Home » Jazz Articles » Genius Guide to Jazz » The Blues: Black Twice

720

The Blues: Black Twice

By

Sign in to view read count
Bluesmen from the country, or Delta, tradition put away their acoustic guitars in favor of the increasingly popular electric versions, mostly as a way to be heard over those damned elevated trains.
“If you’re white and play the blues, you’re black once. If you’re black and play the blues, you’re black twice.” —B.B. King

Upon arriving at the Geniusdome by funicular, after the customary delousing and body cavity search, you’d be welcomed into the anteroom for a cocktail, conversation, and more delousing. “Louse-free since ‘03” is more than just a slogan around these parts.

Venturing deeper into the ‘Dome, you might notice the excess of guitars strewn about the living quarters. Given the fact that you’re in the domicile of the Dean of American Jazz Humorists®, you’d expect that these instruments would be used to produce jazz. You’d also expect me to tidy up the piles of clutter that seem to form a miniature mountain range of magazines and notebooks throughout the ‘Dome before having company over. And you’d be wrong on both counts.

I got my first guitar when I was 21. Already a trained musician, I had been playing the euphonium long enough to know that if there were women who specifically dug euphoniumnists, they were few and far between at best. I picked up a cheap Strat copy and a small practice amp. Having conquered(?) classical and jazz, I was intent on making rock my next subjugation. I had visions of being the next David Gilmour or Mark Knopfler; a pale white guy scoring copious amounts of leg with little more than a six-string and a half-assed liberal arts education.

On the way out of the music store, I decided I ought to have at least some sort of stepping-off point to learn the instrument. To that end, I purchased a small book containing the rudiments of blues. I figured it would teach me a few chords and give me enough basic information to figure the instrument out by myself. Instead, it opened a whole new world. In the blues, I discovered not only a design for almost all American music that came afterwards, but an ancient and mystical formula for scoring free appetizers at participating T.G.I. Fridays’ locations.

Mention this article and receive a blank, uncomprehending stare.

Though I had long been listening to jazz, discovering this formula led me for the first time to really listen to the blues. I began with the most familiar, electric Chicago blues from the forties and fifties. The excellent Chess Records samplers, simply titled The Blues , acted as a guide. I discovered new influences, like Buddy Guy and Otis Rush. I learned that Chuck Berry was once a vital artist, not just a duck-walking caricature. I also found a way to turn the throes of first-love heartbreak into a veritable cottage industry.

It was during the 1940’s that Southern blacks first began to migrate in significant numbers to the industrial North, in search of good-paying factory jobs and that deep-dish pizza they’d been hearing so much about. They brought with them the accoutrements of their homeland, and adapted to their new environs. The staple foods of the rural South would later come to be called soul food and later sold for two prices to unsuspecting Yuppies eager for a multicultural experience so long as it didn’t involve actually interacting with poor people. The blues were quickly adapted to the urban settings they now called home. Bluesmen from the country, or Delta, tradition put away their acoustic guitars in favor of the increasingly popular electric versions, mostly as a way to be heard over those damned elevated trains. The harmonica, which was more in keeping with the itinerant beginnings of the blues than the cumbersome saxophone, also quickly found a home. Sadly, tuba players and accordionists were once again shown the door.

In the late 1950’s, a golden age existed in American music that was manifested in virtually every genre. In jazz, Miles Davis and Charlie Parker were at their heights (6’4” and 6’1”, respectively); rock saw a young truck driver from Tupelo and a bespectacled guitarist from Lubbock become unlikely sensations; country saw Hank Williams and Patsy Cline eking out the last measure of respectability from the idiom before giant hair and ridiculous sideburns permeated the massively overproduced “Nashville sound” of the sixties and seventies; and Britney Spears, Courtney Love, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, and virtually everyone involved with American Idol were yet to be so much as a gleam in some hack publicists eye.

In the blues, musicians such as McKinley Morganfield (a.k.a. Muddy Waters, Pope Innocent XII), Willie Dixon, Elmore James, and John Lee Hooker were making music that would transcend genre and spread seeds into the most unexpected of places. In England, the plaintive, almost primal sound captivated working class youths, allowing many of them (Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards in particular) the opportunity to become recovering heroin addicts rather than workaday pubcrawling alcoholics. (Disclosure: I drink like a former child star).

Subsequently, the sixties saw the blues explode onto the world stage. Groups like the Yardbirds and Canned Heat brought the blues to primarily rock-oriented audiences, setting the stage for groups like Led Zeppelin to bring blues to vo-tech stoners and fellow lefthander Jimi Hendrix to make the music accessible for acid-soaked middleclass college dinks whose experiments in mind-expansion led them as far as the end of their own noses. The blues were all but ubiquitous in the 1960’s, bringing many artists who had long labored in obscurity into the limelight. Artists like Albert King and Howlin’ Wolf enjoyed a well-deserved resurgence in their careers, though only a fraction of the financial rewards being reaped by those who were lounging with topless supermodels in swimming pools full of Jack Daniels thanks to the hard work of the pioneering bluesmen.

