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Quote:
Originally Posted by BradH
Consider this: how many blues artists went around incorporating hillbilly songs into their act? None that I'm aware of although there may have been a few random examples. But blues songs were a regular staple with hillbilly music singers. Blues with a twang. Hillbilly Blues it's sometimes called. And it's all over Western Swing. And speaking of that, what is Western Swing if not Western jazz swing? Swing with a twang. Look at jazz swing itself. Can you imagine straight swing without the strong blues element? No matter where you look in the roots of early rock 'n' roll, the blues is everywhere.
I agree
Just as I said before, Hank Sr was greatly influenced by the blues. But so was the father of country music, (and another glaring omission) Jimmie Rodgers was around to see the birth of the blues, which he experienced in his travels as a railroad brakeman. Rodgers merged mountain folk with raw blues (maybe a little rag as well); his style of playing and lyrical content was definately blues. Country music would be a different critter without Rodgers, or the blues as an influence. Hank Sr took it a step further in the blues tradition, and Elvis Presley put a pop spin on it (or at least Sam Phillips did). So you can say Country Western had an influence on rock, as long as you realize country's foundation is rooted firmly in the blues.
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Does a double-take...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stone
Point taken.
...looks askance, arches eyebrows and says "Look...over there...by the trees...it's a forest..."
jimHJJ(...followed by hails of derisive laughter...)
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I don't know...
Quote:
Originally Posted by 3-LockBox
...So you can say Country Western had an influence on rock, as long as you realize country's foundation is rooted firmly in the blues...
...I always thought of C&Ws roots as Celtic music...Certainly some of the idomatic underpinnings of the blues (microtonality and use of sevenths) is present, but so are those of hybridized Cajun (more specifically Acadian), which traces it's roots to certain European folk traditions...and heck, ain't yodeling Swiss? Or is it German?
This opens a whole 'nother can of Pandoras...like the origin and evolution of the guitar, the development of Western musical notation including melody and harmony within that framework...I believe the l-lV-V progression form predates the blues, CW, and certainly rock, by quite some time...
jimHJJ(...now if you'll excuse me...I'm helping transfer my wife's stamp collection to a more archival-quality album...)
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Here’s something I agree with...about the roots of country anyway...
When I saw Lyle Lovett he did a nice little segment where they stripped down to a small bluegrass unit, then started playing the songs in an Irish style, thanks to a guy from the Chieftains playin' with 'em. It was interesting how interrelated to old country music was with the Irish folk style.
Again, I do like the blues and think they were important to rock and a true American art form, but music in American has always had many, many roots. It didn't all come from the blues. The blues played a big role in creating rock, but so did country...which was influenced, but certainly not created by the blues.
My question remains for those who want to talk like the blues just arose out of nothing but the musical genius of African slaves...why did it take America to bring this music out of them? Don't you think the blues were taking influences from all of the new cultures of the new world?
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I have in my possession guitar/music magazine interviews (some older than me) of the following artists citing Johnson as a big influence:
Clapton
BB, Freddie, and Albert King
Muddy Waters
Howlin' Wolf
Hendrix
Zeppelin
SRV
Warren Hayes
The Allman Bros circa late 70's
Lynard Skynard (really? lmao)
T-Bone Walker (Texas Ranger)
Joe Satriani
Kirk Hammett
Look, that's just mags I still have...I only bought RJ after reading so many BB and Albert references (two of my favs). This list is impressive, and if you took it one step further to include artists influenced by these guys, it'd be huge.
RJ deserves his spot, and only an idiot **** disturber would deny him that (though I can understand arguments against his relative talents, luck, timing, etc)
Sometimes this business is all about the right place/right time formula.
(PS and even Kenny f'n G)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nobody
My question remains for those who want to talk like the blues just arose out of nothing but the musical genius of African slaves...why did it take America to bring this music out of them? Don't you think the blues were taking influences from all of the new cultures of the new world?
