Message Board Archive: Thread Number 19

Hi folks.

I'd be interested to hear how other musicians approach their
performances of old blues songs.

Most of the blues songs I do were learned from old recordings. I rarely
cover a song note-for-note and word-for-word, although in some cases I
do try to stick closely to the original where possible. I always stop
short of deliberately affecting a southern accent, but in some cases
there's a phrase or word which I would never use outside of performing
the song (ie "doney" or "cold in hand") but that I consider to be an
integral part of the song, so it stays. I was once accused of
"appropriating" the language of the Black south in my performance, so
I'd like to hear how others handle this issue.

As for the instrumentation: do you ever re-set a piece in another key or
tuning than that of the original recording? I do this frequently, but
it's usually a compromise for not being able to play the song correctly
:-) For instance, I do John Hurt's "Trouble, I've Had It All My Days" in
open-D tuning, although I suspect he's in standard or DAEGBE.

Just trying to get some discussion going...

-Rob

Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 23:10:08 -0400
From: ari@secondmind.com (Ari Eisinger)
Subject: My approach
Message Number: 19.1

Good question, and a difficult one to answer!
What I try to do is to be faithful to the style of the original
recordings, sometimes to the extent of taking licks from them exactly as
played, while still really _playing_ the music. By _playing_ the music,
I mean not just copying, but putting in my own ideas too. Doing this
without losing the feeling of the old records is the tricky part. (If
you succeed, I find people usually think you are copying the original
note-for-note anyway!)
Usually I'll play things in the same key in which they were originally
recorded, because key and arrangement are closely linked on the guitar.
However, if I'm doing an arrangement for guitar of a tune originally
recorded for piano or some other instrument, then I may take more
liberties and just do a whole arrangement of the tune. This includes of
course the possibility of changing the key.
Then again sometimes I just take liberties even if the original was a
guitar recording. In my case, I think even when I take these liberties I
still tend to sound like I'm playing in a 1920s or 1930s style, even if
the arrangement is mine. That's what I'm trying for, anyway--the
authentic sound that includes my own ideas.

Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 23:12:59 -0400
From: podinkny@erols.com (Larry Otis)
Subject: When the hat gets to you, put something in it.
Message Number: 19.2

I imagine that if I was a guitar playing friend of (fill in the blank!)
we would be trading tunes back and forth, learning/stealing licks from
all kinds of people and things would keep evolving. In short, what is
now to some a sacred cow, would have been a living feast!;-) Don't get
me wrong, some of the most moving music I've heard is acoustic blues.
When I learn a song, I try to get as much of it correct as I can.
Sometimes very "trivial" things can open up the emotional mood of a
tune. Then I do the unthinkable: I edit to suit my own taste and ability
(I am good but not a virtuoso). If I can get the feeling in my gut then
I feel like I'm passing the song along. I also tend not to play a song
the same exact way twice. It just seems to be more alive that way. The
question of how to sing inflections/accents is something I'm not sure
about. All I know is if you honestly sing your heart out and keep honing
your craft, something good is bound to come out. Might be later than
sooner!;-) Larry

Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 11:16:34 -0400
From: sonnyboy@thepla.net
Subject: Feedback: Changing keys
Message Number: 19.3

I change keys to suit my voice (what voice I have;-)). I play "Trouble
in Mind" ala Lightin' Hopkins in standard tuning, but capoed on the 5th
fret. This enables me to play it as though I was down in E. I get to use
all the same licks etc.

As for apporaching the lyrics, it is basically a personal decison. Some
words and phrases are difficult. For example, when I play Blind Boy
Fuller's "Walkin' My Blues Away" I change "Shot the brown I love" to
"shot the girl I love." I mean the lyrics are still foreful but the last
thing you need is something acusing you of being racist. Not that the
historical context.

