Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

In some senses if you modify the name, Blues is very much similar to a "lament", which now I'm thinking about it, is the Scots equivalent to Blues.

Typically Laments are played at times of mourning, or in times of hardship. Very similar circumstances to early blues.

So, that means potentially, Scotland, and not the Mississippi delta is the real home of the Blues !!!

Wait a minute...how'd it get into the cotton fields? The 'blues' scale, the rhythm structures...these are all traceable to regions of Africa, before the Muslim sold Africans to the Christians. The 'Bo Diddley' beat has been definitively traced by musical anthropologists to the Congo River region, originating at least five thousand years ago. All of this music has a long secular, sexual, spiritual history that just happens to stretch back before traditional African songs were banned in plantations, to be replaced by Christian hymns. Traditional African drumming was likewise banned...if you travel through Africa today, you realize what a totalitarian measure this Colonial rule was. I don't know that Africans were legally permitted to drum on this continent until the all-Black Infantry Regiments of the Civil War.

Makes me love Max Roach even more...

By the way, I believe Jimmy Smith is still alive, although I heard he's not feeling well enough to tour anymore...

The PW3 had a chance to open for him at the Gothic Theater here in Denver a few years ago, but our guitar player (of the time) who got the call decided we didn't have time for enough rehearsal and turned it down without telling us. By the time the rest of us found out, someone else had the gig...I was really upset. I told him I would've been happy stinkin' up the joint with clams if could hang out backstage with Jimmy.

He would've trashed us no matter how much we rehearsed, so what's with the angst?

Also...Thomas Dorsey: Gospel/Blues...Tommy Dorsey: Jazz/Swing...two different cats.

Charly,
I have a CD I would like to recommend to you. "Blues From the Lowlands" by Robert B. Jones. He formerly had a radio show of the same title on our local PBS station WDET. He played some of the earliest recorded blues up to recent on his show. He has also taught some classes at a local university. Obviously the education was in his show and his class. He is also an ordained minister.

And remember, Jesus went out to dinner with hookers...(just tryin' to tie the thread back to its origin here)...

Although I don't guess he ever picked up the check...

Yes Thmas Dorsey was black. I probably should have brought that up. My contention is still that blues as we know it started here in America. Sure, everything is derivative, but there are some "clean" breaks, such as R&R, the British Invasion(music not war). I am making the case for taking the field hollers(form and rhythm) and combining them with the Gospel(lyrics based on the Bible) they were being taught . Of course, they soon had to have their own churches!

I know how blues started: I'm soooo tired!!!

I thought it was: I woke up this morning!

Nahh, that was a Ten Years After tune.

Well, I had a serious practice playing along with the blues on the digital cable. My only issue is, I'm not very busy, but I think I did enough to "keep the groove". In fact, I was playing quite a few less notes than the bass guys in the songs. Personally i didn't think mine sounded "less' than the original, just different and less busy.

I stayed very close to the I-IV-V just moved around a little, with a little more movemnt on the turnaround.

I guess the only issue would be, I gotta be a little busy to do a walking line!

Jimmy Smith died earlier this year (Feb. .
Here's the info:
Legendary Hammond B-3 organ player Jimmy Smith died yesterday (Feb. at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., apparently of natural causes. He was 79.

Smith began playing his trademark Hammond B3 organ in the early '50s. By the '60s, he was both a workhorse and a frequent name on the Billboard album chart, thanks to such titles as "Organ Grinder Swing" and "Hobo Flats." Smith became forever linked to a new generation of listeners after the Beastie Boys sampled his "Root Down" for their track of the same name on the 1994 album "Ill Communication."

The artist continued to record and tour in recent years, and recently completed an album with longtime friend Joey DeFrancesco, "Legacy," due next Tuesday via Concord. The pair were planning to begin a tour in support of the set Feb. 16 at Yoshi's in Oakland, Calif.

"Jimmy was one of the greatest and most innovative musicians of our time," DeFrancesco said in a statement. "I love the man and I love the music. He was my idol, my mentor and my friend."

Thanks for the info, Bill...I just heard a retrospective of Jimmy's work on a local Jazz station last night...first I had heard of his passing. What a legend...he did for Bach's main axe what Parker and Coltrane did for Adolph Sax's invention.

I didn't know they had B-3's back in Bachs time.

Just because it swings doesn't mean it isn't still an organ...