Absolutely, there's no question about it. In fact, I think not enough emphasis has been put on that point. There's a cultural black & white dance that's been going on in North America for hundreds of years, influencing each other in ways that we've hardly begun to understand completely. But the preponderance of influence has been from the blues. It didn't just influence early jazz like ragtime and then go away. It wasn't a big bang that faded into background radiation that only musicologists and historians could detect. It's more like a DNA that kept recombining with new streams. That's why an Eddie Cochran didn't have to rely on an Ellington as a distant blues source, he relied on the blues as a blues source. So did Hank Sr.....so did Eric Clapton. Over and over it happened that way. That's how it influenced all those genres I mentioned. It was functional. It was reusable. Lennon described it as the chair everything sits on. Yes, you can point to the Celtic heritage of bluegrass and cowboy songs, those are legitimate points. And I agree, the blues didn't cross the Atlantic from North Africa. Musicologists have searched for the missing link and, technically, it's simply not there other than the social tradition of the griot. Four hundred years of influence from Arabic music in North Africa and European influence in North America have largely erased what was originally brought over. So, yes, the blues is an American invention. But when you get to British Invasion bands like the Beatles covering, say, Carl Perkins, it really stands out as distinctively country as opposed to a blues number that would've passed as straight up rock. So, I would say the blues ended up being the host with c&w as the guest. Think about it. If you inject the blues into late 60's rock you get more of the same. If you inject Celtic into late 60's rock you get Fairport Convention, far from the mainstream.
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I think how much you see that blues influence as the main feature of rock depends on what you are caling rock. It seems to me that sometimes it becomes a circular argument because people will define rock as necessarily having blues roots, then toss out anything that doesn't. But, to me, rock has gone on to things with litle to no blues influence.
What about some stark, cold new wave...some faint rythmic similarities that could have come from anywhere, structure and instrumentaion totally different, feeling not even in the same ball park. How about some industrail music, no blues there, a little more of a tribal influence than anything else...along with the European technological contributions in electronic music. I have trouble listening to rockabilly and not hearing much more country than blues.
I mean, if you wanna stick with 60/70s blues-based rock. Well, yeah, of course blues is by far the biggest influence. But, if you open the definition a little wider, it becomes one of many influences for a variety of styles.
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Originally Posted by MindGoneHaywire
I think the Stones were both aficionados and practitioners at the same time. Could be that being practitioners was what slowed them down in the competition of sorts that existed in the mid 60s between them, the Beatles, and the Beach Boys.
Yeah, I've wondered about that too. I think Aftermath arguably held its own in the 1966 Masterpiece Sweepstakes that seemed to be going on. A real difference between the Stones and the "Killer B's" was that the Stones had less folk influence in their chord changes and vocal approach. Maybe this held them back. After all, "progressive" was a term used even then. But their time was coming (1968)
Quote:
Originally Posted by MindGoneHaywire
I think of Zep more as Page's mad creation, incorporating quite a few things along with some of the best electric blues that came out of that movement, with Jones as his musical right-hand man.
Yeah, but it could be that Page was Jone's right hand man. In an interview last summer Chris Squire claimed the secret of Zep was that it was Jones's band! Jones had extensive experience as a producer in the 60's and Squire claims the other members of Zep had all worked for him on sessions before. I find that hard to believe about Bonham and Plant who were rocking it up with Band Of Joy in and around Birmingham but it's certainly true about Page. Maybe Squire was just championing another bass player or maybe he was drunk. (He said some fairly controversial things about the other Yes members in the same interveiw.) But I do think Jones's contribution is underrated.
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Originally Posted by MindGoneHaywire
I'm sick to death of it, but they put together some interesting stuff.
Mmmmm, Zep talk. It gets me hot.
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Originally Posted by MindGoneHaywire
But I'm not sure I think of them as aficionados. Maybe Plant. But Page & Jones were far more universal & could've done a lot of different things, and Page already had.
Page & Plant were the ones who were seriously into the blues. They all had a nice overlapping of influences with Page & Jones being into Indian and Arabic music, Plant into the West Coast hippie folk stuff (the Band Of Joy recorded a version of "For What It's Worth"), Jones & Bonham were into James Brown and funk. What's cool is you can hear all these influences in their catalog.
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Originally Posted by MindGoneHaywire
The drummer would've played polka if Page ordered it up so far as I can see. I think they kept him on a bit of a leash, something that you couldn't say about Keith Moon. But when they let him go, the results were...boring, in my book anyway. Moby Dick sounds like the biggest waste of time I've ever heard that came of throwing the guy a bone. ZZZZzzzzz.
Bonzo is one of my all time favorite drummers, a true original. But, as a collector of bootlegs, I'd rather be cast into a lake of writhing Janis Joplins than hear another live version of "Moby Dick". One of them goes on more than 30 minutes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MindGoneHaywire
My main beefs with Clapton are glossy production values, a tone I rarely like, and a fondness for middle-of-the-road commercial rock that just sounds less than mediocre coming from the guy who played on that Mayall rec.
