[Harp-L] plagarism

["Glenn Weiser" <celticguitar1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Message: 11
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2007 11:34:57 +1200
From: Roger Boyce <roger.boyce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Harp-L] Plagiarism According to Muddy Waters and Jonathan
Lethem
To: "harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx" <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Message-ID: <C2AE9361.1987%roger.boyce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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I Have extracted a paragraph below - which quotes Muddy Waters - in an
interview with Alan Lomax, from Jonathan Lethem's splendid article ( in the
Jan. 2007 Harpers Magazine / online ) entitled - The ecstacy of influence: A
Plagiarism. Lethems article makes for entertaining reading and comes
complete with a sucker-punch-surprise-of-an-ending which puts the whole
notion of creativity & plagiarism in a fresh light.

Begin extracted Quote -

The Ecstasy of Influence:
by Jonathan Lethem

³In 1941, on his front porch, Muddy Waters recorded a song for the
folklorist Alan Lomax. After singing the song, which he told Lomax was
entitled ³Country Blues,² Waters described how he came to write it. ³I made
it on about the eighth of October '38,² Waters said. ³I was fixin' a
puncture on a car. I had been mistreated by a girl. I just felt blue, and
the song fell into my mind and it come to me just like that and I started
singing.²

Then Lomax, who knew of the Robert Johnson recording called ³Walkin' Blues,²
asked Waters if there were any other songs that used the same tune. ³There's
been some blues played like that,² Waters replied. ³This song comes from the
cotton field and a boy once put a record out as named OWalkin' Blues.' I 
heard the tune before I heard it on the record.
I learned it from Son House.²

In nearly one breath, Waters offers five accounts: his own active
authorship: he ³made it² on a specific date. Then the ³passive² explanation:
³it come to me just like that.² After Lomax raises the question of
influence, Waters, without shame, misgivings, or trepidation, says that he
heard a version by Johnson, but that his mentor, Son House, taught it to
him. In the middle of that complex genealogy, Waters declares that ³this
song comes from the cotton field.²

End Quote


My mother came from the cotton fields ( daughter of a share-cropper ) and
sang songs ( on her own and in bands ) she learned from black and white
folks she knew there. The first song I ever sang, by myself in my crib,
turned out later to be a Leadbelly tune. Much later I would hear the
melodies and lyric variations of songs -I sang with my Mother - on the radio
in newer popular country, blues, rock-and-roll, pop and jazz tunes.

I am now a painter and an educator in the arts. I tell my students that the
creative field is an area of human endeavor where theft ( i.e. Influence, to
one degree or another ) is not just sanctioned but encouraged and crucial in
the manufacture of 'new' culture.

Respectfully Yours

Roger 'Wader" Boyce
Expatriate American thief, living in Christchurch, New Zealand

______

There are many instances of counrty blues songs loosely based on 
forerunners. Robert Johnson, Son House and Muddy all recorded "Walkin' 
Blues."
But the lyrics were never exactly the same, nor the the guitar parts. There 
are times when some country blues players like Bo Carter recycled their 
guitar parts  for other sets of lyrics, but I can't think of a single 
instance where a country blues blues copped a guitar part from another 
artist note-for-note.
Tom Ball, can you think of any examples of this, please? In country blues, 
what I see are players who had their own parts worked out and appear to have 
prided themselves on originality.

The case of the harp player I saw is different-complete Little Walter and a 
Sonny Boy II solos ripped off note-for-note. This is not the same sort of 
thing

-Glenn