“The blues are the roots, everything else is the fruits” -- Willie Dixon

[Bawon Samedi]

@Supper

Check this thread out...

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Piedmont/East Coast Blues aka Fingerstyle or Fingerpicking

The style originated in the late 1800s and early 1900s, as southern African-American blues guitarists tried to imitate the popular ragtime piano music of the day, with the guitarist's thumb functioning as the pianist's left hand, and the other fingers functioning as the right hand. The first recorded examples were by players such as Blind Blake, Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Minnie and Mississippi John Hurt. Some early blues players such as Blind Willie Johnson and Tampa Red added slide guitar techniques. Fingerpicking was soon taken up by country and Western artists such as Sam McGee, Ike Everly (father of The Everly Brothers), Merle Travis and "Thumbs" Carllile. Later Chet Atkins further developed the style.

Piedmont blues, also known as East Coast blues, refers primarily to a guitar style, the Piedmont fingerstyle, which is characterized by a fingerpicking approach in which a regular, alternating thumb bass string rhythmic pattern supports a syncopated melody using the treble strings generally picked with the fore-finger, occasionally others. The result is comparable in sound to piano ragtime or later stride.



The Piedmont style is differentiated from other styles (particularly the Mississippi Delta style) by its ragtime-based rhythms which lessened its impact on later electric band blues or rock 'n' roll, but it was directly influential on rockabilly and the folk revival sceneIt was an extremely popular form of African-American dance music for many decades in the first half of the 20th century.

a type of blues music characterized by a fingerpicking approach on the guitar in which a regular, alternating thumb bass string rhythmic pattern supports a syncopated melody using the treble strings generally picked with the fore-finger, occasionally others.’ Pretty straight up. If you’re not a fingerstyle guitar player you probably don’t care, but the point is that the piedmont style refers most importantly to a right hand technique. As opposed to delta blues–where the picker pinches the strings in a shuffle rhythm, with the thumb keeping the pulse on the bass string–in piedmont style there is a more pronounced use of an ‘alternating bass‘, where the thumb alternates between different bass strings. This allows for the creation of more varied bass lines, counterpoint melody in the treble strings, and a more pianistic or harplike effect.

One thing is clear, as the wiki points out: “The Piedmont style is differentiated from other styles (particularly the Mississippi Delta style) by its ragtime-based rhythms which lessened its impact on later electric band blues or rock ‘n’ roll…” which is why most people have never heard of it. Meanwhile, designating the blues of all the players of a region to be of the same style is problematic. The three players I mentioned above could not have more different individual styles. While Blind Blake used a foundation of alternating bass picking, his bass lines are typified by a double bass technique where he frequently adds a pick-up note before the beat. Gary Davis, in contrast has varied and wide-ranging bass lines, less reliant on straight alternating bass. Using only thumb and forefinger and creating a variety of triplet effects, with the thumb ranging all the way up to the treble strings to create single note runs, and interspersing full strums in a way not seen in Blake’s playing. Meanwhile, Brownie McGee traveled widely and blended a number of influences in his playing to create a very sophisticated synthesis of styles, even while rooted in the style of that other great piedmont bluesman, Blind Boy Fuller. Despite the variety of the individual styles, there’s a certain quality that runs through the songs and the personalities of the piedmont players, a certain core of light within the songs.

Making it even more difficult to draw a geographical line around specific playing techniques, the best example of the alternating bass technique technique that the wiki mentions as defining piedmont style, is played by Mississippi John Hurt, in a completely different region. Interestingly, Hurt’s playing and personality is more similar to the piedmont players than some others of his own regional brethren. As an aside, another piedmont area player of this ‘thumb’ technique–Elizabeth Cotton, being left handed–reversed the guitar and played alternating bass with her fingers and treble with her thumb.

The piedmont blues are somewhat under appreciated, compared to other blues styles. One deterrent to the average music listener becoming interested of course is the rough quality of the pre-war era recordings. But there is also a way that an a less nuanced version of the blues, has been sold to the public. Often in the music marketplace, we don’t look beyond the facade–the bluesman braggadocio–to see the person and the artist. So the softer, friendly blues of Georgia and Carolina often get overlooked and we can understand the pride in their local contribution to the great story of the blues.

One thing I know, any time you play some real piedmont style fingerstyle guitar, people smile–they tap their feet, they say “that sounds nice”. There’s just nothing else quite like it.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

The Roots of "Thumb Picking"

Let me start off by quoting the Country Music section from a book called "Guitar – From the Renaissance to Rock", by Tom & Mary Anne Evans – 1977….
"The British settlers of America brought with them the ballads and folk songs of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, usually sung unaccompanied by a solo performer. These were sung for entertainment and for passing on the history of a society that had little time or energy for formal education. The ballad-making tradition has been an integral part of country music ever since.

