Re: what constitutes blues.

["david j. brown" <nonidesign@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

To me blues is the feeling I get knowing that after going to Maxwell St. for
over 30 years, listening to Chicago blues at the market, and learning to
play harp in "chop" sessions in the back lots behind Nate's Deli, it has
been paved over so that college kids can buy designer coffee.

I went there during the winter and took a photo of the last surviving
business on Maxwell. Ironically, it was a Jewish Tailor shop. As I was
getting back in my truck the only other person on the street (which was just
a big mess of a construction site) came up and asked me, in a French accent,
where Maxwell St. blues market was. I told him he was standing in it. He
couldn't believe it. He told me he was from Paris and that to his friends
back home the idea that this historic place would disappear was
inconceivable. What could I say? I gave him the address of the Checkerboard
and told him to go get a drink.

All I can say is thank God they saved Chess Studios before some idiot from
Schaumburg turned it into a condo.




> From: alciere@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Reply-To: alciere@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2003 16:20:48 -0500
> To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: re: what constitutes blues.
> 
> 
> Mike's point about micro tuning with blues is very important. It's one of
> the reasons the harp is such a good blues instrument. It's not so much
> feeling versus technique. It's more the old concept of cool, laying back,
> leaving space. There may not be much flash but the the groove is in the
> pocket, it's swinging. The band members are listening to each other,
> watching each other, building off each other. In short, the musicians are
> extrodinary but usually they let the singer do the strutting.
> 
> That sense of timing, rhythmn, pace,taste, structure is so important to any
> musican playing any type of music. Some of the early rock band attempts to
> play blues were awful, not because the kids were white, but because the kids
> were beginner musicians. It doesn't take much to bang out three chords and
> blow over it, but that doesn't necessarily make it music.
> 
> To me the Blues form is like a sonnet. A simple form that's capable of
> intense expression.
> 
> Rainbow Jimmy
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