Frownland

I'm going to let you in on a little writing secret called 'knowing what the words that you're using mean'.

Concise | Define Concise at Dictionary.com

__________________

Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

GuD

I laughed.

__________________
I spit bullets in my feet
Every time I speak
So I write instead
And still people want me dead
~msc

Lord Larehip

The primary sources for blues vocalization is the work song and the field holler. Work songs are always of the call-and-response type where a crew leader sang out a line and the rest of the men responded by either repeating the line or with a standard line sung in response to each line sung by the leader. Sea shanties are also constructed this way (many of which are also of African-American descent such as “Rollin’ the Woodpile Down,” “Mail Day,” and “Whoop Jamboree”). These Southern work songs were sung in the cotton fields, the prison yards and chain gangs. Many church songs and hymns were also sung as call-and-response and likely descended from field work songs (this same phenomenon is noted in old coastal towns of England and New England where shanties were adapted as church hymns).

Hollers were sung by an individual and served various purposes. Hollers were long and drawn out. The record label called “Arhoolie” is called that because it is a phonetic rendering of a field holler: “Aaaaaaaarrrrrhooooooooooooliiiiiiiieeeeee!” where the pitch wavers, rises and falls in complex patterns. A man might do a field holler while working by himself but since it was so individualized, he often used it to identify himself and people in the area would know he was approaching without seeing him because they knew his holler.


Arhoolie Records ad.

The original blues lyrics were simply four identical lines such as:

Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees
Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees
Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees
Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees

But as blues evolved, the four identical lines began to get stale in a hurry. 12-bar blues worked better with three lines. Rather than repeat the same line three times, 12-bar blues had a repeating line followed by a third that rhymed or what is called AAB lyrics. So the above lyrics would be modified to something like:

Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees
Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees
Lawdy, why won’t my troubles let me be

A typical example of blues lyrics is Charlie Patton’s “Down the Dirt Road Blues” which rock fans may recognize due to its similarity to Canned Heat’s “On the Road Again”:

Down the Dirt Road Blues

I'm going away to where I’m known (2X)
I'm worried now but I won’t be worried long

My rider got somethin’ she try to keep it hid (2X)
Lord, I got somethin’ find that somethin’ with

I feel like chopping, chips flying everywhere (2X)
I've been to the Nation, lord, but I couldn’t stay there

Some people tell me, oversea blues ain’t bad (2X)
It must not been the oversea blues I had

Everyday seem like murder here (2X)
(My god, I'm no sheriff)
I'm going to leave tomorrow, I know you don’t bid my care

I ain’t going down no dirt road by myself (2X)
If I don’t carry my rider, going to carry someone else


Charlie Patton - Down The Dirt Road Blues - YouTube

(The line “I’ve been to the Nation” refers to the Territo which was the Cherokee territory prior to its being made part of Oklahoma in 1907. Quite a number of blacks had Cherokee forebears and references to the Nation or Territo turn up in a number of old Mississippi blues songs such as Skip James’s “Hard Luck Child.” Whether James had a Cherokee forebear is not known by me but we shouldn’t be surprised if he did. Patton definitely had a full Cherokee grandmother.)

Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie often performed AABA lyrics where the first line was repeated after the rhyming line:

Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees
Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees
Lawdy, why won’t my troubles let me be
Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees

John Lee Hooker’s “Dimples” is a modification of the original style of blues lyrics. The first verse, for example, goes:

Well, I love the way you walk (5X)
You’re my babe, I got my eyes on you.

Note the first line repeats five times but a tag is added at the end and all the verses are structured this way giving us a clue to how the oldest blues may have sounded.

What we are really listening to lyrically in blues are prayers. Blues lyrics are founded on prayers which is ironic since so many black congregations were dead set against blues, calling it the Devil’s music. But the Devil had little to do with it. The repeating line sung in a variety of blues styles is a holdover of the African American church experience.

In the 19th century, many black congregations formed a “ring shout” also known as a “ring dance” or “ring play.” A line from a spiritual, for example, would be sung out by someone and everyone else would pick it up and the ring began to rotate slowly at first but would pick up pace and move faster and faster with the same line being repeated for hours until the participants eventually collapse in a state of ecstasy. But this form of religious expression was replaced by the type heard here:


Rev. E.D. Campbell
Reverend E. D. Campbell from the late 1920s with his congregation.