In the Southern states where country music was developed, a rigid agrarian economy and rural environment encouraged an often inflexible traditionalism. Coupled with a defensive feeling toward slavery, which was being increasingly criticized during the first half of the nineteenth century, the South was determined to preserve its way of life and adopted an isolationist stance. Moreover, the communities were often remote from any agents of change. Physical conditions and emotional attitudes were equally important in helping preserve cultural traditions undisturbed.

Wherever the pioneers settled and formed a community, they entertained themselves by the age-old tradition of music making. It was not only in the lonely Appalachian Mountains that country music flourished, but also in the lands further to the Southwest – Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. The original meandering solo style of the early ballads was modified by the practice of harmony singing and the introduction of instrumental accompaniment. A variety of instruments were adopted. The dulcimer, of German origin, remained popular in the remote mountain areas where other instruments took longer to appear; more widespread were the fiddle and banjo. The guitar made is appearance in the 1880s, at about the same period when black musicians were beginning to use it (for blues).

But the guitar was not so decisive in the development of country music as it was in the blues. In the blues, the guitar became a second voice; its qualities were exploited to produce sounds, which in turn added an extra dimension to the music. Morever, in the early history of the blues, the guitar was the principal solo instrument. The number of good black guitarists in the Southern state, the development of different styles and techniques in different areas, and the intermingling of musician helped to build up a strong tradition of guitar playing among blacks.

In country music the story is rather different. Country music was usually played by groups of musicians and where there was a solo instrumentalist he was a fiddler. In white country music, the early guitarists usually played in a simple fashion – using three or four basic open chords (like Palmer still does) to provide rhythmic background which could be interspersed with the occasional run. Nonetheless, in the history of the music there are a number of notable guitarists, who invariably had learned from blacks a for intricate style of playing which came unfortunately to be known as "****** pickin’." For wherever poor whites and blacks mixed – on railroads, down coal mines or along the river – there was an interchange of musical ideas. As traditional white ballad-making was taken over by black singers, so the white country musicians learned to pick a melody on the treble strings of their guitars while using the thumb to give a steady rhythm on the bass

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the black influence on country music increased. The cities held just as much attraction for the poor white as for the poor black. In Beale Street, Memphis; Deep Elm, Dallas; or Decatur Street, Atlanta, blues, ragtime and jazz could be heard by anybody for the price of a drink. In this way the styles and songs of such great bluesmen and guitarists as Blind Lemon Jefferson (based in Dallas from 1917) must have found their way into the music brought back to the white homesteads. For those who remained on their farms, the medicine and tent shows which traveled around the Southern states brought white and black musicians, performing a variety of styles: straight blues, dance tunes, religious songs and the latest Tim Pan Alley hits.

The great expansion of country music came, like the expansion of the blues, in the 1920s, when the recording companies discovered the potentially large audience. The first recordings were of solo fiddlers and string bands, which consisted of fiddle, banjo and guitar. ………

The radio did far more to disseminate white country music than it did for the blues. Sales of radios increased nationally from $60,000 in 1922 to $548,000 in 1929 (mostly to whites). With such a large audience the program directors were eager for new ideas, and in the early 20s the radio barn dance concept was born with the start of the two longest-running and most popular programs. The World’s Largest Station (WLS), own by the World’s Largest Store (Sears Roebuck), started its National Barn Dance in 1924, beaming the program to a Midwest and Great Plains audience. A year later the founder, Geo Hay, moved to WSM in Nashville and began the grand Ole Opry. The first performer was a fiddle player, and the program was an instant success: …. After three of four weeks of the fiddle solo business, we were besieged with other fiddlers, banjo pickers, guitar player and a lady who played an old zither.

From 1925 to 1935 the Grand Ole Opry was dominated by string bands. Dr. Humphrey Bates and his Possum Hunters, the Crook Brothers, the Gully Jumpers and the Fruit Jar Drinkers were all regular contributors. It was in the Fruit Jar Drinkers that Sam McGee, one of the pioneers in country guitar playing, first started out as a professional entertainer.

Sam McGee (born 1894 in Tennessee) was the first guitarist to introduce fingerpicking into country music (to Dave Macon on the Grand Ole Opry - around 1925.) Sam grew up surrounded by plenty of home-made music - his father a fiddler, his brother banjo - so, he just took to playing accompaniment with them. But, the guitar was rare in the Tennessee hills before the First World War and he didn't have anybody to learn from. The first other guitarist that young Sam heard was Tom Hood (black guy?) who was fingerpicking the guitar in the way that Sam was trying to teach himself.

