In the 90s, Dylan did 2 albums of traditional music. He did this, in part, just to complete contractual obligations, but they turned out to be much more than that.
Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong are just Dylan, voice and guitar, doing a selection of traditional songs. Mostly, they are blues, old songs by Blind Willie McTell, The Mississippi Sheiks, and some so old, like Delia, that they are just marked 'traditional.' His voice is ragged and so is the guitar playing and that is perfect for these tunes. The musicians who first did these were rough and largely untrained, but they had feeling and knew how to play their music. To play these songs with polish would just undermine their meaning. It would be like rewriting Huckleberry Finn with the grammar corrected.
At this point in his career, Dylan had turned out some fairly lackluster albums. O Mercy was good, the rest, just so so. For another artist, they may have been thought exceptional, but much more was expected of Dylan. That is not at all fair, but that was just the way things were.
It was almost like he had to dig back into his roots to find his voice. The three albums he did after these were very good and I will write about them in the next post I urge you to listen to these two fine albums of acoustic songs. My favorites are the traditional ballad, Jack-a-roe and a song my Grandfather sang to us kids when we were little, Froggy Went-a-Coutrin'.
Showing posts with label Blues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blues. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Saturday, June 11, 2016
American Music
With so much lunacy in the world, thank God we have music. Sometimes I wonder if our Creator tolerates us just because we can sing, Everyone has music they love and I love it all, with 3 exceptions. I cannot listen to the insipid pop music around now. The Katy Perrys and Justin Biebers of the world need to just go away and count their money, quietly. I cannot listen to much metal. Those guys can play, but they are a wee bit too aggressive for me. I feel like I am being assaulted when I listen to more than 30 seconds of hard metal. And, with no exceptions, I cannot abide even 3 seconds of hip hop. Heavy beat mixed with electronic squeals is not music, especially when topped with the vilest excuse for lyrics imaginable. If you can make a case for the musical value of any of these 3 forms, please, leave a comment.
American music has 2 roots, the blues and the old Appalachian folk music. From this came country, rock, and jazz. Add a bit of classical influence, a touch of European folk styles, and German Polkas, and you have completed the stew. I will say, with no hesitation, that American popular music is something that is unmatched in the world.
Just think, the Mississippi Delta gave us Robert Johnson and the strange world of sex, booze and the Devil he lived in. His high, haunting voice and the shivering of the strings as he worked the bottleneck up and down his guitar takes you from this world into the world of spirits, ghosts, and demons, violent men and Saturday nights and the crossroads at midnight.
If Johnson seems to paint a picture of a man chased by the Devil, go to the West Virginia hills and hear Dock Boggs, the Devil who was likely chasing him. Boggs was a wicked banjo player and sang in a voice from the Old Country, from the high hills of Scotland and he sang the ancient songs of love and betrayal, of loyalty and murder, of banshees and things that wait along the dark roads of the forest. His voice is cold, distant, as if guilty of horrible crimes or witness to nightmares .
Listen to Muddy Waters, who moved the blues north and electrified it or to the Carter Family, who stayed home and sang of the traditions of family and church and the traditions of booze and wanderlust. Listen to Miles, who smoothed things out and found the sensual soul of melancholy or to Johnny Cash who walked the line between his Baptist faith and amphetamine madness.
Original, one and all, and what other country could give us Elvis and Coltrane and Willie Nelson and Sinatra?
Where else could full blown lunatics like Captain Beefheart find a space to create their earthy magic? Where else could .a strange genius like Frank Zappa find and audience or a kid from Memphis like Arthur Lee put together a find band like Love? And trust me, no where else could a self taught master like Jimi Hendrix appear.
If I seem a bit old school in my taste, it is because I am afraid that we will lose sight of where we came from, not just musically, but culturally. Also, I simply don't hear a whole lot of new music that I can even think of as music. Again, I am open to suggestions and would love comments but, in the meantime, give a listen to some of our older music and you will be pleasantly surprised.
American music has 2 roots, the blues and the old Appalachian folk music. From this came country, rock, and jazz. Add a bit of classical influence, a touch of European folk styles, and German Polkas, and you have completed the stew. I will say, with no hesitation, that American popular music is something that is unmatched in the world.
Just think, the Mississippi Delta gave us Robert Johnson and the strange world of sex, booze and the Devil he lived in. His high, haunting voice and the shivering of the strings as he worked the bottleneck up and down his guitar takes you from this world into the world of spirits, ghosts, and demons, violent men and Saturday nights and the crossroads at midnight.
If Johnson seems to paint a picture of a man chased by the Devil, go to the West Virginia hills and hear Dock Boggs, the Devil who was likely chasing him. Boggs was a wicked banjo player and sang in a voice from the Old Country, from the high hills of Scotland and he sang the ancient songs of love and betrayal, of loyalty and murder, of banshees and things that wait along the dark roads of the forest. His voice is cold, distant, as if guilty of horrible crimes or witness to nightmares .
Listen to Muddy Waters, who moved the blues north and electrified it or to the Carter Family, who stayed home and sang of the traditions of family and church and the traditions of booze and wanderlust. Listen to Miles, who smoothed things out and found the sensual soul of melancholy or to Johnny Cash who walked the line between his Baptist faith and amphetamine madness.
