Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dan Sleep on October 4, 2011 at 11:31am

http://academic.scranton.edu/student/pendraks2/page3.html

 

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Permalink Reply by Clock The Wolf on October 4, 2011 at 1:11pm

There's my type of blues, and then there's everyone elses...

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Permalink Reply by Keni Lee Burgess on October 4, 2011 at 1:15pm

Hello Dan,

Try googling 1920 blues...1930 blue...etc

It might be easier to organize blues by time than by title.

Enjoy, Keni Lee

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Permalink Reply by tal bluver on October 4, 2011 at 8:47pm

:-)

CLOCKWORK said:

There's my type of blues, and then there's everyone elses...

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Permalink Reply by Skeesix on October 4, 2011 at 9:22pm

I don't think any such documentary exists. What I would do is find a list of the different styles and their major artists then look them up on YouTube so you can see and hear them. 

 

http://blues.org/#ref=blues_background_index

http://www.pbs.org/theblues/classroom/essaysblues.html

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Permalink Reply by Mark on October 4, 2011 at 11:54pm

I think you should resist any tendency to put music into rigid classifications. Such classifications are quite often arbitrary and meaningless - at worst they can be misleading. I don't suppose the first musicians who played blues would have classified themselves with the terms that are now sometimes applied to them. First and foremost they were musicians and they played music. Sometimes they played music for people to dance to, sometimes they played music to offload their woes, sometimes they played music to celebrate or worship.

Even when classification has some purpose and sense there are always vague areas around the edges. Different types of blues (so far as they exist) were something that evolved as musicians from one place migrated to another or encountered other types of music and absorbed it into their playing. That evolution is a continuous process, it didn't stop at any particular date to leave us with fixed points. Sometimes influences went in two directions - musicians migrated to Chicago and took up playing electric but their influence also went back south. And picking up an electric guitar doesn't mean you can never play an acoustic again. If you can define two categories of blues then I could probably find you a musician who embodies a bit of both. And for every formal definition of blues you might come up with (eg. chord types, scales or progressions) there is probably an example of something which is clearly blues but doesn't fit any such template.

The horrid segmentation of music is at least partially a product of the recording industry. It's a marketing tool to help pitch the product to particular audiences. It also, in some cases, has been affected by racist attitudes - at one time "race records" was an accepted music industry term. Country music and folk and jazz and blues and all their sub-divisions have a lot of roots in common. All the different groups of people who migrated into America brought their own traditional music, which got mixed around and occasionally transferred to new instruments. If you go far enough back the divide is not at all clear - all there really was was the music of poor people singing about life.

I think one should always keep an ear open to a wide range of music. Remember stuff you like and learn about the musicians involved - their stories and the music they were influenced by. Sometimes you'll find they're described as some particular type of blues player, but that's not what really matters. Every musician and every piece of music is an individual thing with their or it's own story - and sometimes crude categorisation does a disservice to those stories.

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on October 5, 2011 at 12:12am

Skeesix, and everyone,

 

Ummmm...there's a rather large ton of blues documentaries (including Martin Scorsese's 7-films-by-7-directors 2003 epic, "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Blues," oddly enough referenced in Skeesix's links above) - those below were just sto...er, borrowed from the following site after a 2-minute Googling - and yes, I have seen a very few of these, but not many.:

 

http://www.documentarysite.com/?p=198

 

Alberta Hunter: My Castle’s Rockin’, 1988, Stuart A. Goldman.

American Folk Blues Music Festival, 3 vols., 1962-1966, Various, Hip-O.

American Roots Music, 2001, Jim Brown.

And This is Free, 1964, Mike Shea.

Big City Blues, 1985, St. Clair Bourne (RIP).

Bill Wyman’s Blues Odyssey, 2002.

The Blues According to Lightnin’ Hopkins, Les Blank, 1969.

Blues Divas, Robert Mugge, 2004.

Bluesland: A Portrait in American Music, 2002, Rhino.

Blues Story, 2003, Shout Factory.