One can hear in Campbell’s recording that this was spontaneous. This is the meaning of the word “spiritual.” We think of spirituals of being hymns in a book because many spirituals were written down eventually (starting in 1867) but the original conception of a spiritual was that these songs were spontaneous and not written down. In the case of Campbell’s song, this type of hymn-singing was called “long meter” or “Dr. Watts” named after Dr. Isaac Watts, an English preacher who taught slaves to sing proper hymns early in the 18th century and encouraged clergy to do away with the more primitive forms of religious expression. Through reading the words of Watts, many African-American clergymen then did away with shouts and chants.


treemonisha,we're goin' around - YouTube
Scott Joplin including a ring shout in his 1915 opera “Treemonisha.” It partially gave birth to the square dance which was his reason for including in his opera—to show Americans where square dancing came from.

The spirituals prior to the Civil War always had a secret meaning. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” for example was a song of freedom to the slaves. The chariot referred to a train as in “underground railroad.” The term “swing low” meant for the train to come south and pick up the singer to carry him or her “home” which referred not only to heaven but to the North, to a land where they could live as free people. In this specific case, a town across the Ohio River called Ripley was the intended stop and the reference in the song to the Jordan River is really the Ohio. The song form and melody itself clearly taken from Africa. Blues and religious singing had its roots in Africa:


The African Roots of the Blues. Part 1 - YouTube


African Roots of The Blues Part 6 - Dagomba One String Traditions - YouTube


FOLI (there is no movement without rhythm) original version by Thomas Roebers and Floris Leeuwenberg - YouTube

Many blues songs contain “moan” or “groan” in title, e.g. Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Black Snake Moan” and “Long Distance Moan,” Little Papa Joe’s “Moaning Blues (Groan My Blues Away),” Rube Lacy’s “Mississippi Jailhouse Groan,” etc., this was not meant as an expression of pain or misery but is actually an expression of hope and bliss—a blotting out of ones miserable circumstances through humming and singing by drawing out notes spontaneously. It was born from the field holler. You might hear this done by a black singer doing the National Anthem before a ballgame although the church form of moaning is far more haunting. When I was in the service, I lived in the upstairs of a flat in my homeport. The downstairs was rented by a black family who held prayer meetings every week. They would commence to moaning and wailing but in a manner that was clearly an expression of music rather than people simply caterwauling in misery. I would sit in an easy chair or lie in bed and listen to them. I found it quite interesting.

The field holler was added to the blues by way of an introduction to each verse and often to each line. Blind Lemon Jefferson added a field holler to virtually every verse he sang. So when one listens to an old blues recording and hears the singer bellow out a long, drawn out kind of moan just before launching into a verse, that’s a field holler. Blues brought various aspects of African-American musical traditions together into a single expression and, in this way, preserved them.


Black Snake Moan - Blind Lemon Jefferson - YouTube

The early blues guitarists, when playing in open keys as E and A, relied on a pulsing bass monotone underlying the melody of the higher strings. The bass changed only to mark the change from I to IV to V. This is likely a holdover from the days of playing blues on banjos and cigar box guitars—both of which have sympathetic strings. A sympathetic string is never fingered but always strummed open to reinforce the fingered strings. Such instruments are not chromatic and so can only play in one key but the guitar is chromatic and can play in any key. So the early acoustic guitar blues mimicked a banjo or cigar box guitar by treating the bass strings as sympathetic. So the original blues must have sounded very melancholy and mesmerizing expressing what the people who sang it were feeling. The sub-genre of blues called North Mississippi was structured this way.

Another important part of blues structure is hambone otherwise known as the juba dance or “Pattin’ Juba.” It originated in West Africa. “Juba” derives from the Haitian word “Djouba” which derives from the Bantu word “giouba” which can mean “hour” or “peanut” or “the sun” or “to pat” or “to beat.” “Hambone” derives from “hand bone.”

