Pat Hare ,James Cotton and, Joe Hill Lewis: the god fathers of Metal

[Black Haven]

So to find out where the genesis of this demonic prince of a genre began is a tricky task. “No music exists in a vacuum,” Lefevre wisely muses. “Instead music growth is a slow-moving [hell]beast building on years and decades of development.” However, could there have been a flashpoint, one artist or song who created that new tangent, a tangent that broke away from rock and started headbanging down a new, infernal path of destruction?

To start off on this complicated chthonic journey Lefevre first looks at the early history of the genre, and goes beyond where most people can agree the genre originated from, the 1960s, and looks to the generation who influenced many of those 60s musicians. And those were the blues musicians, particularly the 1950s Memphis blues musicians, like Joe Hill Lewis and Pat Hare, who began experimenting with heavier distortions in their music.
Lefevre picks out the track “Cotton Crop Blues” by James Cotton as a good example of this. Along with the heavier sound, they also began writing lyrics on more morbid subject matters, which is also a trait of heavy metal.

Lefevre then traces the distorted sound of the Memphis blues musicians to the surf rock music of early 1960s America. One aspect this movement added to the heavy metal arsenal, was the use of fast-picked guitars. Then, after these foundations were laid, it was the later 1960s rock groups, many from the UK, that then started really building the demented, accursed path towards metal. As the video notes, many of these groups were inspired by the “grit of American blues.

An Answer to the Immortal Question: Who Invented Heavy Metal?





Fun fact a white English tourist reminded me of this historical knowledge a few days ago.

 

[Counter Racist Male]

An Answer to the Immortal Question: Who Invented Heavy Metal?





Fun fact a white English tourist reminded me of this historical knowledge a few days ago.

So a black blues player invented heavy metal? I thought metal was just fast blues musically speaking?

 

[Black Haven]

So a black blues player invented heavy metal? I thought metal was just fast blues musically speaking?

The heavy and strong distortion in their guitar combined with even heavier/darker blues lyrics made all three of the blues musicians I named in the title the foundation and precursor for heavy metal. @IllmaticDelta could probably explain it better than I can.

 

[Neuromancer]

This reminds me of the birth of punk.

 

[The Wall Is Undefeated!]

Pretty much.
Metal is just the evolution of Blues Rock.

I love Metal music.

 

[Black Haven]

I remember Metalocalypse hinted at this when Dethklok went to Mississippi to learn the blues.

 

[Able Archer 83]

This reminds me of the birth of punk.

The first "real" punk band is generally acknowledged to be The Stooges.

They--along with the MC5--were from Detroit/near Detroit, which is not a coincidence.

As for UK punk, most of its black influence came from Jamaica (i.e. dub and reggae) rather than the US. Note the reggae/dub influence in the following songs:

 

[IllmaticDelta]

So a black blues player invented heavy metal? I thought metal was just fast blues musically speaking?

black blues is the root of heavy metal via blues scale which contains the flatted fifth/diminished fifth

The flatted fifth has been called the Devil's interval, and people were actually executed "back in the day" for writing songs that used this interval. The flatted fifth is the chromatic passing note between the four and the five in the scale - the so-called "blues note".

Heavy Metal is basically the b*stardization of the flatted fifth










Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath's debut album is the birth of heavy metal as we now know it. Compatriots like Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple were already setting new standards for volume and heaviness in the realms of psychedelia, blues-rock, and prog rock. Yet of these metal pioneers, Sabbath are the only one whose sound today remains instantly recognizable as heavy metal, even after decades of evolution in the genre. Circumstance certainly played some role in the birth of this musical revolution -- the sonic ugliness reflecting the bleak industrial nightmare of Birmingham; guitarist Tony Iommi's loss of two fingertips, which required him to play slower and to slacken the strings by tuning his guitar down, thus creating Sabbath's signature style. These qualities set the band apart, but they weren't wholly why this debut album transcends its clear roots in blues-rock and psychedelia to become something more. Sabbath's genius was finding the hidden malevolence in the blues, and then bludgeoning the listener over the head with it. Take the legendary album-opening title cut. The standard pentatonic blues scale always added the tritone, or flatted fifth, as the so-called "blues note"; Sabbath simply extracted it and came up with one of the simplest yet most definitive heavy metal riffs of all time.

Well, it just so happens that the tritone is the driving sound behind the blues. In a typical blues song, every single chord has a tritone in it. That’s the gritty sound that makes you say “Hey that sounds bluesy!” In the blues scale, the tritone is actually called the “blues note”. Typically, though, you don’t sit on the blues note when you’re soloing in the blues. You just sort of pass through it. It’s like sprinkling just a bit of red pepper on your food. What Black Sabbath did was just sit right on it. It’s absolutely all over their music and a defining feature of their riffs. Want to go from blues to metal? Just hang a little longer on that blues note, the tritone.

https://redirect.viglink.com/?format=go&jsonp=vglnk_158412828129013&key=098b477826d9c73180a211ac110fa35f&libId=k7ql1fd1010027jz000DAbba4cfad&loc=https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/blues-music-what-is-it-and-its-diversity-and-impact-on-various-strands-of-music.338705/page-5&v=1&out=https://tunessence.com/blog/musical-evolution-episode-3-black-sabbath/&ref=https://www.google.com/&title="Blues Music" What is it and its diversity and impact on various strands of music | Page 5 | Steve Hoffman Music Forums&txt=https://tunessence.com/blog/musical-evolution-episode-3-black-sabbath/