Can You Hear the Wind Howl? The Life and Music of Robert Johnson, 1997, Peter Mayer, Shout Factory.

Chicago Blues, 1972, Harley Cokliss and Tak Fujimoto, Vestapol.

Cigarette Blues, 1985, Les Blank.

Deep Blues, 1991, Robert Mugge.

Devil Got My Woman: Blues at Newport 1966, 1966, Vestapol.

Eric Clapton: Nothing But the Blues, 1985, PBS Home Video.

Feel Like Going Home, 2003, Martin Scorsese.

Gimme Shelter, 1970.

Godfathers and Sons, 2003, Marc Levin.

Harmonica Breakdown: The Blues as Social History, Sonny Terry and Jane Dudley.

Hellhounds on My Tail: The Afterlife of Robert Johnson, 1999, Robert Mugge.

Honeyboy, 2002, Scott L. Taradash

John Lee Hooker: Come See about Me, 2004, Bob Sarles.

John Lee Hooker: That’s My Story, 2001, Jorg Bundschuh.

Josh White: Free and Equal Blues, 2001.

Juke, 1997, Yellowcat Productions.

The Ladies Sing the Blues, 1989.

The Land Where the Blues Began, 1979, John M. Bishop, Alan Lomax, and Worth W. Long.

Last of the Mississippi Jukes, 2003, Robert Mugge.

Lightning in a Bottle: A One Night History of the Blues, 2004, Antione Fuqua.

Piano Blues, 2003, Clint Eastwood.

Piedmont Blues: North Carolina Style, 2003, UNC-TV.

Pride & Joy: Story of Alligator Records, 1994, Robert Mugge.

Red, White, and Blues, 2003, Mike Figgis.

The Road to Memphis, 2003, Richard Pearce.

Say It Loud! A Celebration of Black Music in America, 2001, Nanette Burstein, and Brett Morgen.

The Search for Robert Johnson, 1992, Chris Hunt

Shine On: Richard Trice and the Bull City Blues, 1999, Dir. Kenny Dalsheimer and Jamie Hysjulien.

The Soul of a Man, 2003, Wim Wenders.

The Sun’s Gonna Shine, 1969, Les Blank.

Warming by the Devil’s Fire, 2003, Charles Burnett.

A Well Spent Life, 1971, Les Blank.

Where Lightnin’ Strikes, Mark Susman and Mike Snow.

Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues, 1989, Christine Dall, California Newsreel.

 

Not in the above list:

 

Delta Rising: A Blues Documentary, 2009, Michael Afendakis and Laura Bernieri

Iron City Blues, 2007,  Big Mike Griffin (actually, this is also a biker film)

 

And, of course, Wikipedia contains a pretty nice set of discussions on the various flavors of blues; it makes for good reading.

 

The trick is finding the documentaries. Not very many are on YouTube. There are some for sale on video. All ya gotta do is harness the power of the Web... 

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on October 5, 2011 at 2:10am

Tal,

 

Here's the blues genres as listed in Wikipedia:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genres_of_the_blues

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Permalink Reply by Uncle John on October 5, 2011 at 2:31am

Wow, some great responses here ~ some things I will check into.  But Clockwork clearly has the answer!

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Permalink Reply by Skeesix on October 5, 2011 at 2:39am

Of course there are lots of blues documentaries but they seem to delve into particular styles. He was asking for an overall view of the genre. Like Wes is saying, he might do better with a CD compilation.

 

There is a good list of styles and artists in the All Music Guide to the Blues.

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Permalink Reply by Slowpaw Steve T on October 5, 2011 at 2:46am

I'm not a musicologist able to separate different types of Blues, Blues is born of pain and frustration, the oldest emotions on our planet: my girl left me, i lost my job, i have no money, my dog died, i'm dying - a heart felt primal scream desperate to be heard out loud, it reaches inside you and squeezes your heart until you cry...it's all Blues!  (-;

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Permalink Reply by Nathan King on October 5, 2011 at 3:24am

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