Q&A: Is Blues Music on the Verge of Extinction?

[Tom McPhillips]

The other name I'd throw in here would be Chris Thomas King, who seems to have succeeded in fusing hiphop and blues, which since it seems to me that the "talking blues" was one precursor of hiphop, doesn't seem too much of a stretch in any case.

Robert Randolph is another candidate, though he tends towards the JamBand Blues chapter... In fact Jam Bands in general could be considered a Blues offspring, since ultimately it's Blues with a Jazz vibe - Dave Matthews is the name that sits on the top of that pile...

I definitely have a hard time listening to "Pure Blues" these days, it seems such a limited form, despite the possibility for virtuosity, so I guess I'm with Charlie and Howard...

However, I think one of my next projects in the light of all this discussion will be to revisit my Robert Johnson albums and see where I end up next...

[Adam Blake]

I definitely have a hard time listening to "Pure Blues" these days, it seems such a limited form, despite the possibility for virtuosity, so I guess I'm with Charlie and Howard...

No offence, Tom but this is the kind of thing that really pisses me off. The blues has three chords and twelve bars - more or less - and everything else is up to YOU and whether or not you have anything to say. By all means complain about the performers not having anything to say or not having anything of note to bring to bear on the form but please don't complain about the limited nature of the form. You might just as well say that a Haiku poem or a Petrarchan or Shakespearean sonnet should have more lines and further scope for development. It is what it is. If people can't play it engagingly anymore that's not the fault of the form.

[Charlie]

I guess I'm with Charlie and Howard....

I'm not even sure I'm with Charlie and Howard, having just been listening to (and watching) the CW Stoneking clips in the Youtube section. Is there such a thing as Babyface Blues? You better believe it. Check it out.

[Tom McPhillips]

No offence, Tom but this is the kind of thing that really pisses me off. The blues has three chords and twelve bars - more or less - and everything else is up to YOU and whether or not you have anything to say.

I'm sorry to appear to piss you off, Adam but that's not really what I'm getting at. It's more that I'm trying rationalize the fact that in 1965 and for a few years after almost everything I listened to was blues in some form. And since then I've hardly listened to "The Blues' at all. It's not that I don't find bluesmen have nothing to say, it's just been a personal preference that's emerged since then, it's not the blues' fault it's mine. The few times I've encountered an artist like BB King through work, it's not that I haven't enjoyed their performances, it's rather that I've not gone home and dug out their back catalog. For example, I still consider that I like John Hammond, but frankly it's been some years since I put something of his on...

so it's a personal problem...

[Adam Blake]

Oh, I can see that! I just get a bit protective of the blues when it's attacked for being limiting or boring when in fact it's the performers, or the listeners, who are guilty! I've probably related this tale before but I once had a job as a librarian in a radio station. One day, they said, "you like blues, don't you?" I nodded eagerly. They then gave me a job which turned into a fairies punishment: to go through several large crates of blues cd's and ASSESS them for quality and broadcastability. Ohmigod! By the end of Day One I HAD the blues, by the end of the week I was begging to be excused and going home to lie in a darkened room and listen to Bach. Every lousy bar band in the world had made a cd and sent it to this radio station. About every 10th or 12th cd would be an oldie by someone like B B King or Jimmy Reed and, oh lord, did they stick out like diamonds in a sea of mung!

My advice to you is to listen to blues ONE RECORD at a time, ie, one side of a 45, and make sure it's by one of the acknowledged masters.

"Nothing but the best and later for the garbage" - John Lee Hooker.

[Chris P]

Thinking he was paying him a compliment, a music hack said to Fred Frith something along the lines of "I really like your guitar playing, it's so special and interesting because unlike other greats I can't detect any blues in your playing"

Fred cast his eyes down and replied "In that case I've failed"

[matt m]

I definitely have a hard time listening to "Pure Blues" these days, it seems such a limited form, despite the possibility for virtuosity

well I will in a sense disagree with both Tom and Adam. Because if you listen to a lot of blues,they're not actually even playing blues. well not in that stereotypical three chord I-IV-V 12-bar or 8-bar pattern. Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Mance Lipscombe, Pink Anderson, they all actually had a fair few different chord sequences. In fact even Robert Johnson, though he might have given carte blanche to Status Quo, has a surprising amount of variety if you're paying attention: semi-tone shifts on dominant 7th chords, and a lot of discordance in his turnarounds and intros. He's certainly not a 3-chords and 3-chords only man.

