blues scale/invisible posts

Sorry...I sometimes have trouble with sending mail, and things don't
turn out like I plan...I want to repost my blues comments. After playing
blues extensively for over 30 years, I teach the following as "the"
blues scale: C-Eb-F-F#-G-Bb. But, over the years, I have seen it as
C-Eb-F-G-Bb, and C-Eb-E-F-F#-G-Bb, as well as a couple of other
variations. In the July 1981 issue of Guitar Player mag, Howard Roberts
uses the 6 tone blues scale (same as mine), and my teachers John Parsons
and George Keith, monstermonster bop players, also taught it to me as a
6 tone scale. I don't like the 5 tone, minor pentatonic version, because
without the b5th, the scale feels incomplete. I also don't like to start
folks off with the more complex version, with the major 3rd, because I
have found that it takes a while to learn to use the maj 3rd
properly...this is totally subjective, but it has worked for me well. As
a matter of fact, I routinely use (in the key of C) the E, D, and A...I
do NOT use, very often, the B, Ab, or Db...yet, when you get into
Parker/bop styled blues, almost anything goes. What works in a John Lee
Hooker style, may not fly in a T Bone Walker style, or whatever. In
fact, there are many many styles of blues, from Chicago to L.A. to Texas
to Mississippi to Piedmont to Kansas City, and there is an incredible
variety of music that calls itself blues...as my teacher George said
once, "Blues is a feeling, and blues can be a set of chord changes."
Quite true....Charlie Parker told BB King that he was a blues player,
Coltrane played with Cleanhead Vinson, and Ornette Coleman used to walk
the bar, honking his tenor. I saw John Jackson, 70 year old Piedmont
guitar master, and he played a clean, fingerpicked style, light years
removed from Albert King, master of the bent string...there's a lot of
blues out there. The bottom line, for me, is when you sit down to play
it, is it the real deal...that also can get real subjective, but when
you hear a great blues player, I think you know...I think I know,
anyway. By the way, the post about a piano blues scale was very hip...
Also, many great blues tunes do not go to the 4 chord...Spoonful,
Smokestack Lightning, I'm A Man, How Many More Years, Wang Dang Doodle,
I'm Bad, Machine Gun (I think of it as blues), Bo Diddley...I'm sure
there are many more. What a fascinating form of music...Hstick PS...
Reinhard, I saw in Helmholtz's book (in the appendices) that Handel had
a 16 tone organ...I don't know the page offhand, but I relayed this info
to Morrison a while back...