Author
|
Topic: You have a right to sing the blues if … (Read 1188 times) |
|
Blunderov
Archon
Gender: 
Posts: 3160
Reputation: 8.30
Rate Blunderov
"We think in generalities, we live in details"
  
|
 |
You have a right to sing the blues if …
« on: 2008-08-11 18:46:21 » |
 |
duluthnewstribune.com
You have a right to sing the blues if …
Judith Podell, Duluth News Tribune
Published Sunday, August 10, 2008
1. Most blues tunes begin, “Woke up this morning …” Some blues take place in the jailhouse. If you’re wide awake because you’re in the St. Louis County Jail for playing at Bayfront Festival Park after 12:01 a.m., you’ve got a good start on the blues.
2. The blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it.* Then find something that rhymes … sort of: “Gotta good woman with the meanest dog in town. Yes, I gotta good woman with the meanest dog in town. Got teeth like Hillary Clinton, and she weigh 500 pound.”
3. Good blues cars are still Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Most blues cars are products of Detroit that get poor or no gas mileage. The blues absolutely will not travel in a Prius or a Hummer.
4. Some non-American blues cars:
a. Tata
b. Yugo
5. Blues can take place in New York City but not in Hawaii — except if your daddy is from Kenya and he left you and your white momma from Kansas there. Then again, maybe not. Hard times in Vermont or Seattle are just seasonal affect disorder. Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City are still the best places to have the blues. The 9th Ward of New Orleans would qualify as the blues even if Bush did care about black people.
6. If you’re living in a trailer park, it’s country. If it’s a FEMA trailer, it’s the blues.
7. You have a right to sing the blues if you’ve been held as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese for six years. But if your trophy wife is one of the richest women in Arizona and spends most of that money on Percocet, it’s her blues, not yours.
8. Some good places to have the blues:
a. Highway 61
b. Rehab
c. Jail
d. Bottom of a whiskey glass
9. Bad places for the blues:
a. Mall of America
b. Ikea
c. Trader Joe’s. (It’s impossible to have the blues at Trader Joe’s. You can still have the blues in Duluth because it doesn’t have a Trader Joe’s yet.)
10. Blues is not a matter of color. You need a good dose of bad luck. Barack Obama cannot sing the blues. Hillary Clinton can. Hispanic presidential candidates named Richardson also have got a leg up on the blues.
11. You can sing the Sub-Prime Mortgage Foreclosure Blues unless you took out a no-income verification loan to buy a McMansion.
12. The electric chair and hanging is the blues. Lethal injection isn’t, except when it’s botched, and then it’s a really bad case of the blues — for a limited time only.
13. Getting shot in the face is a cause for the blues. Getting shot in the face because you went hunting with the vice president and he mistook you for a quail is a bad choice in hunting companions.
14. Not all suffering is bluesworthy. It’s not the blues if:
a. You suddenly have to return $20,000 of PAC money linked to Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, or,
b. You forgot to file taxes in 17 states and you “remember” after you announce you’re running for Senate. Then it’s self-destruction, or the Democratic talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
15. If your boss says “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie,” it’s the blues. If you accidentally refer to your boss as your husband, it’s a cry for help.
16. Some blues names for women:
a. Sadie
b. Big Mama
c. Condoleezza
d. Tata
17. Some blues names for men:
a. Willie
b. Little Willie
c. Big Willie
d. Rev. Jeremiah Wright
18. Barack is not a good blues name. But Hussein is. So is Osama. But maybe not Obama. Or maybe so. Or not. Or …
19. People with names such as Madison, Brandi and Heather are not permitted to sing the blues unless they live in a FEMA trailer and been done wrong by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Judith Podell is a retired tax attorney in Washington, D.C., and the author of the definitive “Blues for Beginners and other Obsessions,” available at Amazon.com. She wrote this updated version, with assistance from Memphis Earlene Gray and Blind Mango Washington, for the News Tribune.
*[Blunderov] The classic 12 bar form.
"The rhythm of the blues form was organized into four beat patterns, each of which was called a bar (or measure), and each section of the melody was made up of four bars. As the three phrases had four bars each, the complete structure for each AAB blues verse, chorus or stanza (these terms are used interchangeably) had a total of twelve bars. For that reason it was often referred to as the twelve bar blues. Following is an example of a stanza of blues showing how the poetic (lyric) form was structured:
"I love Robert Johnson when he's
singin' the blues" (the first A section)
"I love Robert Johnson when he's
singin' the blues" (the second A section)
"I'm glad rock musicians put him
back in the news" (the B section)
Rock Music Styles: A History ~ Katherine Charlton
ISBN 0--697-03050-4
"Music was invented to confirm human loneliness."