Hambone was performed throughout the African diaspora including the Southern U.S. during slavery. The dance involved gathering in a circle stomping and clapping in unison as well slapping the chest, stomach and thighs also in unison. The dancers even patted their cheeks in unison. Hence the term “Pattin’ Juba.” The dance involves doing a step routine and then turning counterclockwise often with one leg raised and carrying out more steps called by such names as “pigeon wing,” “Jubal Jew,” “blow that candle out,”and “yaller cat” which all involve various patterns of stomping, clapping and patting. The dance ends with a step known as “the long dog scratch.”

The term “hand bone”imp lies the use of the hands on the body to supply percussive effects. The dance was done in places as Haiti and Congo Square in New Orleans during slavery when drums were not allowed for a time because whites feared secret messages encouraging organized rebellion were hidden in the drum patterns.

Over time, words were added to the dance in the form of rhymes chanted in time with the steps. For example:

Hambone Hambone where have you been
All ‘round the world and back again
Hambone Hambone what did you do
I got a train and I fairly flew
Hambone Hambone where did you go
I hopped up to Miss Lucy’s door

Or this one which appears to be directed at the white plantation owners:

Juba dis and Juba dat
And juba killed da yaller cat
You sift da meal and you gimme da husk
You bake da bread and you gimme da crust
You eat da meat and you gimme da skin
And dat’s da way my mama’s troubles begin.

African stories often involved talking animals who either help, hurt or deceive humans. The human characters show no surprise that the animals speak and even make deals with them. The point being that the animals are really humans who exhibit certain traits reminiscent of a certain animal. A thief might be personified in an African story as a monkey because monkeys will steal food right out of your hand. A sly person might be personified in the story as a snake because they slink and crawl about silently or sit immobile as though dead or inanimate until an edible creatures gets too close. So the origin of the following hambone rhyme is not hard to assess:

First come in was Mister Snake
He crawled all over that wedding cake
Next walked in was Mister Tick
He ate so much it made him sick
Next walked in was Mister Coon
We asked him to sing us a wedding tune

This form of Pattin’ Juba became closely associated with the ring shout or ring play.

T.O. Canuck

I've subscribed to this forum after spending a couple of hours reading Page 1 of your thread. Just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying the history of Blues that you've taken the time to post here. I'm always open to more information about the roots of music.

Lord Larehip

Whites Discover Blues

Pure black blues did not have a white audience in the 20s or 30s and only started getting noticed by whites in the 40s due to pioneers as Ella Mae Morse, a white singer on the Capitol label who performed R&B and boogie-woogie numbers and became quite successful. Her “Cow-Cow Boogie” was the first million-selling R&B hit on the newlyformed Capitol label in 1942 when she was only 17. Blues records were sold as exclusively as “race records” and the consumers were virtually entirely black. There was a 30s blues guitarist named Bayless Rose who was rumored to have been white but no one knows for sure. White jazz artists were not sold as race records so whites from that period who were familiar with jazz appeared to be almost entirely ignorant of the blues genre and its bevy of artists.

Or so the prevailing wisdom goes. If whites were ignorant of blues in the early days of the 20th century, how did a white man end up publishing his blues piece in 1912? Another American composer and bandleader, Gus Haenschen, was also doing blues-based music in 1916--some of it straight 12-bar blues. One piece, "Sunset Melody," was an energetic, bluesy piano and drum duet bordering on boogie-woogie. While blacks undoubtedly bought these records, they were aimed at the white public which means the white public must have been familiar with blues and must have danced to it. Yet, by 1926, when Blind Lemon Jefferson's records were released as the first country blues, white blues listenership seemed to have dried up. In this decade long window, 1916-1926, something happened that turned whites away from blues. Hawaiian music became extremely popular about 1915 and perhaps the public abandoned blues for that but I really don't know.

Blues is a purely African-American music but jazz is a black-white American hybrid. Had whites any interest in blues by the 20s, more of the older recordings would have been preserved. We can only assume that blues was largely viewed by whites as low-class music made by low-class people fit only to be menial laborers and only allowed in the house if they were butlers or maids. Blues was their music and no self-respecting white person was going to lower himself or herself to that level by listening to this trashy, low-class cacophony.

