[Harp-L] Blues and country and gospel



--- In harp-l-archives@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "James" <wasabileo@...> wrote:


>As to the previous discussion about early country music, listen 
>to the Delmore Brothers (great harp) and Jimmy Rogers "The 
>Singing Brakemen" they sound like Blues to me. 

Now this is where some interesting things come up. 

Who's that playing trumpet on some of those Jimmy Rogers records?
Louis Armstrong.

Where did Howlin' Wolf get the idea for his wolf howl? The yodeling of
Jimmy Rogers.

The Delmores' later work with Wayne Raney and Lonnie Glosson (dual
harps on several of those singles) is sort of pre-rockabilly, which is
pre-rock'n'roll. All of which definitely borrown from boogie woogie of
the 1930s as much as they borrow directly from blues.

Now, there's an interesting point that Johnny Shines once made to me
in conversation. He said, If you sing, my baby's pretty, she got
(whatever attributes you think are fine), that ain't the blues. Blue
for Johnny Shines was the unburdening of trouble in lyrics. 

So for him, one of the great storytellers of the blues, blues was not
defined by form or scale but by lyrics. For him, a huge chunk of what
gets called blues he would consider not to be blues.

Think about some of the Beach Boys tunes or Chuck Berry tunes that use
a 12-bar blues form. The feel of most of those tunes is so
antithetical to blues that you might not even notice the form.

The thing that we call 12-bar blues is heard in blues, country, rock,
jazz, surf music, and probably other American styles. There are even
classical compositions that use it. Meanwhile, some of the oldest
blues doesn't use a chord progressions at all and doesn't necesssarily
last for 12 bars - or they use some other progression, like the 8/16
bar progression or the Saints. So I think it's a mistake to hear the
12-bar progression and immediately draw a link to blues.

Somebody else asked me offlist about how gospel fits into the picture.
I assume they meant black gospel, as there is also white southern
gospel music that is very different.

Well, Ray Charles was one of the first artists to use the sound of
gospel music and put secular words to it - and people showed up at his
gigs to denounce the blasphemy. Again, it was about lyric content as
much as about musical style.

My knowledge of gospel styles is not very deep, but the term really
just refers to religious music. I doubt that there has been,
historically, a single style of gospel music in the African American
population nationwide until radio and record business started
promoting a standard. Even now I suspect there are strong regional
differences, as well as differences among, say, Baptists and
Catholics, who tend to have rather different approaches to forms of
worship and even personal expression.

Winslow










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