- Lawrence Durrell
|
|
|
|
|
Walter Watts
Archon
Gender:
Posts: 1571
Reputation: 8.25
Rate Walter Watts
Just when I thought I was out-they pull me back in
|
|
Re:You have a right to sing the blues if …
« Reply #1 on: 2008-08-12 01:56:12 » |
|
Walter takes a long swaller from the moonshine jug and bangs out a couple of bars of: "How Can I Miss You if You Won't Ever Leave".
PS. Meet my band:
    
oh yeah, I almost forgot Demetrius on pedal steel:
That pedal steel makes me cry sometimes too......
|
Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!
|
|
|
Blunderov
Archon
Gender:
Posts: 3160
Reputation: 8.30
Rate Blunderov
"We think in generalities, we live in details"
|
|
Re:You have a right to sing the blues if …
« Reply #2 on: 2008-08-22 04:43:45 » |
|
[Blunderov]High potential OCD alert for this site http://listverse.com/
(Lots of luvverly U-tube links are available at the link below)
http://listverse.com/music/top-10-blind-bluesmen-from-before-you-were-born/
Top 10 Blind Bluesmen From Before You Were Born
Published on August 14, 2008 - 77 Comments
The type of music known as “The Blues”, was first recorded in 1920 by Mamie Smith (”Crazy blues”), but its prerecorded origins is something of a mystery. Although some West African and European similarities and influences have been said to exist,the blues is mostly an American phenomenon, if not entirely.
It was passed along by the oral and song tradition. This all changed with the advent of locomotion, big cities, the Victrola and the jukebox, and the record companies putting out “race records” in 1923. The blues is like a family recipe with spices and ingredients plucked from many different places. It’s a magnificent form, molded from amalgamated parts, containing the secular and sacred.
Not a whole lot is known about a number of the gentlemen on this list. With some, just one picture is all we have to see how they appeared for THAT moment in time. Some others here didn’t so much sing and play the blues, as preach the gospel, but they have been included by many musicologists as being within the blues lexicon nonetheless. What remains most importantly, is the voice, the music, and the heart and soul that crackles through the ages unbound.
10 Blind Joe Reynolds 1900 or 1904 - 1968
Recommended: The Complete Works of Son House & The Great Delta Blues Singers, and When The Levee Breaks: Mississippi Blues Rare Cuts 1926-1941
Reynold’s real name was Joe Sheppard. He was blinded by a shotgun blast to the face in Louisiana in the mid to late 1920s, which resulted in the physical loss of his eyes. Despite this handicap, “Blind Joe” became known for his distinctive bottleneck style as well as his reported accuracy with a pistol, with which it is said he could judge the position of a target by sound alone. Reynolds is known to have been polyamorous, as is apparent from a number of his recordings. He was also known to be outspoken and flamboyant, often using his music as a medium to attack society. He only cut records between 1929 and 1930. Even in the digital age, his music is hard to come by. When listening to the video clip above, close your eyes - the images are not related to the recording.
9 Teddy Darby 1902 - Unknown
Recommended: His complete recordings, from 1929-1937
Full name: Theodore Roosevelt Darby. Darby was from Kentucky and settled in St. Louis. He recorded for Paramount, Victor, Bluebird, Vocation and Decca between 1929-37. Darby became blind at the age of twenty from glaucoma (an increase of pressure within the eye). He spent time for bootlegging and recorded a song, “Bootleggin’ Ain’t Good No More”. Later in life, he became a minister.
8 Roosevelt Graves 1902 or 1909 - 1960 or 1962
Recommended: The Complete Recordings 1929-1936
Graves was born in Mississippi. He recorded for Paramount and American Records in 1929 and 36 with his brother Uaroy and band, “The Mississippi Jook Band”. Nothing else of his work is known to exist after the 1930s. He is said to be an early forerunner to rock and roll.