We might think that we have these old 20s and 30s blues recordings thanks to the record labels who have all this stuff archived for posterity. And if we think that, we would be dead wrong. We have these old blues recordings today because of record collectors. In the late 50s, there was an American folk music renaissance. Young musicians, mostly white from middleclass and even wealthy homes, grew weary of the stuff their parents were listening to. They didn’t care about classical music or Frank Sinatra or Tin Pan Alley classics. There had to be more to American music than this. They became curious about American roots music in their endless quest for a database of influences from which to draw inspiration so they didn’t end up singing soulless renditions of “Tennessee Waltz” or “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.” The Appalachian songs were wearing thin. What else was there? Since most of these people were avowed leftists and even communists, they thought it was time white America tipped its collective hat to the blacks they so looked down on but whose musical ideas they freely borrowed from and even stole. They turned to performing blues and wanted to find as many old blues numbers as they could unearth.

Some of these musicians were avid record collectors or were in tight with avid record collectors and in their collections were old blues, mountain songs, hillbilly tunes and rags—some even recorded only on cylinders. Tape recordings were made and passed around while musicians listened intently trying to learn these old, forgotten songs—America’s true heritage. When the artists were known, some of these musicians sought these people out to learn directly from them. If the artist in question was dead, his closest associates and family members were sought out to fill in the details of this artist’s life and music.

Gayle Dean Wardlow and Max Tarpley, in search of blues records to sell to Northern record collectors who paid good money for them, went door-to-door through black neighborhoods in the South offering to buy old blues records. Wardlow developed a profile for others canvassers to follow: go to older black neighborhoods and look for houses owned by old ladies which usually had a profusion of flowerpots and the like outside. Knock on the door and also call out, “Anybody home?” because they were often hard of hearing. Then ask for blues records and mention people as Blind Lemon Jefferson and Leroy Carr whom most of them were familiar with and so would know what kind of stuff the canvasser was looking for.

The rarity of the recording and its quality would determine the price but Wardlow never paid more than a dollar for a rare one, 50 cents for a less rare one of good quality or 25 cents for a rare one of questionable quality. Wardlow estimates that only one in 10 had anything worth buying when she had anything at all. He discovered that if she had moved, she tossed her records instead of keeping them so it was important that the house look like it had been continuously occupied for decades. Black men were not good as potential targets because they generally moved around too much and didn’t (and usually couldn’t) carry records with them.

Many old records have simply been lost. Wardlow found one by an artist he had never heard of but the record was unlistenable because the lady who owned it had been using it to rest a flowerpot on for many years. Wardlow also scoured small antique stores and pawnshops and found some very good recordings in such places because the owners also went door-to-door looking for old stuff to buy. Some people were hip to the canvassers and demanded more money. Some didn’t like whites and would order them off their property. Wardlow was once threatened by a drunken man with a knife when he asked if he could see his mother’s records.


Gayle Dean Wardlow.





In 1973, underground cartoonist R. Crumb (Zap Comics) illustrated the life of a fictitious 1930s bluesman named Tommy Grady who fights with and then leaves his wife in rural Mississippi, journeys to the city where he records a couple of sides in a hotel room for an A&R man (probably based on Speir) but whose career is cut short when he is shot to death in a juke joint for messing with another man’s woman. His records fall into total obscurity during the Depression and he is forgotten for decades until a canvasser (based on Wardlow) runs across a single Grady recording in an old lady’s house. He plays it and realizes this lost bluesman is totally amazing but can’t any information on him. He discusses Grady with his contacts who also never heard of him. He sells the record to a collector probably based on Nick Perls (founder of Yazoo Records), who loves it, who then plays it for his fellow collectors who are at first skeptical. In the last panel, they are grooving to Grady’s sound who will finally get his due long after his death and “that’s life” which is the name of the strip. Crumb is a self-confessed old blues fanatic (see below). I used to have “That’s Life” which I acquired when I bought an Arcade Comics when I was around 14.


I bought this for my nephew a couple of Christmases ago. Nice booklet with bios of each artist and a CD sampler with a song from each artist. I ripped the CD, of course, before wrapping it up.