Well, yeah, that and morally equating his long solos with child molestation. Other than that he's not a bad guy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MindGoneHaywire
I actually like quite a bit of what SRV did, I think the rap on him as a new/white/cheesy/rock-blues figure to be mocked for that is not entirely accurate.
Not entirely accurate? I would call it total bullsh!t. He was the real deal.
Hey, you're not turning into a hippie are you?
Just checking.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MindGoneHaywire
How did you know I was grinding my teeth?
There was a disturbance in the force.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nobody
I think how much you see that blues influence as the main feature of rock depends on what you are caling rock. It seems to me that sometimes it becomes a circular argument because people will define rock as necessarily having blues roots, then toss out anything that doesn't. But, to me, rock has gone on to things with litle to no blues influence.
What about some stark, cold new wave...some faint rythmic similarities that could have come from anywhere, structure and instrumentaion totally different, feeling not even in the same ball park. How about some industrail music, no blues there, a little more of a tribal influence than anything else...along with the European technological contributions in electronic music. I have trouble listening to rockabilly and not hearing much more country than blues.
I mean, if you wanna stick with 60/70s blues-based rock. Well, yeah, of course blues is by far the biggest influence. But, if you open the definition a little wider, it becomes one of many influences for a variety of styles.
I agree with a lot of that. I remember seven years ago, one of my first posts here was describing how the chord structure of new wave owed more to folk than the blues. You'd have thought I just crapped on somebody's kitchen table by the reaction I got. Blashpemy!
I don't think rock necessarily has to have blues roots. (I mean, please, you wanna talk about prog rock with me for a day?) The question was whether blues had more influence than c&w. My point is about the pervasive influence. For example, punk or industrial is recognized as such when somebody hears it. But play a blues rock tune and the average listener will just call it rock. There's a reason for that.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nobody
Here’s something I agree with...about the roots of country anyway...
When I saw Lyle Lovett he did a nice little segment where they stripped down to a small bluegrass unit, then started playing the songs in an Irish style, thanks to a guy from the Chieftains playin' with 'em. It was interesting how interrelated to old country music was with the Irish folk style.
Again, I do like the blues and think they were important to rock and a true American art form, but music in American has always had many, many roots. It didn't all come from the blues. The blues played a big role in creating rock, but so did country...which was influenced, but certainly not created by the blues.
My question remains for those who want to talk like the blues just arose out of nothing but the musical genius of African slaves...why did it take America to bring this music out of them? Don't you think the blues were taking influences from all of the new cultures of the new world?
Well, when I mentioned 'mountain folk', I prolly woulda been more accurate to call it Irish folk, especially when considering bluegrass, (btw: a very jazz-like genre, in approach anyway).
I guess another good argument would be to figure out the roots of gospel, since that is supposed to be the root of the blues.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BradH
Yeah, but it could be that Page was Jone's right hand man. In an interview last summer Chris Squire claimed the secret of Zep was that it was Jones's band! Jones had extensive experience as a producer in the 60's and Squire claims the other members of Zep had all worked for him on sessions before. I find that hard to believe about Bonham and Plant who were rocking it up with Band Of Joy in and around Birmingham but it's certainly true about Page. Maybe Squire was just championing another bass player or maybe he was drunk. (He said some fairly controversial things about the other Yes members in the same interveiw.) But I do think Jones's contribution is underrated.
Having read the book Hammer Of The Gods; the writer gives Jonesy much of the credit for the early succes of LZ, along with Page. Both had worked together in the Yardbirds as well as other projects and Jonesy was a jack-of-all-trades. Jones was as essential to Zep's success as Page. He (the writer) considered it an equal partnership, but Page had a habit of <i>taking credit for other peoples work</i>.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bradly
Page & Plant were the ones who were seriously into the blues. They all had a nice overlapping of influences with Page & Jones being into Indian and Arabic music, Plant into the West Coast hippie folk stuff (the Band Of Joy recorded a version of "For What It's Worth"), Jones & Bonham were into James Brown and funk. What's cool is you can hear all these influences in their catalog.
Entire catalog... yes, hell even in one album. Houses Of The Holy being a prime example; musically speaking its all over the place and still very cohesive as a whole, their best IMO.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BradH
Bonzo is one of my all time favorite drummers, a true original. But, as a collector of bootlegs, I'd rather be cast into a lake of writhing Janis Joplins than hear another live version of "Moby Dick". One of them goes on more than 30 minutes.
ROTFLMAO :lol:
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