I'm not saying they were as complex as jazz or anything like that, but they were a long way from the 12-bar patterns that ended up being the standardised norm for lead guitarists to widdle over in electrified blues from the late 1950s onward.

There's a lot more changes of chord and riff etc in a well-constructed blues song than there is in your standard verse-chorus-verse-middle eight-repeat chorus pop song.

[Adam Blake]

if you listen to a lot of blues,they're not actually even playing blues. well not in that stereotypical three chord I-IV-V 12-bar or 8-bar pattern.

Yes indeed, Matt. But the delineation of blues as a 12 bar, I, IV, V chord structure is, as far as I know, a white European trained musicians' simplification of something which, as you quite rightly point out, is often far more complex in practice. Conversely, many great blues performances have only one chord and maintain their musical interest through the accumulative development of polyrhythms - just like quite a lot of, erm, African music...

[Adam Blake]

the delineation of blues as a 12 bar, I, IV, V chord structure is, as far as I know, a white European trained musicians' simplification

Sorry, I'm being dumb - it must have been W C Handy.

[garth cartwright]

I've been meaning to say something here for ages but I'm so immersed in US blues I could go on and on. will try not to - in my forthcoming book MORE MILES THAN MONEY I check out what's left of US vernacular musics including Mississippi and Chicago blues. In both places the music exists as part of a living tradition: in Mississippi I met sharecroppers who've played the blues all their lives without ever a thought to recording and making money out of it (one has an adult son who learnt to play after coming out of prison - there's a lot of reasons to have the blues in Miss!) while in Chicago you have both north side blues bars that focus more on 12 bar blues and black south side clubs who focus more on "soul blues".

Sure, blues is not the powerhouse it once was but it certainly exists as a creative force - whether its Errol Linton and Little George leading great British bands or JJ Grey (check his superb Country Ghetto album on Alligator - the best new talent i heard in 08) and many others in the US. All music forms peak - hip-hop as Jonathan has noted is not what it once was - check Murder Dog (a US gangsta rap magazine) to see how rap is now largely a regional phenomenon, little labels doing local artists (in the Wire Series 4 Snoop and Chris work out how to find out if the drug dealers are from Baltimore or NY by asking them about popular local DJs). Point being that vernacular music in the US exists within its own community and doesn't tend to give a damn whether great albums and rave reviews and such follow. The music is made as community music first and foremost. Go there and they'll share it with you.

[matt m]

Point being that vernacular music in the US exists within its own community and doesn't tend to give a damn whether great albums and rave reviews and such follow. The music is made as community music first and foremost. Go there and they'll share it with you.

That could equally apply to most of the music I like here in the UK – and many of the acts I posted links to in this thread.

There's a sort of self-supporting scene of largely south london based folk/americana/blues acts centred around regular club nights like: Easycome Acoustic (Nunhead); Basket Club (Brixton); Folk at the Moon (Herne Hill); and Lantern Society (Farringdon). More or less the same acts at all places. None of them appear all that interested in having record deals (record deals? what are they? I vaguely recall them – something that existed in the 20th century, right?); albums get burned at home as CDRs and given away. (Other than people I've mentioned already I'm thinking Trent Miller, The Cedars, Benjamin Thomas, the Lorcas, Green Rock River Band, The Lorcas, Garden City Project, Kate Finn, The Turncoat, Trevor Moss & Hannah Lou, Andy Hankdog, the Henry Brothers, Congregation)

(I should have mentioned Congregation earlier. They've just released their debut album on Seasick Steve's label Bronzerat. GREAT blues duo: myspace.com/Congregationband)

There's a similarly successful – from a music making rather than a financial point of view – grassroots folk/Americana scene in Yorkshire and Lancashire, from what I've scene recently. (I'm thinking people like Martin Rossiter, Benjamin Wetherill, Serious Sam Barrett, Hatstand Band, Jonny Kearney, Liz Green, David Broad, Jason Steel)

[Charlie]

There's a similarly successful – from a music making rather than a financial point of view – grassroots folk/Americana scene in Yorkshire and Lancashire, from what I've scene recently. I'm thinking people like , Liz Green

Ah, Liz Green. I just have a couple of singles by her, played one on Radio 3 and got a positive response from Gordon Neill. Have you seen her live?