Wardlow, Tarpley and other canvassers did their work in the 60s and 70s. Only a comparative few recordings were unearthed in the 80s. Nowadays, canvassing is a lost art. An old lady in her 80s is still too young to have bought any of the old blues recordings. At best, she might have gotten them from her parents or an older relative or neighbor but this was rare. Most people tossed their old recordings rather than pass them on. There is no telling today what has been lost forever as a result. Many recordings today are of bad quality but that is all that is available. The original owners might have taken better care of them had they known that white record collectors would eventually take such an intense interest in their blues recordings but at the time they bought them, blacks were virtually the only customers and they had no reason to believe that would ever change.

There might still be some undiscovered recordings laying around in attics or basements somewhere but they will be very sparse—too much so to make it worth the effort to canvass for them. The other problem that Wardlow discovered was that by the 80s, many of the neighborhoods he canvassed were becoming too dangerous to enter due to gangs and drugs. A white man walking through such a neighborhood was taking his life in his hands. So canvassing is all but passé but it served its purpose and rescued hundreds of old blues recordings that would otherwise be lost—probably forever once the old ladies who owned them died and their houses cleared out for new tenants.

Lord Larehip

The Birth of British Blues

But the same passion that young American whites showed for learning and playing blues was simultaneously spreading across the Atlantic to Britain. People we think of as the great British rock legends were all blues players—Clapton (of course), Jimmy Page, David Gilmore, Jeff Beck, Kim Simmonds, Keith Richards, John Mayall, Brian Jones, Long John Baldry, Ritchie Blackmore, Tony Iommi, Marc Bolan as well as Ian Anderson, Jack Bruce, Robert Plant, Keef Hartley, Rod Stewart, Gary Thain, Mick Jagger and Ringo Starr. When Ringo was once offered a job to go to America to repair roads in Alabama, Ringo said he would go only if they sent him to Texas. Why Texas? the interviewer asked. “Because,” said Ringo, “that’s where Lightnin’ Hopkins lives and if Texas is good enough for Lightnin’ Hopkins, it’s good enough for me.” Starr didn’t get the job but two years later was touring America as a Beatle.

Mick Jagger was a young blues singer in the 50s who delighted in collecting rocknroll and blues records and couldn’t wait to play them for his friend, Keith Richards. One day, Mick ran into Keith who asked him what new records he had. “Oh, I’ve got a new Chuck Berry and a Muddy Waters,” Mick exclaimed.

“Muddy Waters?” asked Keith. “Who the hell is Muddy Waters?”

“You’ve never heard of Muddy Waters?” asked Mick, incredulous. “You have to hear this!”

They went to Mick’s house and he played the Chuck Berry and then the Muddy Waters. Keith took out his guitar (which he never went anywhere without) and started learning the licks. When the record ended, Keith ordered Mick to play it again. Mick started the record again. When it finished, Keith said, “Again!” and Mick played it again—and again and again and again. Jagger said Richards would listen to Muddy Waters records nonstop, playing them over and over and over for hours until he mastered every lick. Neither Mick nor Keith would dare to imagine that they would be playing onstage with Muddy by 1978.

Muddy Waters went to Britain for the first time in 1958. Big Bill Broonzy had gone there seven years earlier and encouraged Muddy to go but Muddy wouldn’t consider it. He couldn’t fathom that people across the ocean could possibly care about him or his music. Dixieland jazz had been in Britain for some time such as Chris Barber’s band. They were the closest thing they had to blues so they backed whatever jazz or blues acts toured the country including Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and the Modern Jazz Quartet. But young guitarists as Alexis Korner began learning Big Bill Broonzy after he came through Britain. Soon a new crop of aspiring guitarists were looking for any blues they could find. Muddy decided to go to Britain after Chuck Berry had taken America by storm making his style of blues sound dated to American ears.

Their first concert was in Leeds. Most of the British had no idea what to make of Muddy Waters. They expected him to be like his friend, Big Bill Broozny, but Muddy was unlike anything they were used to. It was new and unexpected yet most of the Britons liked it but not all. Some thought Muddy was too raw, rough-edged and unpolished. The band featured Muddy’s longtime friend, Otis Spann, on the piano. The rest of the outfit was Chris Barber’s. Overall, Muddy took Britain by storm. A young man named Eric Burdon learned to play guitar by learning Muddy’s “Honey Bee.” Burdon was a student at the Newcastle College of Art. One day, he stood up in class and held up two tickets to a Muddy Waters show and asked who else was going. Another student named John Steel said he was. Burdon and Steel then formed a band called the Animals.