The heavy and strong distortion in their guitar combined with even heavier/darker blues lyrics made all three of the blues musicians I named in the title the foundation and precursor for heavy metal. @IllmaticDelta could probably explain it better than I can.

yeah, the memphis guys/or the blues recorded and produced in memphis were the first to add heavy-gritty fuzz distortion to blues along with power chords

Auburn "Pat" Hare[1][2] (December 20, 1930 – September 26, 1980)[3] was an African American Memphis electric blues guitarist and singer.[4] His heavily distorted, power chord–driven electric guitar music in the early 1950s is considered an important precursor of heavy metal music.[5] His guitar work with Little Junior's Blue Flames had a major influence on the rockabilly style,[6] and his guitar playing on blues records by artists such as Muddy Waters was influential among 1960s British Invasion blues rock bands such as the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds.[5]

His guitar solo on James Cotton's electric blues record "Cotton Crop Blues" (1954) was the first recorded use of heavily distorted power chords, anticipating elements of heavy metal music. According to Robert Palmer, "Rarely has a grittier, nastier, more ferocious electric guitar sound been captured on record, before or since, and Hare's repeated use of a rapid series of two downward-modulating power chords, the second of which is allowed to hang menacingly in the air, is a kind of hook or structural glue. [...] The first heavy metal record? I'd say yes, with tongue only slightly in cheek."[5] The other side of the single was "Hold Me in Your Arms"; both songs "featured a guitar sound so overdriven that with the historical distance of several decades, it now sounds like a direct line to the coarse, distorted tones favored by modern rock players." According to Allmusic, "what is now easily attainable by 16-year-old kids on modern-day effects pedals just by stomping on a switch, Hare was accomplishing with his fingers and turning the volume knob on his Sears & Roebuck cereal-box-sized amp all the way to the right until the speaker was screaming."[4]

Ike Turner (memphis) and some of the Chicago guys

The first guitar amplifiers were relatively low-fidelity, and would often produce distortion when their volume (gain) was increased beyond their design limit or if they sustained minor damage.[4] Around 1945, Western-swing guitarist Junior Barnard began experimenting with a rudimentary humbucker pick-up and a small amplifier to obtain his signature "low-down and dirty" bluesy sound. Many electric blues guitarists, including Chicago bluesmen such as Elmore James and Buddy Guy, experimented in order to get a guitar sound that paralleled the rawness of blues singers such as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf,[5] replacing often their originals with the powerful Valco "Chicagoan" pick-ups, originally created for lap-steel, to obtain a louder and fatter tone. In early rock music, Goree Carter's "Rock Awhile" (1949) featured an over-driven electric guitar style similar to that of Chuck Berry several years later,[6] as well as Joe Hill Louis' "Boogie in the Park" (1950).[7][8]

In the early 1950s, pioneering rock guitarist Willie Johnson of Howlin' Wolf′s band began deliberately increasing gain beyond its intended levels to produce "warm" distorted sounds.[4] Guitar Slim also experimented with distorted overtones, which can be heard in his hit electric blues song "The Things That I Used to Do" (1953).[9] Chuck Berry's 1955 classic "Maybellene" features a guitar solo with warm overtones created by his small valve amplifier.[10] Pat Hare produced heavily distorted power chords on his electric guitar for records such as James Cotton's "Cotton Crop Blues" (1954) as well as his own "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby" (1954), creating "a grittier, nastier, more ferocious electric guitar sound,"[11] accomplished by turning the volume knob on his amplifier "all the way to the right until the speaker was screaming."[12]

In the mid-1950s, guitar distortion sounds started to evolve based on sounds created earlier in the decade by accidental damage to amps, such as in the popular early recording of the 1951 Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm song "Rocket 88", where guitarist Willie Kizart used a vacuum tube amplifier that had a speaker cone slightly damaged in transport.[13][14] [15] Rock guitarists began intentionally "doctoring" amplifiers and speakers in order to emulate this form of distortion.[16]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

The first "real" punk band is generally acknowledged to be The Stooges.

They--along with the MC5--were from Detroit/near Detroit, which is not a coincidence.

As for UK punk, most of its black influence came from Jamaica (i.e. dub and reggae) rather than the US. Note the reggae/dub influence in the following songs:

yeah, American punk is different from Uk Punk. Uk Punk will often have reggae/dub influences (The Police) on top of the basic rock foundation, while American Punk will sometimes even have Jazz or Funk in it along with its more hectic tempos (Mc5, Blondie, etc..)

 

[Able Archer 83]

yeah, American punk is different from Uk Punk. Uk Punk will often have reggae/dub influences (The Police) on top of the basic rock foundation, while American Punk will sometimes even have Jazz or Funk in it along with its more hectic tempos (Mc5, Blondie, etc..)

Have you heard any No Wave? An offshoot of NY punk rock. It was *heavily* indebted to free jazz and funk.





And, this classic of course:

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Have you heard any No Wave? An offshoot of NY punk rock. It was *heavily* indebted to free jazz and funk.

Spoiler

And, this classic of course:

yup

in 1970s/early 1980's, American Punk, HipHop and Disco-Club Culture all crossed paths