 |
| Frank Hutchison |
the way the two of us have sometimes wondered if a certain cut qualifies as "the Blues". Maybe some folks out there thought that we'd not drawn the line crisply enough and let something that was not "The Blues" in through the backdoor. Was some of this merely Blues Lite?
So for this week's show, Lance threw the above question into the hopper at a great on-line site, The Blindman's Blues Forum. Of course, the old-timers there must of rolled their eyes a bit. However posed, it's not the most original question to hit the board. A few cringed alluding to ancient battles that somehow turned into issues of black vs. white. But the thread rolled out with a couple of hundred views and about 30 comments by the next afternoon. Define the blues? It seems that Inexactly is about the best you can hope for. As Sassy put it: "I think the thing is that if you ask 5000+/- members here, you'll get
5000+/- different answers."
Although it seems that part of any sort of definition would involve the music that emerged in the African American population at the end of the 19th century and was eventually widely disseminated in the US by both black and white musicians through a number of characteristic musical
structures, it seems there is an ephemeral quality involving a certain set of feelings arising from the human condition that is part and parcel of the music we call the blues. Maybe, as Michael says "there's The Blues on the one hand, and something called Blues Music on the other?" Yet, there seems to be something special that unites them. What exactly that is, and how various musicians communicate and evoke certain feelings in
those who listen is, perhaps, the realm of art more than science or scholarly criticism. As Lightning Hopkins put it: "The blues comes so many different ways until it's kind of hard to explain, but whensoever you got the sad feeling, you can tell the whole round world you got nothing but the blues."
So, this week after we continue our spin through Columbia's Roots 'n' Blues with great archival recordings of Pink Anderson and Simmie Dooley; Roosevelt Sykes; the Hokum Boys;and W.T. Narmour and S. W. Smith we'll be doing something a little bit different. Michael has collected a number of songs with versions by different blues musicians.
Our take on it is that musicians from both the African American and European American communities listened--and heard--one another all along. And all along, individuals crafted and created variations on similar themes from a combination of their own artistry and experiences--and the common experience of being a human being facing the various adversities of life. So have a listen to "Worried Blues", "Jelly Roll Blues", "KC Moan"--and a lot more! What do you think? Does Spinning Tales have the Blues?
This Week's Stories:
Our first story, at around 4:30 will be a replay of a story told on Spinning Tales in 2008 by Lindsey French about her trip to Egypt a number of years ago . With the current turmoil in Cairo, Lindsey's story may give us a little insight into the people that are in the streets of this ancient country, what we may see happen in the future.
At about 5:30 we'll again turn to Nancy Andry for a story, this one from the Cree Nation, "The Moose and the Pipe",