Soon Britons were crowding around Muddy and following him dutifully from town to town. Muddy, in turn, eased up and his shows got better at each stop. Young Brits would mob Muddy for his autograph and to ask him questions about other bluesmen they longed to see. Muddy was always the consummate gentleman and never treated his British hosts with anything but quiet, respectful behavior. He posed for photographs, granted interviews, encouraged young Brits to take up the blues and even asked some of them, such as Alexis Korner, to play a little for him and would praise their knowledge of and talent playing a music that was new to them but had also lit a fire in them.

Muddy, like other black American musicians who came to Britain, was a little stunned and pleased that the British girls would approach them so openly, asking for autographs, giving them hugs and kisses and would sit with them and chat with no self-consciousness whatsoever. The British men didn't get uptight about it. This simply did not happen in America and certainly not in Mississippi. Although, like many bluesmen, Muddy was quite the womanizer, he was smart enough to be a perfect gentleman on his tour and stayed cool and reserved but always smiling and friendly. Quite simply, the British loved him.


19-year-old Mick Jagger sings the blues in the band Blues, Incorporated. The bassist is Jack Bruce (later of Cream), the harpist is Cyril Davies (the first British blues harpist) and the guitarist is Alexis Korner who was the original lead singer of the New Yardbirds (they recorded two numbers which have never been released before Robert Plant took over singing duties and the band changed its named to Led Zeppelin).

Korner is considered to be “the founding father of British blues.” Jagger would always credit Korner and Davies as being his mentors in blues but then so did the Yardbirds, Mayall, Zeppelin, Cream, Savoy Brown, Foghat, the Animals, etc. British blues gave birth to progressive rock when Keith Relf left the Yardbirds to form Renaissance along with John Hawken who went onto co-found Strawbs. Virtually any British rock band of the 60s or 70s was actually made up of bluesmen.

The original Jethro Tull was a straight-up blues band. The original Black Sabbath (then called Polka Tulk) played amplified blues. Fleetwood Mac was also originally a hardcore blues band under Peter Green. Pink Floyd was named after two bluesmen—Pink Anderson and Floyd Council—who were cohorts of Blind Boy Fuller whom Syd Barrett listened to quite a bit in his early days. We would not be far off to say that the blues forever changed Britain very profoundly. When Blues, Incorporated recruited younger members and started gravitating towards rock, the band transformed into the Rolling Stones who never fully shed their blues roots.

Why were the British so adoring of American bluesmen? Because they didn’t share the white American class disdain towards blacks. To them, these black bluesmen were musical saviors and cultural heroes (which was, in many ways, true). John Lennon stated in an interview that, to the British, America was this exotic foreign place where this great music was made and the whole thing reached mythic proportions in the minds of British musicians. This music was so honest and so visceral that British kids, in search of something far better than what their parents listened to, were utterly taken with it. And since the blues and rocknroll records were not easy to get, there was a sort of prestige in owning them. A lot of British musicians also had short wave radios to tune into American stations playing blues and rocknroll especially King Biscuit Time.

Many of these British kids felt that had the blues never entered their lives, they would have ended up dead or in prison and, in some cases, it was definitely true. Others had never even thought about taking up music until they heard American blues and then could not think of doing anything else. They grew so infatuated with the music that when they finally had a chance to see the true blues legends whose records they adored, such as Waters or Hooker, it was too much for them. They were overcome with emotion and wanted to properly greet these men who had so fundamentally changed their lives forever through the power of their music.

Both and Muddy and John Lee Hooker reported fanatical devotion among the British blues fans. People genuflected before them. Some would say hello and when the greeting was returned, would simply faint. Some even tossed rose petals in front of them as they walked. Once a posse of British blues fanatics followed Muddy down the street and when he stopped into a place to have breakfast, they all ordered the same thing he did. When Muddy was done eating, they bought the dishes, cup, silverware and anything he had consumed his breakfast from and wouldn't allow them to be washed. One man even bought the stool Muddy had sat on and had it removed from the establishment.

