bostonmoejo <bostonmoejo@xxxxxxx> wrote:
http://www.filmbaby.com/films/3717
one thing i take issue with is his statement at the end: "the very best ones, they've been dead a long time". now, ancestor worship is all well and good, but i find this notion that the golden years of harp are long gone to be ridiculous. yet it comes up all the time, either explicitly or implicitly.
maybe i'm just oblivious to the subtler nuances, but i can listen to little walter, and then to, for example, dennis gruenling, and there's no comparison. sure, walter was the groundbreaker, the inventor of this stuff, and terrific in his day. i respect him greatly for that. but time doesn't stand still, music moves on, and the bar keeps creeping up as each new generation starts with greater expectations and understanding of what can be done.
it's not just harp, of course. when i listen to the music i grew up on, artists that i revered in the early 70's, a lot of it's just not that amazing anymore. it's good, and i still enjoy it. but i hear guys all the time, even just in our local blues jam, that play rings around (for instance) what clapton was playing, back when clapton was God.
-- Optimism and pessimism don't exist for me. I'm a blues man. I am a prisoner of hope. I'm going to die full of hope. - Cornel West
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