Original, one and all, and what other country could give us Elvis and Coltrane and Willie Nelson and Sinatra?
Where else could full blown lunatics like Captain Beefheart find a space to create their earthy magic? Where else could .a strange genius like Frank Zappa find and audience or a kid from Memphis like Arthur Lee put together a find band like Love? And trust me, no where else could a self taught master like Jimi Hendrix appear.
If I seem a bit old school in my taste, it is because I am afraid that we will lose sight of where we came from, not just musically, but culturally. Also, I simply don't hear a whole lot of new music that I can even think of as music. Again, I am open to suggestions and would love comments but, in the meantime, give a listen to some of our older music and you will be pleasantly surprised.
Friday, May 13, 2016
America's Music - The Blues
America has produced a few kinds of music original to our Country, well, as original as any music can be. Of course, all music has a link or two back to earlier times and the obvious root of the blues is Africa. However, African music became American blues after its creators were exposed to the folk music of Europeans. Nothing exists in a vacuum.
For example; there is a great blues song called I Know You Rider. I have heard this song done in several styles: blues, country, folk, and even rock. The Grateful Dead used it as a takeoff piece occasionally for their long extended improvisations, taking it into outer space before bringing it back to Earth. Early blues was deeply influenced by the other music of its time. Robert Johnson was known to play many pop tunes of his day and his favorite song was, by all accounts, a country tune, Tumblin' Tumbleweeds. Those guys made a living playing for live crowds, for tips, and had to be ready to play whatever was popular. The Mississippi Sheiks were often booked to play at square dances for white audiences simply because they were so good. Shamefully, at those gatherings they were forced to play from behind a curtain because of their color. So, as I said, while Blues has its roots in Africa, it did not develop in isolation from other cultural influences.
Why has the blues always been so popular with musicians? Beside its deep emotional appeal, it is a simple loose structure. The basic form is a-a-b; state a line, repeat it, then answer it. That expanded to a-a-b-a; state a line, repeat it, answer it, then restate the original. Later of course, more complexity was added, but the basic form is so simple that it allows the player freedom. Between the basic lines of the form, you can do most anything, as long as you come back to the form. When those players played weekends at bars, folks wanted to dance a but and they tipped according to how much they liked the song. If you did a 2 minute song, no matter how good. they were apt to not tip because that is not enough time to really get into dancing. However, if you stretch that out by improvising, both words and music, to 6 or 7 minutes, giving them a chance to move around with their partner, they were likely to be generous.
And thus, you see the roots of America's one truly native musical form, Jazz. No Blues, no Jazz, it's that simple.
I love all of the many forms the Blues has taken from Charley Patton and Robert Johnson to Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf on through Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughn. It is possible, many have done it, to spend a lifetime devoted to tracking down old Blues recordings, and through the efforts of those who did so, those of my era rediscovered the older masters of the form. Players as great as Son House and Skip James had all but disappeared until collectors stumbled across old, forgotten recordings, then tracked down those guys and brought them back to public attention in the folk revival of the 1960s. I'm glad they did.
For example; there is a great blues song called I Know You Rider. I have heard this song done in several styles: blues, country, folk, and even rock. The Grateful Dead used it as a takeoff piece occasionally for their long extended improvisations, taking it into outer space before bringing it back to Earth. Early blues was deeply influenced by the other music of its time. Robert Johnson was known to play many pop tunes of his day and his favorite song was, by all accounts, a country tune, Tumblin' Tumbleweeds. Those guys made a living playing for live crowds, for tips, and had to be ready to play whatever was popular. The Mississippi Sheiks were often booked to play at square dances for white audiences simply because they were so good. Shamefully, at those gatherings they were forced to play from behind a curtain because of their color. So, as I said, while Blues has its roots in Africa, it did not develop in isolation from other cultural influences.
Why has the blues always been so popular with musicians? Beside its deep emotional appeal, it is a simple loose structure. The basic form is a-a-b; state a line, repeat it, then answer it. That expanded to a-a-b-a; state a line, repeat it, answer it, then restate the original. Later of course, more complexity was added, but the basic form is so simple that it allows the player freedom. Between the basic lines of the form, you can do most anything, as long as you come back to the form. When those players played weekends at bars, folks wanted to dance a but and they tipped according to how much they liked the song. If you did a 2 minute song, no matter how good. they were apt to not tip because that is not enough time to really get into dancing. However, if you stretch that out by improvising, both words and music, to 6 or 7 minutes, giving them a chance to move around with their partner, they were likely to be generous.
And thus, you see the roots of America's one truly native musical form, Jazz. No Blues, no Jazz, it's that simple.
I love all of the many forms the Blues has taken from Charley Patton and Robert Johnson to Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf on through Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughn. It is possible, many have done it, to spend a lifetime devoted to tracking down old Blues recordings, and through the efforts of those who did so, those of my era rediscovered the older masters of the form. Players as great as Son House and Skip James had all but disappeared until collectors stumbled across old, forgotten recordings, then tracked down those guys and brought them back to public attention in the folk revival of the 1960s. I'm glad they did.
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