[matt m]

Yes, I saw a Liz Green solo show at a great evening at Cecil Sharp House towards the end of last year. It was a really good gig – a true experience, actually using the room and the space and the crowd, rather than just reeling off a rote list of songs. She was playing in the basement. Her set was slightly shy of half an hour. Most of her songs segued into one another – she'd fill in the spaces between songs with a drone from the keyboard, or some a capella singing. She did a lot of wandering around the room, singing away from the microphone and swapping instruments (guitar, accordion and keyboards).

Her performance style reminded me a lot of David Thomas Broughton, who I imagine she's picked up a few tricks from as they've been on a few bills together.
I have a few reservations about her voice - it's a bit too affected for me. I sometimes think the influence of singers like Antony (as in & the Johnsons) and Davendra Banhart has been a bit overpowering on some impressionable freaky folk kids. In demeanour too: Liz was laying on the "I'm a bit mad and intense, me" kookiness a little thick.

She's unquestionably, to use some unpardonable music critic journalese, "one to watch" though

[Neil Foxlee]

Meanwhile, I received a bumper new Red Lick mail-order catalogue this morning - my first since they restarted operations (have they been phasing mail-outs?).

See http://www.redlick.com/justin.php , which hasn't been updated from the previous catalogue, which highlighted the following:

"Releases reviewed in the new catalogue as usual cover a mighty broad spectrum - including hard-hitting electrified blues of modern times (as represented in new releases by Magic Slim & The Teardrops and Mark Hummel), authentic country blues (such as the beautiful 'Music Maker's Sisters Of The South' 2CD set), classic soul (the inspiring 3CD compilation 'Take Me To The River - A Southern Soul Story 1961-1977'), cajun (another JSP 4CD set winner), and country (the ever-fantastic Old Hat Records latest release of old time North Carolina music - 'In The Pines: Tar Heel Folk Songs And Fiddle Tunes'). We also feature the truly exquisite presentation - 'People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs 1913-1938' a 3CD box and accompanying booklet that rounds up sing-a-long festive favourites (well, not quite) of murder, floods, fires, crashes, wrecks, robbers, droughts and other damage-inflicting occurences. One of the best writers on country music alive today, Tony Russell, has his latest study - 'Country Music Originals - The Legends And The Lost' - picked over by Red Lick and we also cast our mind back to Sam Charters landmark blues LPs in the mid-sixties - 'Chicago The Blues Today' - and re-assess how the music contained in these 3 LPs (more recently available as a 3CD pack) stands up today."

[garth cartwright]

Been listening to a lot of JUNIOR KIMBROUGH & RL BURNSIDE both of whom cut some great material for Fat Possum in the 90s. Kimbrough was something else - he had a trance blues style comparable to certain West African griots while RL, who had learned from his neighbour Mississippi Fred McDowell, played rough as guts but great too.

I love their recordings and think Kimbrough stands as one of the 20th C's greatest bluesmen - his work is so bleak yet authorative (Most Things Haven't Worked Out, Done Got Old). Iggy Pop took him on tour as support and used to get in the mood to hit the stage by listening to a Junior CD, so malevolent could JK be. Which leads me to another RON ASHETON note - the reformed Stooges cut a blistering version of Kimbrough's YOU BETTER RUN, a song almost psychotic in intent, to a tribute album Fat Possum put together a few years back. If they had kept that template for their album things could have been different!

Also been listening to NEW BEATS FROM THE DELTA - a CD where Organized Confusion, a Mississippi rap crew, remix various Fat Possum blues recordings. It doesn't always work but the best tunes - Johnny Farmer singing Son House's Death Letter getting a swampy ambience - is great. Highly recommended to those who like to hear the blues taken to new places.