"The Blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling, and understanding."
Willie DixonMaybe I don't fit the typical profile of a blues fan. Then again, I don't know if such a profile exists. The blues is something that grabs a hold of you. If you have at least a little musical soul, the blues is going to stick with you. I love the blues like I love my Mum; unconditionally and without exception.
I grew up in a religious, middle class, sports loving, suburban home. White as the day is long. I'm very white. Greg Brady white. And yet, the blues lives in me as much as my Scottish heritage.
My older cousin Mark got me into music when I was 13 or so. I had no older brothers, nobody to teach me. A young person trying to find music on their own without a mentor to guide them is a dangerous thing. (That's how I ended up lost in the wilderness with a Jackson 5 "Victory" cassette in the Walkman. It took a while to right the ship.) Those are the people that bought Fat Boys and Falco records. Those are the people listening to top 40 disposable radio. When we would go to visit our family in Bellingham Washington, Mark would play music for me. Something I'm eternally grateful for. When my friends were listening to Poison, Ratt, Motley Crue and the rest of the interchangeable hair-sprayed, eyeliner-wearing hair bands, I was listening to The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Cream, The Yardbirds, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. I didn't understand the butt rock, MTV bands. I wasn't rock and roll to me, just a bunch of pricks in tights. Why were they all trying to look like drag queens? Why did all the guitar solos sound the same? What is this dreck? I was a snotty little bugger.As I went through high school listening to those great old records, I began to want to know more about what influenced the bands that I loved. Zeppelin quoted Robert Johnson. (And J.R.R. Tolkien, by the way.) Clapton played songs written by Muddy Waters. The Doors had blues songs. Dylan had a cut about Blind Willie McTell. The more I dug, the more I saw that the majority of the bands I loved were influenced by early American blues artists.
I vividly remember hearing Robert Johnson for the first time. He was mentioned the most by Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. It was Crossroad Blues. "I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees. Asked the Lord above 'Have mercy, now save poor Bob, if you please.'" It sounded so guttural, so gut wrenching. Reading about Robert entranced me. Did he sell his soul to the devil at "The Crossroads" - where highway's 61 and 49 meet in Clarksdale Mississippi - to play guitar like that? Was he poisoned by a jealous lover's husband? Was he out barking at the moon the night before he died? It was amazing to me. To this day, we still don't know how he died. Or which one of the three gravestones is the correct marker. I still can't believe that is only one guitar on those records. From there I started listening to John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, B.B. King and Willie Dixon. That's where I began. A few of my friends thought I was nuts listening to music that was more than fifty years old, but I didn't care. They didn't know what I knew. The blues mattered. The blues spoke to me. The songs were about love and pain. They told stories. They had wit and depth and soul. Songs that were written for black juke-joint audiences in segregated Southern America decades before I was born moved me, a pasty white son of a public school teacher. Those songs were just as important to me as they were to Clapton and Page.
My love of the blues has grown. It has matured. Spread like small pox. Many modern bands that mean something to me still have blues influences. From Mike McCready's blues infused solos on his 1959 Strat, to Jack White's damn near reinvention of the blues. I read an interview with Jack a while back and the interviewer asked how he would like to be remembered. Three Quid coolly replied, "A good husband and father, good upholsterer, and he loved the blues." Here here Jackie. Selah.
Ball and a Biscuit
From the core blues artists I progressed to more historical greats. Tommy Johnson, Son House, Lead Belly, Mississippi John Hurt, Charlie Patton, Taj Mahal, Big Bill Broonzy, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Little Walter, Freddie King and Blind Willie McTell. Just to name a few. Sniffing out clues and following leads like a reincarnated Sherlock Holmes in a Tom Waits t-shirt I continue to find a little gem-of-a-song here and there. Not too long ago a found a song called Rabbits Foot Blues I didn't know from Blind Lemon Jefferson. What a beauty.So much of modern music is pre-packaged, over-marketed, saccharine-coated garbage. I have read about record companies using an algorithm that can figure if a song is going to be a hit or not. You plug in a verse, a chorus, another verse and a scantily clad girl "singing" and presto; a top 40 hit. That is offensive to me. People complain that the arts are suffering. Music stinks, films are watered down, novels are boring. This is true, sadly. The reason - partly - is because the suits are killing the arts. Jackass's that are more concerned about where they are having lunch and with who, than letting a burgeoning musician grow and mature. They believe they can predict what will sell, not what is good. Nobody in an office building in Santa Monica told Son House not to record a song about a dead girlfriend in the morgue. (See: Death Letter, a blues classic and perhaps my favorite song of all time.) The blues was - and is - raw and unfettered. The songs were about life around the artists. They matter.
Part of my definition of good or important music, whether I like it or not, is it must last more than one generation. The blues lives on. The blues breathes. She has life of her own.
Thank God she's a part of mine.
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Very nice Johnny. Though not big on Blues, I'm an avid Jazz collector, and your same beliefs hold true for me.