7 Sonny Terry 1911 - 1986
Recommended: Sonny Terry: The Folkway Years 1944 - 1963
Real name: Saunders Terrell. After a couple of farming accidents, Terry was blinded for life at the age of 16. A harmonica was his singing voice. The sound of whoops and hollers through his harp are immediately recognizable as his own. He is known for his collaboration with Brownie McGhee (his music partner for almost forty years) and for his contribution to the blues/folk revival of the 50s - 60s. Terry played with the greats: Blind Boy Fuller, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Woody Guthrie, Rev. Gary Davis, and Leadbelly.
6 Reverend Gary Davis 1896 - 1972
Recommended: Pure Religion & Bad Company
“My grandmother said I taken blind when I was three weeks old. The doctor had something put in my eyes that was too strong and that was what caused me to go blind.” Davis was a marvelous 12 string guitar player with a commanding voice. He began in the blues and was later ordained as a minister and sang only the gospel. He stopped recording in the 30s, only to re-emerge during the 50s - 60s folk fervor in New York. His finger picking style and strong vocal delivery, underlined with a touch of sorrow, make tunes like “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” unforgettable.
5 Blind Boy Fuller 1907 - 1941
Recommended: East Coast Piedmont Style
Real name: Fulton Allen. A street musician staple of Durham, NC in the 30’s, Fuller “learned” the blues through the records of Blind Blake and Rev. Gary Davis. His ragtime Piedmont style hops and pops and sways with an uplifting beat and he sings with assurance and clarity. He even scats at times too, mimicking his melodious flow. According to Wikipedia, the Piedmont style is a,”finger picking method on the guitar in which a regular, alternating-thumb bass string pattern supports a syncopated melody using the treble strings”.
The Piedmont blues typically refers to a greater area than the Piedmont plateau, which mainly refers to the East Coast of the United States from about Richmond, Virginia to Atlanta, Georgia. What is important is the time in which these guys were playing (during the 20s and 30s) - the height of this style.
4 Blind Willie JohnsonBetween 1890 and 1902 - 1947
Recommended: The Complete recordings 1927-1930
When Johnson was a child, lye was accidentally thrown in his face by his stepmother (who was fighting with his father). Johnston became a sidewalk singing evangelist in Texas as an adult. He had an amazing guttural buzz of a singing voice and a driving and, at times, sublime guitar sound. Using a pocketknife instead of a bottleneck, slide guitar was his forte and is considered one of the best examples of this style. His song, “Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground” was shot into space in 1977, via Voyager 1.
3 Blind Willie McTell 1898 - 1959
Recommended: The Early Years 1927-1933
“Doogie” played a fast and clean 12-string guitar of the Piedmont blues. He got around on his own using echo location, by way of tongue clicks and through cognitive mapping. He had a way of making his instrument talk and mimic and bellow, as if another entity were adding its touch by punctuating the story. His personality comes across strong in all of his recordings.
2 Blind Blake 1890 or 1907 - 1930s
Recommended: His complete recordings, or Best of Blind Blake
Real name: Arthur Blake or possibly Arthur Phelps. Blind Blake was known for his accomplished Piedmont blues style guitar playing, which combined ragtime, jazz, and elements of vaudeville show tunes. Blake recorded extensively with the Paramount Label, cutting 81 solo sides, practically a disc a month between 1926 to 1932. He then disappeared. His date of death (like his birth) is uncertain. Rev. Gary Davis said he was run over by a street car in NYC and others said murder or alcohol did him in.
1 Blind Lemon Jefferson 1893 or 1904 - 1929
Recommended: The Best Of Blind Lemon Jefferson
Jefferson was given the title, “The Father of the Texas Blues”. He was born blind and the youngest of seven children. A true traveling songster. He inspired an eight year old Lightnin’ Hopkins to play the blues and in 1917, while living in Dallas, Texas, he met Leadbelly, who would later rise to fame in the blues and folk music fame, as “the King of the 12 string Guitar”.
Jefferson had an outstanding “one of a kind” voice, with a complex melody chord structure that was plucked and strummed out through his guitar, lending to a different sound of blues. He cut 90 songs in four years. Next to Blind Blake, Jefferson was one of Paramount’s most successful recorded blues musicians. He died before he reached the age of forty.
Contributor: Diogenes
|
|
|
|
|
Hermit
Archon
Posts: 4289
Reputation: 8.50
Rate Hermit
Prime example of a practically perfect person
|
|
Re:You have a right to sing the blues if …
« Reply #3 on: 2008-08-22 08:54:03 » |
|
Thank you for "http://listverse.com/." What a lovely waste of time :-P
Kindest Regards
Hermit
|
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
|
|
|
|
Logged