While there were certainly many white American artists into the blues--Canned Heat, Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Charlie Musselwhite, Mose Allison--Americans as a whole did not know how to embrace blues. The British did though with every fiber of their being. The blues is so fundamental to the average Briton's approach to music that it is impossible to know what course British music would have taken without it.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS6vujo-958


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBunD9pis6E


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkulcvRkd4I


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNsZNPyn23Y

Zhanteimi

This is an amazing thread! Thank you for taking the time.

Lord Larehip

Muddy Waters was having quite an influence in the recording industry and in music. Not only was he influencing them directly but he was spinning off other influences such as guitarist Jimmy Rogers and harpist Little Walter. Walter had a big hit among the rocknroll set in 1955 with “My Babe”—a straight up 12-bar blues. Rogers retired from music in the early 60s but his recordings are now being noticed.

After Little Walter left Muddy’s band, his place was taken over by Junior Wells. Although not quite the equal with Little Walter, Wells quickly starting making his own niche both with Muddy and blues music overall.

Inroads were being blazed and paved into the consciousness and tastes of the white public. Whites could no longer ignore Muddy Waters and they didn’t want to.


Muddy at 21. He had just received a pressing of the recordings he made for Alan Lomax. Muddy found the occasion so special that he donned his best Sunday suit and posed holding his record. This is the first photo ever taken of Muddy Waters. Clearly the suit is a hand-me-down as the pants are a tad short.

With his star rising among the white public, Muddy had money now. He could buy things he could only have dreamed of from his sharecropping days—a decent house, a Cadillac, beautiful women—and Muddy did buy all those things. He wasn’t filthy rich but he wasn’t dirt poor anymore. In Britain, Muddy granted an interview to Melody Maker magazine. The interviewer, Max Jones, asked Muddy if his newfound wealth now made him less of a convincing blues figure. Muddy answered: “There’s no way in the world I can feel the same blues the way I used to. When I play in Chicago, I’m playing up-to-date, not the blues I was born with. People should hear the pure blues—the blues we used to have when we had no money. I’m talking about when you couldn’t even buy moonshine, a hot dog even. When you are making thirty-five cents a day.” Muddy then pulled a wad of cash from his pocket and waved it. “How can I have that kind of blues with this in my pocket?” So how, Jones asked Muddy, could he still be legitimately able to sing the blues? Muddy tapped his temple and said, “Cuz I have a long memory.”

Lord Larehip

By 1954, rocknroll looked ready to plow blues under and suddenly, by 1960, it was over. The deaths of Richie Valens, Big Bopper and Buddy Holly the previous year, Chuck Berry being sent to jail, Little Richard becoming a preacher, and Elvis going into the army derailed rocknroll. Ray Charles and Fats Domino crossed over into country. In addition, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis and Bill Haley had all fled America for the greener pastures of Britain. Cochran would die in England later that year. To top it off, payola was declared to be illegal that year and it ruined Alan Freed, the man credited with starting the whole rocknroll craze in 1951. All that was left of rocknroll were lightweight entertainers making huge amounts of cash by covering the songs of black artists (in a nice, clean way, of course) who weren’t permitted to be broadcast on the same stations where their pale imitators were making killings off their material. That’s what it had come down to. What began with so much aggressive promise ended in a flat whimper.

Blues seized the moment to jump back into the spotlight. Blues revivals became all the rage in the early 60s. Son House, Skip James, Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Mississippi John Hurt and others were playing the old blues to new, enthralled audiences of young white kids. Some bluesmen, as Hurt and James, enjoyed a popularity at the revivals that eluded them when they recorded decades earlier mostly because of the Depression. Electric blues too was enjoying a rebirth with such artists as Otis Rush, Buddy Guy and T-Bone Walker enjoying revived careers—this time with an adoring white audience who hung on their every note while new bluesmen as Jimi Hendrix were arriving on the scene.

Muddy and the Chess Records executives were not about to let this bit of good fortune slip by. Suddenly, young white people, many of them disaffected rocknrollers, constituted the majority of the blues fans at every show. Muddy was a bit unnerved by it. He had grown up not really trusting white people—they always wanted something from him without ever giving him anything in return for it but trouble. At a place called Smitty’s Corner, three white men kept turning up at every show and made Muddy very suspicious. “Goddamn, they come to get me,” said Muddy. “That’s got to be them.” He meant the IRS because he owed taxes. Even white people got
screwed over by the IRS, a black man had no chance. Muddy would hide backstage after his sets to avoid the men. The men’s names were Paul Butterfield, Elvin Bishop and Nick Gravenites and they had nothing to do with the IRS and everything to do with the music business and they idolized Muddy.