Gotta run now. You've piqued my interest in the Son House song about the dead girlfriend in the morgue...
Thanks, pal. I appreciate that.
I love jazz as well. (Mostly pre-1960) I used to go to Jazz Alley in Seattle all the time. A great club. My favorite joint here in Manhattan was called Smalls in the Village. It's gone now.
Check out Death Letter. And the White Stripes cover of it.
JW
AMEN BROTHER! The more music I hear that is on the radio today, the more I love and appreciate the blues. I have the good fortune to live in Memphis Tennessee, about 1 hr from the Crossroads. You have never experienced the full impact and power of the blues until you've been to Clarksdale and heard it performed live by a player who does it not for the money, not for fame, but because they feel the music. If you've never had the chance, you should make it a goal to visit the Ground Zero Blues Club (co owned by Morgan Freeman) in Clarksdale and take in some live blues, and pay a visit to the Delta Blues Museum. Your appreciation of the music will only increase. Thanks for this post and for you sharing how you feel. I agree with you completely.
I've wanted to go to the Delta Blues Museum for years.
It's on the list, along with playing my guitar at 508 Park Avenue in Dallas. That is the site of one of Robert Johnson's recording sessions.
Cheers, Ecogeek. Thanks for reading.
Thanks for this post. I'm a blues enthusiast and it really took me back to my last trip to the delta, half a dozen years ago.
The blues museum was a huge disappointment, like a sara lee version of a fine french pastry. But then I lucked into the real Clarksdale. It didn't hurt staying at the Riverside Hotel--the former infirmary where Bessie Smith died. Converted to a flophouse and run by an affable throwback of a fellow named Rat, this is the place to stay. Damn near every bluesman of note stayed here at one time or another, and Rat knew most of 'em.
Roger Stolle of Cat Head Records knows everything's that going on in town: when Red's Juke is going to be hoppin', and if Sarah is cookin' with her boys pickin n' grinnin' at Sarah's Kitchen, not to mention who runs the local card game and who books all the locals sports bets. He'll also turn you on to obscure finds you didn't know where out there, and the best bluesmen you've never heard of. This is how I found out about Fenton Robinson, and was the first place i'd ever been that stocked Honeyboy Edwards.
Digression aside, my journey to the blues was similar to yours: A white kid in the suburbs listening to Led Zepplin and blues influenced southern rock to discovering the inspiration for those tunes and falling in love with the blues. First, just delta acoustic, then chicago and electric and now the whole spectrum. Well writen, jay dub.
Your welcome Brad. There are millions just like us. Here and across the pond. When you listen to Clapton talk about discovering the blues, his story isn't that different than yours and mine. Neither is Jack White's.
I LOVE Bessie Smith. Amazing. Me and My Gin is my favorite song of hers. And Honeyboy Edwards, wow. Impressive. That cat knew Robert Johnson. He (and Sonny Boy Williamson) back up the story that Robert died from a strychnine-laced whisky bottle.
I appreciate you taking the time to write. I'll write down those places in my notebook.
Down on Highway 61,
JW
I can't say I'm a great aficionado of the blues, but I do have my favorites. The thing I have against the blues, which I've heard so many other people mention, is it all seems kind of samey same. This is why I like blues from the early part of the 20th century, because it was when everything was new. Those old, lo-fi recordings of people like Furry Lewis, Charlie Patton, Lead Belly and Robert Johnson really move me. I think one of the reasons is because I almost feel like I'm listening to a ghost speak. Some of these early recordings almost literally give me the chills.
The problem with the blues to me, especially after the early sixties, is how seemingly stagnant it is. I think a lot of the blame lies on white people who discovered the blues, a lot of them from the Northeast U.S., who went to the South to find their "heroes". Not to sound demeaning towards the musicians, but I think a lot of these blues guys saw these white guys come down, give them money and/or booze and played what they thought they wanted to hear. Just like hip hop today, the majority of people who buy blues records are white and probably looking for some kind of "authenticity".
The genius of bands like the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin was to do what these blues musicians didn't do, and that was to build on the roots of what came before and take it somewhere else. The Small Faces "covered" You Need Love, by Willie Dixon via Muddy Waters, but it wasn't too dissimilar from the original. Led Zeppelin took the Small Faces version, added a psychedelic freakout (and in the live version, the violin bow stolen from Eddie Phillips of The Creation) and took it way beyond the original and made Whole Lotta Love. But, overall, this is where the blues and classic rock intersected to make something wholly original, yet something that was still recognizable by copyright lawyers.
I think the real question is: Have I made any sense at all? I love some blues, but too much of it sounds the same and it can get boring. Who's fault is it? White people. But who saved it? White people. The blues was the foundation of rock and roll, but it got old. White people discovered it and resurrected and killed it at the same time. (I realize by saying “white people” so many times makes me sound like I may be racist, but, seriously, my best friend was a guitarist for Parliament/Funkadelic, www.ericmcfadden.com, so obviously I‘m not) With a few exceptions, I don’t think the blues has been the same since about the time Sam Philips recorded Howlin’ Wolf (Moanin‘ At Midnight. So Awesome!).
