{"id":16480,"date":"2023-09-07T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=16480"},"modified":"2023-09-06T22:16:28","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T21:16:28","slug":"looking-to-learn-about-the-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2023\/09\/07\/looking-to-learn-about-the-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"LOOKING TO LEARN ABOUT THE BLUES"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Norman Warwick is<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

LOOKING TO LEARN ABOUT THE BLUES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

after reading Geoffrey Himes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess we all have our favourite, and our least favourite, genres of music. I think I have always somehow missed out on the blues. I have never really come to terms with the blues. Although I love the ethno-musicology of it all, I find the music itself somewhat hard to listen to. I know Elton John guesses that\u00b4s why they call it the blues, because of an inherent sadness but I\u00b4m nto sure I agree with him. I guess \u00b4the blues\u00b4is marketing term and I guess that why they realy call it eh blues ! When it comes to jazz and the blues I tend to listen to a subsection of each called something like smooth.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, I often find myself listening to a blues without knowing it\u2019s a blues, and I usually enjoy it as much as all the other tons and tones of music I love.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The blues are often further by the landscape they are picked from, urban delta or cotton for instance. Sometimes a particular city, suchas Chicago epithets the term, the blues.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chicago, says Geoffrey Himes in a recent Curmudgeon column in Paste magazine, deserves its reputation as the capital of the blues and tell us that<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though New Orleans and Memphis can make plausible claims, Chicago was home not only to many of the best artists but also to a critical mass of record labels, clubs and audience that kept the genre alive. When the great migration of Southern African-Americans came north in the \u201930s, \u201940s and \u201950s, more of them landed in Chicago than anywhere else\u2014and they brought the blues with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The greatest of the Chicago labels was Chess Records, which despite its sometime questionable business practices documented hundreds of immortal blues performances. Chess is gone, but keeping the tradition going are Delmark Records and Alligator Records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Delmark is this year celebrating its long run with a new, single-disc compilation, Delmark Records 70th Anniversary Blues Anthology. <\/em>Bob Koester founded the label (originally named Delmar) as a 21-year-old kid in St. Louis. But it became much more than a sideline when he moved to Chicago in 1958, opened the legendary store known as the Jazz Record Mart, and expanded his label.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company\u2019s importance is established with the compilation\u2019s opening track: \u201cSnatch It Back and Hold It\u201d from Junior Wells\u2019 1965 debut album, Hoodoo Man Blues. <\/em>This was a major shift in the evolution of the blues, as Well\u2019s staccato vocals and sax-like harmonica blended James Brown funk with Chess Records blues with help from guitarist Buddy Guy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as important was Magic Sam, exemplar of Chicago\u2019s West Side Sound. Sam Maghett added deeper harmonies and tenser rhythms to the usual blues changes; he sang and soloed with wild abandon, especially on his two albums for Delmark before dying of a heart attack in 1969. The compilation includes the best version of his signature song, \u201cAll of Your Love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Koester\u2019s insider knowledge of the record biz enabled him to lease key older recordings by T-Bone Walker (right)<\/em><\/strong>, Dinah Washington and Little Walter, all included here. The set concludes with \u201cAshes in My Ashtray\u201d by Jimmy Johnson, the best Chicago blues songwriter since Willie Dixon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delmark is bit older than Alligator. The latter label celebrated its half-century birthday in 2021 with its own compilation, Alligator Records: 50 Years of Genuine Houserockin\u2019 Music. <\/em>That set showcased one of the company\u2019s brightest recent discoveries, Selwyn Birchwood, who has released an impressive new album this summer. Exorcist<\/em> contains 13 strong originals by the singer\/guitarist backed by his road band featuring the wild-card flavor of Regi Oliver\u2019s baritone sax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those bottom-heavy horn riffs are used to good effect on \u201cFlorida Man,\u201d a song about Birchwood\u2019s home state and the detached-from-reality things some residents are known for. With Oliver and organist Ed Krout swirling the low end, Birchwood\u2019s booming baritone relates how \u201cFlorida Man takes an alligator for beer runs\u201d and \u201cmakes love when he\u2019s handcuffed in a cop car.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That sense of humor gives these songs a freshness that distinguishes them from the usual blues fare. He promises to bury an old love with a silver spade beneath a bush of dead roses. On \u201cSwim at Your Own Risk,\u201d he tells a comic tale of a thief running into a Florida swamp; the cops don\u2019t catch him, but the gators do. These tunes are clearly geared for the blues bar circuit, but they stand out from the rest, thanks to the songwriting, the use of lap steel and sax, and Birchwood\u2019s Hendrix-flavored guitar fills and solos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this year, Alligator released the Cash Box Kings\u2019 Oscar\u2019s Motel,<\/em> which owes its classic Chicago blues sound to the many years lead vocalist Oscar Wilson spent in the trenches of the South Side barrooms. To prove where he\u2019s coming from, Wilson sings songs by Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson and delivers an uncanny imitation of Howlin\u2019 Wolf on the title track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s the quality of the originals co-written by Wilson and\/or producer\/harmonica specialist Joe Nosek that makes this album much more than a mere revival. The title track evokes the kind of seedy motel where illicit love can flourish with barbecue on the side. The slow blues, \u201cI Can\u2019t Stand You,\u201d a duet between Wilson and Deitra Farr, is a swinging, back-and-forth lovers quarrel. And \u201cDown on the South Side\u201d is contagious enough to convince you that the bottom of Chicago is still the top of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less impressive is Coco Montoya\u2019s new album for Alligator, Writing on the Wall.