The seventies were a fallow period for blues in many ways. While the greats were still active, as were the acolytes who’d survived their turns at overdose roulette in the late sixties, the blues were nowhere near as prevalent as they had been. As those originally influenced explored other music, though, they carried the blues to some unexpected places. The crystalline edge David Gilmour’s unmistakably blue guitar cut through the sometimes-muddled psychadelia of Pink Floyd. A young Eddie Van Halen followed the lead of Jimi Hendrix in creating a whole new way both to play and listen to guitar while managing to do some things Hendrix could never have dreamt of, such as live to see 30 and nail Valerie Bertinelli.

It is here that our story takes a few unexpected turns. For one, it doesn’t do a Ken Burns and just trail off when it gets within a generation of the present. For another, a young guitarist in Texas manages to rise to prominence by playing the purest blues anyone had heard in mainstream music since before Clapton sprouted the Afro, at a time when the top-forty was ruled by soulless synth-pop and ball-less hair metal. Demonstrating formidable chops on his cobbled-together Stratocaster, Stevie Ray Vaughan almost single-handedly returned the blues to the popular ear and rescued them from being nothing more than background music for beer commercials. And he did it while dressed like a pimp at a rodeo, which says more about the sheer power of the blues than my thesaurus even has adjectives for.

In the wake of Vaughan’s popular success, longtime blues artists like Bonnie Raitt and Robert Cray also found the mainstream. Established bluesmen like B.B. King, Albert Collins, and John Lee Hooker enjoyed the long-overdue embrace of popular culture, if only until it was again distracted by something shiny. Eric Clapton returned to the blues after a decade spent padding the playlists of lite FM stations. The emergence of compact disc as the predominant media of the record-buying public once again spurred the re-release and rediscovery of classic blues recordings, including those 29 canonical songs by Robert Johnson (leading eventually to one of only two Ralph Macchio movies I can watch without dry heaving). Even trend-whore Madonna briefly changed her name to “Memphis” Madonna before realizing—to her horror—that despite its relatively simple 3-chord, 12 (or 8) bar structure, the blues actually required more talent than just dancing around in your underwear while lip-syncing vaguely controversial catchphrases.

It could be said that the blues finally managed to gain lasting mainstream presence in the nineties, if for no other reason than I’m about to wind this piece up and needed to end on a high note. The opening of the first House of Blues theme nightclub in 1992 packaged the blues, and Southern culture, so that the multiculti set could experience it without getting the merciless ass-whipping they would have received had they set their Birkenstocked feet inside a real down-home blues club. Dan Aykroyd earned a small measure of forgiveness for having participated in Nothing But Trouble by bringing pure blues to the airwaves as host of the syndicated House of Blues Radio Hour for the better part of the decade. Exciting new artists like Jonny Lang and Keb’ Mo’ (a.k.a. Mo’ Keb’) kept the blues constant for new generations of listeners. And your Own Personal Genius kept the American guitar industry propped up by compulsively purchasing instruments on which to play the blues for an audience usually consisting mostly of a disinterested parakeet and various now-ex girlfriends.

While the blues have formed a foundation on which jazz has built many wondrous things, they have remained largely a distinct entity. Few bluesmen have tried their hand at jazz, far fewer than the jazzmen who have paid blues their respects. Still, the blues remain an integral part not only of jazz, but of American music in general, and its influence grows with each passing moment. Just last night, your Own Personal Genius and the Queen of Plum Creek attended a concert by Bob Dylan, who once admonished guitarist Al Kooper “not to play any of that B.B. King bulls**t,” and found the blues very much in evidence. As Dylan settles into the age where he has more in common with B.B. King than he does current folk-rock idol Dave Matthews, perhaps the universality, empathy and catharsis of the blues finally came home for the aging legend as both beginning and end, the alpha and omega of all American music.

And so we, too, come full circle.

Till next month, kids, exit to your right and enjoy the rest of AAJ.

Comments

Tags


For the Love of Jazz
Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who create it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

You Can Help
To expand our coverage even further and develop new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for a modest $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination will vastly improve your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Jazz article: How To Bring Millennials to Jazz
Genius Guide to Jazz
How To Bring Millennials to Jazz
Jazz article: Anniversary
Genius Guide to Jazz
Anniversary
Jazz article: Call Me the Breeze: Dave Douglas and Donny McCaslin Play Lynyrd Skynyrd
Jazz article: My Guitar
Genius Guide to Jazz
My Guitar

Popular

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.