[Harp-L] Re: More Recognizable blues tunes

[Ken Deifik <kenneth.d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John Frazier wrote:
> He asked for tunes that your average non-blues aficionado would recognize.
>
> Hell, I don't recognize half of those. LOL

When I read your excellent original prime-the-pump list, I knew that it 
must've been in response to a question, but I didn't see the question, and 
my pump got all primey and all.

It inspired my first response, based on the idea of songs that felt like 
blues and yet had highly unique melodies.

I then got into the car to hunt down some dinner for the wife and me and 
the pump really took off.  Got home and knocked out the second list, again 
having little to do with what I now know to have been the actual question, 
and everything to do with beautiful blues songs with unique melodies.

I knew the odds were good that I had gone off-subject, but it still seemed 
like a worthwhile list to make for the general discussion.

The blues recordings I enjoyed the most through the years, and almost all 
of the blues recordings that really stick with, me push one edge or 
another, and make themselves unique and recognizeable AND ARE STILL 
BLUES.  Fixin' To Die by Bukka White and Hard Time Killin' Floor by Skip 
James come to mind.  Heck, most of Muddy's best material doesn't sound like 
anything else.

When I was a kid I and I'd read an interview with a great musician, I was 
skeptical when they'd say that the blues is not a form or scale, it's a 
feeling.  But the truth of that observation is made clear when you try to 
say one thing is blues and another thing is not.  (In the 60's there were 
actually some boneheads who proclaimed that Bessie Smith's recordings were 
not 'real' blues.)

Hence, Kenny The D's Postulate: if something sounds or feels 'bluesy' then 
it is The Blues.

In any case, the tunes I put on my list all sound like standards to me, are 
really unique and seriously blues.

K the D