<\/em> It suffers from the kind of over-singing and over-playing that give contemporary blues a bad name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nashville label, Easy Eye Sound, is only six years old, but it too has a new, celebratory anthology, Tell Everybody! (21st Century Juke Joint Blues). <\/em>The Black Keys\u2019 Dan Auerbach is the company\u2019s founder, in-house producer and in-house songwriter. He has released a broad spectrum of American roots music, but his emphasis has been on the original inspiration for the Keys, Mississippi juke-joint blues, and that\u2019s what this new collection showcases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The collection gets its title and striking cover photo from Robert Finley, the Louisiana gospel-soul singer who has converted to the Mississippi Hill Country cause. The title track invites everyone to a party, but the gradually building music is so slow and full of dread that it promises to be the strangest, most funereal bash of the season. R.L. Boyce pays tribute to his mentor R.L. Burnside with a slide-heavy version of \u201cCoal Black Mattie,\u201d and Leo \u201cBud\u201d Welch is represented by his 2021 single, \u201cDon\u2019t Let the Devil Ride.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The small town of Bentonia, Mississippi, evolved its own brand of blues with its own tunings and high, lonesome singing. Skip James and Jack Owens were the original masters, and Jimmy \u201cDuck\u201d Holmes is their living-legend heir. For this compilation, the Black Keys contribute their muscular version of Owens\u2019 \u201cNo Lovin\u2019,\u201d while Holmes is represented by his lean and mean \u201cCatfish Blues.\u201d Gabe Carter, a younger Chicagoan who has devoted himself to the Bentonia sound, provides two respectable cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Auerbach himself puts a psychedelic-boogie spin on an original blues, \u201cEvery Chance I Get (I Want You in the Flesh).\u201d The Akron singer also pays tribute to his early Ohio hero (and early guitarist for the James Gang), Glenn Schwartz, by showcasing the late singer on two tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another contributor to the compilation is Nat Myers, who has just released his debut album, Yellow Peril,<\/em> with Auerbach producing and co-writing nine of the 10 songs. The title track is an allusion to Myers\u2019 Korean-American background. The lyrics complain that folks with \u201ceyes that look like mine\u201d are viewed with suspicion by immigration officials and college admissions offices alike, even though they \u201cjust wanna have a little fun before we die.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Myers\u2019 notion of \u201ca little fun\u201d is refashioning the Mississippi country blues of the 1930s as a vehicle for the poetry he studied at the New School in Manhattan and the rambling-musician life that has taken him from Louisville to Memphis and beyond. Sometimes he tries to cram too many syllables into a line, but when the words and groove link up, his relaxed tenor, tapping foot and sparkling fingerpicking can make you believe that the music of the 1930s might be the perfect response to the angst of the 2020s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bobby Rush is 89, old enough to have befriended Elmore James, Pinetop Perkins and Ike Turner in the Arkansas Delta in the late \u201940s and Howlin\u2019 Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Jimmy Reed in Chicago in the mid \u201950s. He remains a teenage smart aleck at heart, however, and he has written and recorded 10 irreverent, party songs for his new album, All My Love for You. <\/em>There\u2019s nothing gimmicky about this project\u2014no famous guest stars, no high-minded concept\u2014just a tight little quartet pumping out funky blues about hard times and fickle women, a fresh dose of what Rush has been doing so well for three-quarters of a century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On \u201cI\u2019m the One,\u201d he boasts that he\u2019s \u201cthe one who put the funk in the blues\u201d over a push-and-pull dance groove. It\u2019s a plausible claim, but more importantly, he\u2019s the one who put the punchline in the blues. He\u2019s always had a flair for over-the-top lyrics that turn the ongoing battles between men and women, the rich and the poor, the musician and the biz into crackling good jokes. On this album, he rewrites his signature song, \u201cOne Monkey Don\u2019t Stop No Show\u201d as \u201cOne Monkey Can Stop a Show\u201d by describing the many ways a vengeful lover can end it all for the one who did her wrong. It\u2019s as funny as it is funky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

. acknowledgements<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The primary sources for  this piece was written for the print and on line media Authors and Titles have been attributed in our text wherever possible<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Images employed have been taken from on line sites only where  categorised as  images free to use.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a more comprehensive detail of our attribution policy see our for reference only post on 7th<\/sup> April 2023  entitled Aspirations And Attributions.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Delmark is this year celebrating its long run with a new, single-disc compilation,\u00a0Delmark Records 70th Anniversary Blues Anthology.\u00a0Bob Koester founded the label (originally named Delmar) as a 21-year-old kid in St. Louis. But it became much more than a sideline when he moved to Chicago in 1958, opened the legendary store known as the Jazz Record Mart, and expanded his label.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16480"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16557,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16480\/revisions\/16557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}