Shaun

Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 19:47:00 -0400
From: tbone01@earthlink.net (T. Roy Matthews)
Subject: Idea: My take on the language thing. . .
Message Number: 19.4

The language and vernacular used in many of the old songs (and many
newer ones) I believe, is about 60% of what makes or breaks a song.

I look at it this way - If a song uses certain regional and period slang
and phrasing that's kind of foreign to me, I still try to incorporate it
into my version of the song partly because of its folkloric value and
partly because I feel I'm doing the song and writer of the song more
justice to play it the way it was intended.

Look, for that matter, I'm playing music that was born of things which
I'll never have to face in my life: Sharecropping, discrimination,
hoboin' - I might as well try to not insult it by substituting my own
societal language and standards. Hell, I'll even try to fake the accent
for that reason.

To me the voice, like the guitar, harp, etc, is another instrument. Look
at the way which a guitar player will "phrase" chords and bend notes
when playing a Robert Johnson song. To me, those are "accents"
distinctive of the certain player he is emulating. What's the difference
if you try to vocalize using the same standard?

I don't think you'll hear someone like John Hammond argue with this
point either. But when he walks off the stage and is just talking, that
all goes away since he does not talk that way in real life. I believe
the regional vernacular is an integral part of the song as a whole.

Just M very HO

Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 23:58:42 -0500
From: rivnrev@memphisonline.com (Andy Cohen)
Subject: Feedback: re: Take on the Language Thing
Message Number: 19.4.1

