The heavily opinionated Rig-talker checklist V 1.0

[VonBonfire]

Blues is funny because it's been around long enough to be 95% divorced from its original social context, but not long enough to be 100%.

I would say it is highly dependent on where and who is playing it. We are closer to the past than you might sometimes think. Good post though!

 

[Rackman]

I would say it is highly dependent on where and who is playing it. We are closer to the past than you might sometimes think. Good post though!

Well that's certainly a possibility. Being white, northern, and well west of the Mississippi the blues here is basically context free. I don't have any experience with it in the south. The last black musicians I played with were into hip hop with classical tinges on their beats.

 

[VonBonfire]

Well that's certainly a possibility. Being white, northern, and well west of the Mississippi the blues here is basically context free. I don't have any experience with it in the south. The last black musicians I played with were into hip hop with classical tinges on their beats.

I was down in Helena and Clarksdale weekend before last playing gigs with my own group and also with a mostly black band. Sprinkled in with both bands were some hispanic fellas too. Good times were had.

 

[CoreyW]

Short answer: Trade secrets. Look at the catalog of the player. A guy who spent his life making rock music is a rock guitarist. A guy who spent his life making blues music is a blues guitarist.

If I call a song and tell you "this one is a flat tire shuffle" would you understand what I'm talking about? Are you familiar with 8 bar blues? 16 bar blues? Can you recognize the difference between a texas shuffle, a chicago shuffle, and a rock shuffle? How is your 12/8 slow blues? If I say "this one has a quick change", do you know what I'm talking about? If I call a dozen blues standards will the average rock guitarist be familiar with those tunes? Not usually....

Most rock guys seem to be fixated on minor pentatonics and think that's qualification enough but in blues the major pentatonic plays a much larger role and most rock guitarists do not have the same grasp on it. Playing the changes is more important in a blues setting.

If you get booked for a blues fest, show up and play white room and purple haze you aren't likely gonna get a return invite. Granted, some blues fests have fallen to the "anything goes" mentality but most of the fests down in the south are not going to put up with that.

IME a great rock guitarist will be able to stick a real blues gig but the average rock guitarist will fall apart by song number 4, especially when I press him with four or more choruses of soloing. Guys like Hendrix and Clapton are very adept at blues but they spent their careers releasing rock and pop records, not blues. There are rock guys whose blues playing has my deep respect and have had an oversized impact on blues guitar but they are still rock guys at the end of the day.

All of those British guys in the last half of the 60s were taking our blues from the 20s and 30s and evolving it into what they created, Zepplin had quite a few actual blues songs released. I am not trying to be argumentative here. Hendrix was very well received by the Kings, and played with them. They may not have had a set list that would fall under true delta blues, but their inspirations were about as blues as it could get, with them being young white boys from England.

We use to have an actual blues bar here in town, they couldnt get a liquor license, so kept it open as a BYOB establishment, would get decent sized acts in and have weekly Mon or Tues night "blues" jams, I miss those days and that place.

 

[VonBonfire]

All of those British guys in the last half of the 60s were taking our blues from the 20s and 30s and evolving it into what they created, Zepplin had quite a few actual blues songs released. I am not trying to be argumentative here. Hendrix was very well received by the Kings, and played with them. They may not have had a set list that would fall under true delta blues, but their inspirations were about as blues as it could get, with them being young white boys from England.

I don't think Hendrix was particularly well received by Albert King but that is the case for pretty much anyone. Albert wasn't known for being very friendly or nice in general. Keyboardist Ron Levy thought he was gonna have a blast because his parents agreed to to let him tour with Albert while underage. He found out Albert was more strict than his parents. BB King is known for being nice to everyone. Freddie King never jammed with Hendrix although Hendrix was a fan.

You have to grasp that inspired by blues does not equate to being blues. Many acts are "bluesy" but not blues. Zeppelin did record some blues tunes. So did Hendrix. The Stones have recorded a blues album. So has Rob Halford, Yngwie Malmsteen, Pat Travers, Cindy Lauper, Whitesnake, and more. None of them are legitimate blues acts, they are rock and pop acts in spite of what those outside the realm of actual blues music try to claim. No one deep into blues music takes that kind of claim seriously.

We use to have an actual blues bar here in town, they couldnt get a liquor license, so kept it open as a BYOB establishment, would get decent sized acts in and have weekly Mon or Tues night "blues" jams, I miss those days and that place.

The boomers aged out of the blues club scene and it started a decline beginning around the early 2000s. There are only a couple legit old school all-blues clubs left in Texas that I can think of offhand, both in Houston.

 

[311boogieman]

Do you have to be depressed to play the blues? There's not a lot of happy blues is there?

 

[VonBonfire]

Do you have to be depressed to play the blues? There's not a lot of happy blues is there?

Blues is generally designed to lift the spirits of the player and the listener, not depress them, although those blues exist also.

 

[rstites]

Short answer: Trade secrets. Look at the catalog of the player. A guy who spent his life making rock music is a rock guitarist. A guy who spent his life making blues music is a blues guitarist.

If I call a song and tell you "this one is a flat tire shuffle" would you understand what I'm talking about? Are you familiar with 8 bar blues? 16 bar blues? Can you recognize the difference between a texas shuffle, a chicago shuffle, and a rock shuffle? How is your 12/8 slow blues? If I say "this one has a quick change", do you know what I'm talking about? If I call a dozen blues standards will the average rock guitarist be familiar with those tunes? Not usually....

Most rock guys seem to be fixated on minor pentatonics and think that's qualification enough but in blues the major pentatonic plays a much larger role and most rock guitarists do not have the same grasp on it. Playing the changes is more important in a blues setting.

If you get booked for a blues fest, show up and play white room and purple haze you aren't likely gonna get a return invite. Granted, some blues fests have fallen to the "anything goes" mentality but most of the fests down in the south are not going to put up with that.

IME a great rock guitarist will be able to stick a real blues gig but the average rock guitarist will fall apart by song number 4, especially when I press him with four or more choruses of soloing. Guys like Hendrix and Clapton are very adept at blues but they spent their careers releasing rock and pop records, not blues. There are rock guys whose blues playing has my deep respect and have had an oversized impact on blues guitar but they are still rock guys at the end of the day.

Thanks for the lengthy reply. It makes sense to me. Someone like Hendrix or Clapton grew up on the blues and developed but were known for their rock work, so this is more about that next generation who thinks that if they'll learned tunes from those guys they can automatically play blues.

I'll confess I don't know what they hell you mean by those definitions, but then I'm not taking a blues gig. Now I am a bit curious so will probably go off and try to figure out what you mean by them though.