Anyone here into the blues? The only music to have earned the definite article. Recommendations please? I know nothing.
Stuff like this please.
Aw man, I went through a phase in high school when I was super into the blues. Sounds like you want the super-primordial OG shit like Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, and Lightnin’ Hopkins? You’ve probably locked into these artists already, but just in case:
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Nice. That’s nice.
At some point someone invented the electric guitar, and the whole blues game changed completely.
A common theme of the blues was white artists appropriating blues songs. At the time, it was scandalous to play black musicians on the radio, but white artists playing the same songs could get on the air. To be fair, the Rolling Stones and other bands respected the fuck out of their predecessors and went out of their way to let everyone know they were inspired by Muddy Waters, et al. Also, it was a common thing for black musicians to steal shit from other black musicians.
Still, the injustice is palpable: Elvis and Led Zeppelin and the Stones and Clapton made multi-millions playing watered-down blues songs invented by black musicians who created national anthems and got jack shit for their work. I take it you are familiar with some of the following songs:
Of course when the 60’s and 70’s came in and everything got groovy, the blues adapted to the style of the time. I don’t think the definite article is appropriate at all; there are so many styles of blues.
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Big Mamma Thornton recorded You Ain’t Nothing But a Hound Dog in 1952; it wasn’t until Elvis recorded his 1956 version that the song became a smash hit. Imagine what this shit would be like today. It’s like, imagine if Despacito was released in 2017 but never got any airtime at all until four years later in 2021 when a white boy band released a watered-down version of it. That’s just how the music industry was for generations, so much talent was appropriated and stolen.
Any discussion of the blues has to include this jam:
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Start with delta blues giants like Skip James and Robert Johnson, then to Chicago blues style stalwarts Muddy Waters and my favourite Howlin Wolf, who I still remember one critic describing as making Muddy Waters sound like David Niven.
And there are others, of course.
Awesome. Between the last few posts I have a playlist for today. Cheers.
A couple of harmonica players I favor:
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Damn, the new Fiona Apple is pretty good. Much bolder and more raw than I was expecting.
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Wow. The Rev. Davis in particular is great.
New Gorillaz track (well, a couple months old now) is a treat. “Désolé” ft. Fatoumata Diawara
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For my money, it doesn’t get any better than when Michael Bolton sings “When a Man Loves a Woman”.
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There is no reason to use past tense here.
It’s pretty wild that Rage Against the Machine are unique. And I mean that in the proper sense of the word. They’re singular. An entire genre was invented out of nowhere in an attempt to ape RATM’s success. Each and every “rap metal” band is trash except one.
Are you suggesting Body Count self titled album was not a masterpiece?
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