watered down blues

Oh Seth...you mentioned playing with John Jackson, and then mentioned
something about the "watered down" I-IV-V blues progression, as opposed
to the more real blues of Jackson...easy there, pardner...what's watered
down? Are you saying those old country blues guys, with the less
structured changes, are more "authentic" than...what? There's a mighty
large range of blues styles, from Count Basie to Charlie Parker to
Johnny Otis to Howlin' Wolf to John Jackson to Robert Johnson to George
Benson, etc...what, in your opinion, is the "watered down" blues, and
what isn't, and why? I'm curious..I saw Jackson give a clinic a few
years ago, and thought he was great..no better, or more authentic, than
those other folks I mentioned, and no more authentic than many others,
as well..I actually think I am an authentic blues player, too...I've
sure had many bad (and good) experiences in my life, which I believe I
translate into the blues language pretty well...again, am I missing the
meaning of your post? See you...Hstick

on 1/19/01 11:36 PM, tuning@egroups.com at tuning@egroups.com wrote:

> Message: 13
> Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 19:53:54 -0700
> From: "Neil Haverstick" <STICK@USWEST.NET>
> Subject: watered down blues
>
> Oh Seth...you mentioned playing with John Jackson, and then mentioned
> something about the "watered down" I-IV-V blues progression, as opposed
> to the more real blues of Jackson...easy there, pardner...what's watered
> down? Are you saying those old country blues guys, with the less
> structured changes, are more "authentic" than...what? There's a mighty
> large range of blues styles, from Count Basie to Charlie Parker to
> Johnny Otis to Howlin' Wolf to John Jackson to Robert Johnson to George
> Benson, etc...what, in your opinion, is the "watered down" blues, and
> what isn't, and why? I'm curious..I saw Jackson give a clinic a few
> years ago, and thought he was great..no better, or more authentic, than
> those other folks I mentioned, and no more authentic than many others,
> as well..I actually think I am an authentic blues player, too...I've
> sure had many bad (and good) experiences in my life, which I believe I
> translate into the blues language pretty well...again, am I missing the
> meaning of your post? See you...Hstick
>

Neil,

Perhaps my tendency towards cynicism does not translate well to the email
format.

Okay, what I mean by watered down blues is the phenomenum of jam session
mentality, someone says, let's play a blues, and every jumps into the same
old 12 bar thing, with endless pentatonic riffing. There tends not to be a
difference between any of the songs with that approach. In fact, there are
no songs. Just, blues in E, then a blues in A... ad infinatum

To me, blues is such a rich song form that goes deeply beyond a mere set of
chord changes or riffs. To me, the really great blues songs are identifiable
simply on the strength of their melodies, regardless of the chord changes.
And I think that quality of song is found in every artist you mentioned,
along with many others.

All this said, the same old twelve bar thing that can sound so mundane, is
transformed into magic in the hands of the masters. And I aspire to that
authenticity in my own playing. Time will tell if I attain this.

I guess another aspect of what I perceive as watered down-ness would be the
tendency to clean up intervals into a more 12 ET sound, as opposed to the
very microtonal nature of the great blues improvisors. I think some of the
same things can be said of cleaning up the rhythym.

I hope this clarifies my thinking on my statement. It's very easy to
say/write things only partially in an email, with my full contextual
perspective in mind, and nobody reading my post would hear what I obviously
didn't say out loud.

Seth
--
Seth Austen

http://www.sethausten.com
email; seth@sethausten.com

"Music is far, far older than our species. It is tens of millions of years
old, and the fact that animals as wildly divergent as whales, humans and
birds come out with similar laws for what they compose suggests to me that
there are a finite number of musical sounds that will entertain the
vertebrate brain."

Roger Payne, president of Ocean Alliance, quoted in NY Times