Jul 132010
Todays modern blues integrates different jazz chords which helps the guitarist built solos around them. The old original blues was mostly 12 or 16-bar with the old i-iv-v progression.
Todays modern blues integrates different jazz chords which helps the guitarist built solos around them. The old original blues was mostly 12 or 16-bar with the old i-iv-v progression.
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Electric Instruments. Makes a difference when you listen to an original song, then listen
to a new remake.
Generally speaking, most modern blues musicians don’t play blues music so much as they play a standardized blues form. Blues music was quite varied back when it was forming in the 20’s and 30’s, and again during its resurgence in the 60’s. However, blues musicians today only recognize the most uniform elements of the music, mainly the I-IV-V progressions, the flat 5 in the blues scale, and turnarounds. If you listen to someone like Stevie Ray Vaughn, you’ll find that EVERY SINGLE SONG of his uses ALL of these elements, but if you listen to a real blues musician like Skip James, you’ll find he has many songs that don’t use any of these elements at all. For an example, look at “I’m So Glad”.
Original blues music didn’t have the same defined structure as today’s blues music has, which is a fancy way of saying that most of the original guys just made it up as they went along. Sometimes it was 10 lines, other times it was 11. The original guys memorised or just plain made up thousands of verses that they’s string together depending on how they were feeling. Another differance is that it was a terrible thing to be playing blues – a blues musician was really looked down upon by the majority of people.
The original instruments were acoustic – but mainly guitar and piano. Alot of the songs were/are incredibly risque – oblique ways about talking about sex, drugs, and killing. John Lee Hooker is about as close to an ‘old time’ blues musician as you can get from the modern era. I used to hate his music – because he would just say F*** it to conventional forms of blues… but now that I’m older I really admire him more and more for being original.
When white people started to listen that more or less codified the blues into what they are today. 60’s blues rock elevated all of that old school music into a state where it became archetypal – and that’s why you don’t really have any ‘new’ blues music.
good luck.
It used to be played ’cause it had to, now it’s played ’cause they want to. That makes the feeling different. Listen to Little Walter do “Boom Boom Out Go The Lights” then listen to Pat Travers do the same song. Pat Travers is a fine musician but you’ll be listening to the Little Walter version all your life.