{"id":248,"date":"2010-08-10T13:07:46","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T18:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/?page_id=248"},"modified":"2010-08-11T18:35:30","modified_gmt":"2010-08-11T23:35:30","slug":"listening-to-the-blues","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/?page_id=248","title":{"rendered":"2. Listening to the Blues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bob Wilson gave me the blues. We were probably both in junior high (1955-1957), though it could have been earlier. His father and my father were both science professors at Kansas University in Lawrence, so we had probably met before we were junior high classmates. The blues have been characterized as \u201cthe Devil\u2019s music\u201d by religious fundamentalists, but it\u2019s a genre that has cast a spell on me since I discovered it as a teenager.<\/p>\n

Wilson became a lifelong friend and I was continually amazed at the depth and breadth of his musical interests and knowledge. It\u2019s possible that I\u2019d heard blues before Wilson, but he was the one who introduced me to the early country blues players. He gave me a 2-LP compilation by Samuel B. Charters called The Rural Blues<\/em> (RBF Records, 1960). It included examples of such musicians as Sleepy John Estes, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie Johnson, Lightnin\u2019 Hopkins, Furry Lewis, Blind Willie McTell, Bukka White, and others whom I would never have heard in Kansas in the Fifties even in a college town. Robert Johnson and Lightnin\u2019 Hopkins eventually became favorites.<\/p>\n

My mother loved the early rock \u2018n\u2019 roll singers such as Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and the Comets and, above all, Elvis Presley. She drove Wilson and me to some of disk jockey Alan Freed<\/a>\u2019s (1921-1965) rock \u2018n\u2019 roll concerts in Kansas City before we were old enough to drive. I don\u2019t remember which musicians we saw, but Chuck Berry and Bill Haley were probably among them.<\/p>\n

I also remember that Mother had a book of sheet music of boogie-woogie<\/a>, a percussive style of piano-based blues.When I asked her about it in 2009, she didn\u2019t remember that she ever played the music. Whether she did or not, she could have had blues or blues-related records that I heard.<\/p>\n

One of the first blues records I recall listening to at home was by John Lee Hooker<\/a> (August 22, 1917 \u2013 June 21, 2001), who has been a favorite ever since. I don\u2019t know what became of the album, but I\u2019m almost certain it was I’m John Lee Hooker<\/em><\/a> (Vee Jay, 1959), solo recordings (1955-1959) of him singing and playing electric guitar accompanied only by his foot-tapping. I loved his deep resonant voice and the haunting power of his Epiphone guitar.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>

John Lee Hooker's "I'm John Lee Hooker" (Vee Jay, 1959)<\/p><\/div>\n

Another early blues hero was Muddy Waters<\/a> (McKinley Morganfield, April 4, 1913 \u2013 April 30, 1983), considered \u201cthe Father of Chicago blues\u201d and probably the greatest player of that style. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed four songs of his in the \u201cThe Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll<\/a>\u201d: \u201cRollin\u2019 Stone\u201d (1950), \u201cHoochie Coochie Man\u201d (1954), \u201cMannish Boy\u201d (1955) and \u201cGot My Mojo Working\u201d (1957). Both the British rock group and the American music magazine took their names from Muddy’s song. Like Hooker, he had a powerful and wonderfully resonant voice, but could also make his Fender Telecaster guitar sing, especially when playing slide.<\/p>\n

From August, 1966 to March, 1970, I lived near Palo Alto, California while I went to graduate school at Stanford. This was an exciting time in rock \u2018n\u2019 roll history<\/a> and I am grateful that I was \u201con the scene\u201d when so much was happening on the West Coast. I first saw The Grateful Dead when they gave a free concert in a Palo Alto park some time in 1966 or 1967. I went to the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco to see many local and national bands (Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding, The Jefferson Airplane, The Quicksilver Messenger Service, Country Joe and the Fish, Canned Heat, Jimi Hendrix, Paul Butterfield Blues Band). Many British rock musicians (John Mayall, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Peter Green and others) had discovered Mississippi Delta blues and had covered many songs by American blues greats when they were largely ignored in the U.S. That brought the blues to the attention of white audiences. It was common to include black American blues musicians on the bill at the Fillmore, for example. I don\u2019t remember whom I might have seen, but it\u2019s likely that I saw Muddy Waters, Albert King and others.<\/p>\n

I first discovered Otis Taylor<\/a> [born in Chicago in 1948] on February 20, 2004 when he was the opening act for the Malian musician Habib Koit\u00e9 at the Old Town School of Music in Chicago. Taylor played solo guitar and banjo and sang. I was enthralled. Since then I\u2019ve bought all of Taylor\u2019s CDs and have listened to them many, many times. I\u2019ve been to hear him several times in Chicago and consider him the most exhilarating musician I know. He describes his take on the genre as \u201ctrance blues\u201d[12]<\/a> and the hypnotic background rhythms and droning effect of the music have the strongest appeal for me.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to put in words the attraction of a certain aesthetic experience. I\u2019ve always enjoyed music and have found any music I connect with enlivening and energizing. At it\u2019s best music is a spiritual activity and experience for both musician and listener. It allows our minds, hearts and spirits to communicate beyond<\/em> words.<\/p>\n

While I have not had an especially hard life, music in a minor key or in a mournful and melancholy mood appeals to me. For reasons I can\u2019t account for, I find that the characteristic tonalities of Arabic and Oriental music speak to me very powerfully; they seem especially poignant and soul-piercing. Arabic-Islamic music<\/a> was influential<\/a> in certain areas of Africa and memories of this music remain in the tonalities of the blues.<\/p>\n

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Bob Wilson gave me the blues. We were probably both in junior high (1955-1957), though it could have been earlier. His father and my father were both science professors at Kansas University in Lawrence, so we had probably met before we were junior high classmates. The blues have been characterized as \u201cthe Devil\u2019s music\u201d by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/248"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/248\/revisions\/333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}