Minimum R&B and Blues

["Mark R. Leaman" <mleaman@sccoast.net>]

Before we start getting protests from those who'd rather discuss Daltrey's
sock color (or I should say: colour), I maintain that discussing R&B (the
root music of The Who) is a legitimate topic for this list, therefore those
who are hunched over their keyboards ready to request its ending can forget
it. Just skip the notes if you don't like them.

> Playing Voodoo Child does not ipso facto mean SRV sounded like Hendrix.

Canute:

You are quite correct. However, sounding like Hendrix DOES mean SRV sounded
like Hendrix. He did. I mean, it's pretty obvious. I'm amazed anyone is
claiming otherwise. I asked my partner cold, and he laughed and said "Of
COURSE, he sounds JUST like Hendrix!"

> Yes, before Haley had a hit with the tune, I do believe Big Joe had done
it.

Howard:

I've never heard the Haley version, and BJT definitely had a hit with it
(as far as any black artist could in those days). I must assume, as was
frequently happening at the time, Haley covered it and had another "hit"
with it (although it's not on the Haley "best of" I have here at the
store)...a Pat Boone sort of thing. I'll stick with the original.

> And, as I had originally posted, I wasn't able to drudge the song from my
> memory banks to sing it to verify if it was a blues.  I now am able to,
and I
> was correct... it is a blues.

I know the song well, and have for years...it's one of my favorites! It's
on the Atlantic R&B collection (8 CDs, and highly recommended) and as the
title of the collection suggests, it IS an R&B song. Which is not to say
the collection has no Blues...Cry To Me is on it, for instance.

> Haley in a Rock n Roll/R&B style, and by the Blues Bros. in an R&B style.

Everything the BB did was R&B, despite what they called it. They used the
Muscle Shoals band to back them up, after all, and a more famous R&B unit I
defy you to name. They were Booker T's band (the MG's) and the Mar-Keys,
too. They were on so many Atlantic/Stax recordings it's hard to imagine.
And The Who, early on, were basing their music on R&B not Blues (unlike
most bands, although The Beatles were more into the lighter, more
commercial Motown R&B...or as it was called at the time: Soul). The Who had
their roots in the stuff we're talking about here. Witness Green Onions on
the Quad movie...a Muscle Shoals preformance, that.
The only actual Blues songs they ever did (or at least that I can recall at
the moment): the afore-mentioned Anytime You Want Me, I'm A Man, and
strangely enough the two James Brown songs on MG. "Strangely" I say because
Brown was definitely an R&B artist.
And if you want to count My Generation Blues, I guess you can but it's
really just Memphis Tennessee redone a bit slower. I wouldn't count
Eyesight To The Blind, although it was originally a Blues song, because
it's so completely different. According to reports, it was taken from the
version Mose Allison did (which unfortunately I haven't heard either).
And Townshend did Drifting Blues on one of the SCOOPs.

> I'm sure you know that R&B stands for "both kinds of music"

You mean like "We like both kinds of music, Country AND Western." I resist
this definition, myself. Although from a common root (Gospel), I'd say
Blues and R&B were two different sorts of music. In fact, I'd say R&B came
from Blues with an infusion of Jazz...and has an identity all its own. Is
Aretha Franklin a Blues artist? No...not at all! Otis Redding? He had a hit
with a Blues song, Try A Little Tenderness, but was still an R&B artist.
Etc.
Once again, using The Who as an example...comparing them to their
contemporaries like The Yardbirds, Animals and Stones, their music was not
even similar...being based on R&B rather than Blues.

> structure.  The whole point of my post was that many rock songs are
blues, done
> in a rock style.

Just by the fact that it's (as you call it) a "Rock style" would then mean
it was no longer Blues. Taking Chuck Berry's songs, we see little more than
Blues sped up. But, once sped up it's no longer Blues! In that specific
case, it was Rock N Roll. After all, no one in their right mind could call
a song as happy as Maybelline "Blues."

> be a matter of opinion.  I've heard a helluva lotta blues.

Me too. Do you have the Chess Blues boxed set? Fantastic stuff! Peter
Green? Clapton WISHES he was that good! Tinsley Ellis...my all-time
favorite, Muddy Waters...Tracy Nelson...the incredible Howling
Wolf...Allgood isn't bad, if you're in that SRV mood...


            Cheers                           ML

"We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world."
--Presidential candidate Dan Quayle