" by blues musicians) players of the early Chicago blues scene. Other harp players such as Big Walter Horton were also influential. Muddy Waters and Elmore James were known for their innovative use of slide electric guitar. Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters were known for their deep, "gravelly" voices. Intro- LeRoi Jones states that: ‘the path the slave took to ‘citizenship’ is what I want to look at. And I Although the blues evolved in the southern states of the USA from the late 19th century, it has lots of musical influences from Africa.

One of the first things John Belushi said, upon meeting Dan Aykroyd in 1973, was: “I don’t listen to much blues.” But within a year, Belushi was a convert, and by January 1976, the double-act launched The Blues Brothers as a sketch on Saturday Night Live. Technique was then, as today, the key to creative freedom, but before this came a will toward expression. Thus, Jones’s theory to the contrary, Negro musicians have never, as a group, felt alienated from any music sounded within their hearing, and it is my theory that it would be impossible to pinpoint the time when they were not shaping what Jones calls the mainstream of American music. Indeed, what group of musicians has made more of the sound of the American experience? Nor am I confining my statement to the sound of the slave experience, but am saying that the most authoritative rendering of America in music is that of American Negroes. Partridge, Eric (2002). A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-29189-7. BLUES PEOPLE is a NY/NJ blues band featuring...KELTON COOPER (vocals/guitar), MIKE GRIOT (bass), RON THOMPSON (keys) and GENE LAKE (drums). Early comparisons to the Meters, Luther Allison, Keb Mo' and Buddy Guy are starting to roll in!Having released two promotional singles in 2022 ("The Skin I'm In" and "Troubled Times"), the band is busy in the studio finishing up their much-anticipated 2023 debut album "Troubled Times". Perhaps. But today nothing succeeds like rebellion (which Jones as a “beat” poet should know) and while a few boppers went to Europe to escape, or became Muslims, others took the usual tours for the State Department. Whether this makes them“middle class” in Jones’s eyes I can’t say, but his assertions—which are fine as personal statement—are not in keeping with the facts; his theory flounders before that complex of human motives which makes human history, and which is so characteristic of the American Negro.

A slave was, to the extent that he was a musician, one who expressed himself in music, a man who realized himself in the world of sound. Thus, while he might stand in awe before the superior technical ability of a white musician, and while he was forced to recognize a superior social status, he would never feel awed before the music which the technique of the white musician made available. His attitude as “musician” would lead him to seek to possess the music expressed through the technique, but until he could do so he would hum, whistle, sing, or play the tunes to the best of his ability on any available instrument. And it was indeed, out of the tension between desire and ability that the techniques of jazz emerged. This was likewise true of American Negro choral singing. For this, no literary explanation, no cultural analyses, no political slogans—indeed, not even a high degree of social or political freedom—was required. For the art—the blues, the spirituals, the jazz, the dance—was what we had in place of freedom. Much of the time, some or all of these chords are played in the harmonic seventh (7th) form. The use of the harmonic seventh interval is characteristic of blues and is popularly called the "blues seven". [30] Blues seven chords add to the harmonic chord a note with a frequency in a 7:4 ratio to the fundamental note. At a 7:4 ratio, it is not close to any interval on the conventional Western diatonic scale. [31] For convenience or by necessity it is often approximated by a minor seventh interval or a dominant seventh chord. Early music p23>> A song whilst song on the corn fields- ‘five can’t ketch me and ten can’t Moore, Allan F. (2002). The Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel Music. Cambridge University Press. p. 32. ISBN 978-0-521-00107-6.Not much is known about this mysterious Delta bluesman, but what is certain is that he only recorded 16 songs, one of which, “Catfish Blues,” went on to achieve immortality and a place in the pantheon of best blues songs. He recorded it in 1941 for the Bluebird label, accompanying his declamatory vocals with driving acoustic guitar; the song later had an impact on the Mississippian bluesman Muddy Waters, who drew inspiration from its lyrics, transforming it into his 1950 song, “Rollin’ Stone.” Lightnin’ Hopkins, Jimi Hendrix, and Buddy Guy with Junior Wells all went on to put their own spins on “Catfish Blues.”– Charles Waring Otis Rush – Working Man Oliver, Paul; Wright, Richard (1990). Blues Fell This Morning: Meaning in the Blues. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-37793-5.