When Muddy finally heard music from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, he heard his own music. When he heard the English bands as Cream and Led Zeppelin, he heard his own music. Even Elvis was getting in on the act with his song “Trouble” from the movie King Creole, which blatantly used the beat from “Hoochie Coochie Man” and Muddy realized that white folks were not just fans, they were now imitating him in earnest. It wasn’t some affectation they were assuming, it was now their identity, they had embraced and internalized the blues. The new crop of bluesmen were becoming more and more white. They weren’t greenhorn hacks anymore, they were becoming serious competition. They had a deeper love and understanding of blues than an increasing number of blacks in the same age group who were now turning away from it and Muddy knew he’d better watch out.

By 1968, Waters and the Chess label did some experimenting with his Delta sound and came up with Electric Mud, which featured songs as “I Just Want to Make Love to You,” “Hoochie Coochie Man” and “Mannish Boy” done up with rock effects and production values. It sold very well initially until critics attacked it as a blatant attempt to make Muddy into an unconvincing hippy and cash in on the naïveté of young fans. While Muddy was aiming at the hippies with the album to bring a new audience into blues, the album certainly didn’t make Muddy into a hippy but simply made him more accessible to them. But the critics won the day and poisoned the album and sales of Electric Mud all but stopped. Today, the album is recognized as an evolution in electric blues but, soured by the experience of watching critics destroy the work, Muddy pronounced Electric Mud to be “dogs-hit” despite the fact that Jimi Hendrix loved it.

Lord Larehip

Charlie Patton was discovered by Henry Speir and made his first recordings for Paramount in 1930. These recordings made him one of the most famous race records artists especially in the South where Patton performed exclusively (although he recorded up north and his last recordings were done in New York). He became famous enough that he did not have to tramp from place to place looking for a gig but had them set up in advance and he toured across the South on a schedule. Patton was a great showman as well as a musician and he influenced a lot of people. When he wasn’t touring Patton lived on a farm at Dockery’s plantation as a sharecropper. With his beautiful dexterity on the guitar and his gruff bellowing voice, Patton quickly acquired the moniker of “King of the Delta Bluesmen.” He spelled his name “Charlie” but Paramount changed it to “Charley” for some reason. Standing only 5’5” and weighing in at only 135 lbs., the women tried to tear his clothes off when he showed up. Patton bore many battle scars, especially the one on his neck that he suffered when he politely refused a drink bought for him by a drunken patron who took offense, dragged out a knife and viciously slashed Patton in the throat narrowly missing his jugular but inflicting a nasty wound that turned into a noticeable, pale scar. Patton also had a limp which he assumed after being shot in the leg at another juke joint. For a man of his diminutive stature to endure the worst juke joints had to offer, Patton must have been an extremely tough individual and he put on quite a show—playing behind his head, tossing his guitar in the air, etc. He sang blues and religious numbers indiscriminately. He wasn’t religious according to his sister, he just needed something to sing. While performing at whorehouses, Patton would perform a religious number and send many of the patrons fleeing, scared to death that God would strike the sinful place down with a lightning bolt with them still in it.


The only known photo of Charlie Patton (1891-1934) taken about 1929. He was also known as Elder J.J. Hadley and The Masked Marvel. The photo is valuable because it shows us one of his guitar-picking techniques. Note the scar on the neck. Patton taught some of the most influential bluesmen including Son House, Willie Brown and Chester Burnett (a.k.a. Howlin’ Wolf) and influenced everyone from Muddy Waters to Jimi Hendrix. He not only taught blues guitar but also how to survive in the juke joint circuit. One of his more famous pieces of advice was to gorge oneself on fatty pork with a bit of lean on it before the show. The purpose was that one could then consume alcohol all night without getting drunk because the alcohol would go to work on the fat first. Patton learned the hard way not to turn down drinks bought by a fan. He wanted to save others from a similar or worse fate.