To the Blues World At Large, including Elijah Wald,
  I think about things like this a lot. In part I do so because I am
trained to do so- degrees in cultural anthro, I'm supposed to know what
I'm talking about-, but also, it's an interesting questiuon in its own
right, and it says a lot about the people asking it. More, actually,
than the people emulated.
  Elijah Wald is a blues player in Boston who writes for the Boston
Globe on all manner of things as a free lancer, and who also writes
scripts for blues television shows. I have been arguing with him about
this for years. His position, basically, is that there is a core of
blues folk who can be identified by the fact that they talk and sing in
the same accent, and that nobody else, certainly no white person, and
especially not an educated white person with a professional degree can
make the claim of authenticity. So far I agree.
  Dave Van Ronk once pointed out to me that, thankfully, the social
matrix of post-enslavement African-American peasantry that produced the
art form(s) we label as blues is changed to the point that its
absolutely worst elements are gone. We know that enough of them still
exist to make a flavorful similacrum, and that the present social matrix
has produced art forms of its own.
  Pat Conte maintains a view of blues aas part of an "old-time music"
perspective, and I agree with him as well, to a point: says the Major,
"...in 1864 _everybody_ played old time music. I say Son House _and_
Uncle Dave Macon."
  The folklorist Charles Purdue, who is the man ultimately responsible
for bringing John Jackson within our revivalist purview (sorry, Chuck)
adamantly maintains, and quite reasonably, I think, that it requires
three generations for a work to disembody from its matrix of creation
such that it can be viewed as "traditional", and so a lot of what we
think of as "folk music" isn't really "traditional music", and anyone
who calls themselves a folksinger, isn't, except idiomatically.
Certainly, almost none of the members of FolkAlliance, say, qualify as
tradition bearers in any pristine sense. Thnk of Hank Sapoznik, for
instance, who is a positively great banjo player, but if it weren't for
the organized folk music movement would have had no more contact with
Uncle Dave than the man in the moon. On top of that, his return to
Klezmor music (seventh generation cantor, I think he is already) is
equally sincere, equally skilled, and equally revivalist in the Robert
Redfield sense of pursuing a cultural revival. Few of us, including the
likes of Mike Seeger and Paul Geremia, can make much of a claim on
membership in the tyraditions we purport to represent.
  What claims can we make?
  1. Generally, we're pretty good at what we do, and we get more
knowledgeable and better at our music as time goes along.
  2. We have a lot of friends among pristine tradition bearers, whom we
care about to the point, sometimes, of major sacrifice. This is a good
thing. We do not steal from our teachers, nor do we betray them or fail
to honor them in appropriate ways.
  3. The folk music movement itself involves the construction of a sort
of tradition. It organizes urbane, educated, sympathetic students of
different kinds of folk music (on this board it is blues, but other
things are known by each one of us, I'm sure) into a decentralized body
of bearers of some kinds of knowledge. This is as true for black members
of this body as it is for the Italian, Jewish and Nordic members. Nobody
has much examined the black practitioners of Black OTM/Blues for
"revivalism", but it's much in evidence. Robert Jones, Sparky Rucker,
Keith Brown, all bear the same relationship to blues- one step removed-
that Hank Sapoznik bears to Klezmor music. He didn't grow up in the
Ukraine, and didn't wander from town to town in the pouring rain and
cold to play weddings, either.
  On the other hand, Larry Johnson and Big Joe Duskin are both
folklorically aware black revivalists, who respect both the traditions
from which they come, and the scholarly and presentational constructs
that support their playing. They have the same kind of relationship to
the music they play that Jean Ritchie and Margaret Macarthur have to
theirs: kind of "one foot in and one foot out". Each contributes to an
ongoing (though thinning) living literature.
  The key social point here is that the black revivalists, like the
white ones, may not live middle class lifestyles, but they generally
have within them an expanded middle class worldview that is not hobbled
by such paltry constructions as "race" when the more important
constructs of "music", "beauty" and "history" are under discussion. We
can;t just ignore this stuff, but we don't have to let it cripple us,
either.
  I like to talk about "blues I, blues II and blues III". Blues I is the
grammatical meaning of the term as used by African-Americans, prior to
its association with any form of music: wanting something very badly in
the sure knowledge of the impossibility of getting it. Blues II ids this
meaning writ large, used as Imiri Baraka might mean it, namely the
condition of Black people in America, today as yesterday. Again, it has
nothing to do with art, it has to do with social conditions, and
especially with what Marx meant by "class." Blues III, the set of art
forms associated with a particular range of times and places which we
study, admire, support and emulate, is very much accessible to us,
whoever we are, whatever our backgrounds, original languages or skin
color.
  Is it worthwhile to single out such a body of music for preservation
for its own sake? It is for me. How about for the sake of some social
reason, for instance, as _part_ of the musical expression of a people
largely oppressed at a particularly nasty juncture of history? Again,
for me, yes. I presume it is for y'all, or you wouldn't be reading Ari's
web page.
  Having laid all this out, NOW let's talk about language. It's a knotty
problem. If you want to communicate with French people, wouldn't you
want to speak in an understandable accent? If you are of some ethnic
background, say Jewishm doesn't your accent get heavier when you go home
for the high holidays? If you go down South, don't you begin to pick up
the idiom and enough of the accent to make yourself intelligible to
those you talk to?
  We don't hear ourselves well when we sing, I think. Most of us white
guys from the educated left-wing North can't do a Southern accent for
beans. When we sing, we sing in an accent unknown _anywhere_, except in
the Caucasian blues revival. In most cases, it's better to sing in your
natal accent, if it's bland enough, so that you can articulate the words
(something we are capable of doing often better than the pristine
singers of them). Sing Southern if you can pull it off, but don't try to
sing like it sounds to you on the 78. It's probably insulting to any
black members of your audience, and you will probably lose them unless
they have some ulterior reason for hanging around. It's a dilemma. Like
Shel Silverstein said, "Whaddaya do if you're young and white and
Jewish, and the only levee you know is the Levy that lives down the
block?
  I think if you have a thick New England or New York accent, either
bring it _right_ out front, or try to bury it in bland midwesternisms.
The purpose of singing at all is to communicate something, hopefully
across rigid cultural barriers. Why exacerbate them by (a) making the
words unintelligible and/or (b) insulting the culture or intelligence of
the very members of your audience you most want to win over?
  Anybody got a response?

Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 09:23:17 -0400
From: Owner-HyperNews@ComCAT.COM (Greg Greene)
Subject: Disagree: A Fans Perspective
Message Number: 19.5

I think I understand your inclination to change words of "standards" but
I gotta say, from a fan's/listener's perspective, I usually dislike it
when an artist does that. There's a certain gratification I get with
singing along (very, very quietly of course or even just in my mind)
that kind of gets spoiled when the performer wanders off into new
territory. There's something very comfortable about a well-known song
that gets lost.

Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 22:26:41 -0400
From: secmuse@cris.com
Subject: Feedback: approaches...
Message Number: 19.6

...on playing old blues? i rarely perform these days,but at home it's a
matter of anything goes----mimic-wise it's all in fun & a challenge not
fit for an audience,i think.amoung friends,a slavish imitation of a
voice,or even exaggeration of traits,more like a caricature,is endlessly
rewarding to me. i have never approached black country music the same
way as with hillbilly stuff.for old country music,learning from classic
recordings became a crusade,the 78s a form of the sheet music like in
classical playing(i.e.,tha's the way it's played!)variants are always a
joy-but i would never call that dumb,blind imitation.rather more a
reverence for style. for country blues,however,there is a dividing
line.to perfectly reproduce guitar licks,set-ups & sounds,i think that's
a phase for most folks to pass through-especially as a performer
expecting to get paid.voice-wise there is a myriad of skills to learn;no
one seems to bother-but that's ok too,it makes for a natural,easy-going
performance.you can't expect people's hair to stand up on every song
when you give a concert!naturally,there's no shortage of good
guitarists.but! singers? hmmnnn...if they would take the care in honing
that craft as well,i think they would never work at all(meaning, most
folks just sharpen up their own natural voice after years of
concert-giving). and being a home/social player mostly,experimenting
with keys,set-ups & tunings is endlessly rewarding.the purist banner can
be tedious...why not just make good music the best you can? when i was
learning old-time banjo styles,i was corrected while figuring out a
difficult tune.my pal said "if it gets real complicated,it's probably
wrong".never forgot it. pvc

Date: Mon, 8 Sep 1997 23:06:17 -0400
From: cottrell@wfu.edu (Allin Cottrell)
Subject: Dancers wanted
Message Number: 19.6.1

Yeah, I find there's an extra order of difficulty in 
presenting old country blues as opposed to old-time string
band music which I also love.  Some of the 78s of fiddle
music from the 20s and 30s were cut by fairly educated
and more or less middle class whites (a species of which I'm
a member) but not so for the Delta blues, and there's kind
of a feeling of "impersonation" in doing the latter.  I think
it can be musically valid OK.  It's world-class music and
if _somebody_ is keeping it alive, no matter who, that's
important...  One problem, though, is no dancers (or do
you sometimes play for dancers, Ari?).  I'm thinking for
instance of the brilliant Calt/Wardlow book on Charlie
Patton, and their insistence that this was _dance_ music.
And I'm cross-referencing this with the tremendous charge
it can be to play string band music for dancers -- the way
it can give you an extra energy, compared to just playing
for listeners, and lead you to relatively "risky" (but
beat-preserving) innovations/improvisations.  And I'm
thinking it's a shame you (I anyway) never get that when
playing the blues.  

Allin Cottrell

Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 08:11:55 -0400
From: ari@secondmind.com (Ari Eisinger)
Subject: Feedback: Dancers
Message Number: 19.6.1.1

I do sometimes find that people break into spontaneous dancing when they
hear some of the old blues. As a matter of fact, just this past weekend
I was at a picnic with some people who have my album. Someone had
brought a guitar along, and as soon as I picked it up, before I even
started playing, people stood up and got ready to dance!
I don't know what the relationship is between what people find danceable
today and what they did back then. In any case, today people seem to
want to dance more to the ragtimey styles like that of Blind Blake,
rather than the hard-driving delta stuff.