Also, I really envy you ecogeek, I’ve been to Memphis four times and that place just oozes history. There are so many ghosts there you can almost feel them in the air. I really love that place. Also, if you haven’t , everyone should read Robert Guralnick’s “It Came From Memphis”. He makes a very good case that Memphis is the true cultural and commercial hub of America.
Really though, did I make any sense? I love a lot of the blues, but so much of it sounds so similar, it gets really boring really quickly. A lot of blues fans are very patronizing towards the musicians (but not you, of course) and I think that’s what I was trying to say also. Plus I was trying to tie it into the “Classic Rock” (barf) you grew up on.
But hey! Love your website, keep it up, blah, blah, blah...
I would like to, at some point, travel around that area. Do a bit of a blues tour. The places mentioned in this post and the comments have a lot of interest both as musical and standard history. Clarksdale, the crossroads. Hell the whole blues region.
I appreciated your thoughts Ken. I sense the Force is strong with you.
I'm a huge blues fan and I agree with you, it stays with you. I also have to say THANK YOU for putting that clip of Ball and a Biscuit up. I was never a fan of the White Stripes, but all I heard was what was played on the radio. Hearing that song changed my mind. Its amazing.
well i've never commented here before, but all it takes is a post on the blues and i'm on it like duck on a chinese menu (an expression i'm pretty stoked about after hearing my dad possibly create it before my very eyes today). firstly anyone who has ball and biscuit as the one video in multi-paragraph blues post deserves a pat on the back, there are too many people who say the blues is a dying breed to be playing john mayall clips. on that point i was saddened to see no mention of john mayall (man crush what can i say). moving along, i was talking to this girl the other day, a delightful person it seemed, and i was showing a little interest until she took off her jacket to reveal an avenged sevenfold t-shirt. i left promptly (mostly because i had a plane to catch but still it was within 15 minutes of her exposing the shirt). anyway, that was really a meaningless story in the middle of a fluid thought so lets back track a few sentences and start talking about the white stripes again. cool. i, being a part of this shameful generation that is destroying music, didn't find my way to the blues through the doors or zeppelin or any of the more obvious routes of the past. when i was listening to my white stripes collection at the age of 10 my dad said if you like that you'll love this (might not be exactly what he said) and gave me a cream greatest hits cd. i mean he had to go downstairs and get it, he didn't just pull the cd out from behind my ear. it was like magic (i'm talking about the cd itself now, as i just explained the presentation of the cd was not at all like magic). i grabbed all the blues rock i could find not realizing that was what i was doing, but always understanding that some how the music i was picking was different from all the other rock and roll out there. as my music collection kept expanding it kept becoming harder and harder to call what i was listening to rock and roll. i found taj mahal, buddy guy, john mayall, t-bone walker, elmore james, robert cray, and of course robert johnson. and now that i am a man (altough i don't think i would describe myself as a hoochie coochie man) of 18 years and have discovered drugs and women let me tell you i can finally truly understand and appreciate the music i have been listening this whole time. because nothing makes you love the blues like drugs and women. so what am i trying to say? i guess i just wanted to say right on. also i too am very very white.
You bet Ford. The Stripes are much more than Seven Nation Army, believe me.
Taylor, come on brother, like I don't love John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. Of course I do. I'm sorry for not mentioning them. I didn't mention Elmore James, Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, Paul Butterfield and Michael Bloomfield either, but believe me they are important to me.
I wrote a quasi-love letter about the White Stripes last year. About my discovery of them. Maybe I'll repost it this week in a little blues solidarity.
Does anyone want me to do that? It's already written, wouldn't take much to put it up.
I love how the blues inspires people to write these huge comments. I know I'm not alone...
JW
Oh yeah, "I'm on it like duck on a chinese menu."
That's pretty good.
I didn’t mean to sound like i was attacking your quality as a blogger/blues enthuiast when i said it saddened me you didn’t mention john mayall. obviously i don’t expect you to name every blues artist on my jam-box, also known as an iPod, that would be difficult, but you must understand i still haven’t forgiven my parents for not naming me john mayall. If you had a post about wether or not dogs have individual preferances towards certain colors or if their favorite color has to do with the breed of dog i would still be saddened at the fact john mayall’s name wasn’t mentioned. i honestly would take a bullet or posined glass or whiskey for the guy. i am obsessed with the guy to the point where it is almost dpressing with the guy. if some reading this hasn’t heard the album turning point buy that immediatly. it just throws the rule book out the window and says f*** this lets jam. In closing i would like to say john mayall’s name one more time. Also i apologize for the excessive use of parenteses and the word cd in that last post. john mayall.