After Sam’s family moved from the farm to town was where he had his first contact with black people: "My daddy ran a little store, and these section hands would come over from the railroad at noon... Well, after they finished their lunch, they would play guitars... that's where I learned to love the blues tunes. Black people were about the only people that played guitar then."

(End of Quote)


Conclusion

Tom and Mary Anne Evans (writers of Guitar – From the Renaissance to Rock) research seems to indicate that country music got its fingerstyle influence from southern black blues players, thus helping propel the guitar out of the back line of the "band":

Nashville (Grand Ole Opry) got introduced to fingerstyle guitar from Sam McGee – who learned from blacks eating at his folks store. Circa – 1900 - 1910

Chet says one of his earliest guitar influences was Blind Lemon Jefferson records that his "soused" step-dad used to play over and over. And, Jefferson was heavy into playing intricate melodies with his fingers while keeping rhythm with his thumb. Circa 1930s Another major influence was Merle Travis over the airwaves.

Merle Travis’s connection seems to be back through Kennedy Jones, Mose Rager, & Ike Everly (father of the "Brothers") – via blacks, Arnold Schultz and Amos Johnson down in western Kentucky. Circa 1910 – 1940’s

Bill Monroe learned a bunch of his music as a kid from the same Arnold Schultz. Circa – approx 1920 - 1930’s (No wonder Pat Kirtley wrote a song about that Arnold Schultz dude…..)


The southern black blues singers/players of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s had a need to have a rhythmic accompaniment instrument that could also absorb some of the solo action. It’s pretty obvious to me from my quick research that their "need" pretty much gave birth to the "essence" of our Merle – thumb picking and Chet - alternating bass style guitar music. The fact that the blues players were finger pickers (probably because they couldn’t afford picks) forced them to develop it. It sounds like that the blues players were broken up into a couple of groups like Merle and Chet were: the heavy thumbed whackers that got by with energy and personality, and those that had a more intricate control of the strings that "probably" were also using alternating and moving bass lines wherever possible.

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http://ofgc.bizland.com/the_roots_of_thumb_picking.htm

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Delta Blues has had more impact on rock music but the type of Blues with the most impact on Appalachian Country music (you can hear the delta style on Country music from like Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana etc..) from a guitar standpoint is Piedmont Blues because of it's geographic origins.



Ragtime and the Guitar

His name was Arthur Blake, or maybe it was Arthur Phelps. He might have been from Jacksonville, Florida or perhaps from the Sea Islands of Georgia. Whoever he was, and wherever he was from, the guitarist who would be known professionally as Blind Blake made history in 1926 when he sat down in a Grafton, Wisconsin recording studio and ripped through a guitar rag called “West Coast Blues.” The “B” side to the first of many Blind Blake hits, “West Coast Blues” was the first recording of Piedmont style ragtime guitar – a complex syncopated style of fingerpicking, which through recordings by Blake and contemporaries such as Blind Willie McTell, Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Boy Fuller, represents a high point of American guitar music.

Blind Blake wasn’t the first guitarist to record ragtime. The ragtime craze swept America around the turn of the twentieth century, and ragtime recordings featuring guitarists began appearing as early as 1906. Nor was Blake the first black guitar soloist to record ragtime – Sylvester Weaver recorded a number of ragtime pieces in the mid-1920s, beginning with “Guitar Rag” (played on a guitar/banjo hybrid) in 1923. Blake, however, was the first of the Piedmont school of guitarists to record. Rediscovered by young white guitarists like David Bromberg, John Fahey and Jorma Kaukonen during the folk and blues revivals of the 1950s and 1960s, the ragtime recordings of the Piedmont guitarists represent a standard to which fingerpickers still aspire, and Piedmont guitar rags are in the repertoire of guitarists across the globe.

Ragtime, which was unabashedly music of the black underclass, caught the attention of white audiences in the mid-1890s. The ragtime craze was most likely sparked by a white vaudeville performer in New York in 1896. Ben Harney (1871-1938) was a hit at Tony Pastor’s Music Hall and other New York vaudeville theatres; and the composer of some of the first published ragtime songs including “Mr. Johnson, Turn Me Loose” and “You’re a Good Ol’ Wagon.” Where and how Harney learned to play ragtime is a mystery. He claimed to have invented the style, but it is likely that he picked it up from black musicians in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, and honed his skills in Louisville saloons.

In the 1890s and early 1900s, ragtime was as transformational and disruptive as rock & roll was in the 1950s. It was a hot, rude new sound that erupted out of the black underclass to the delight of young white people desperate to break away from stifling Victorian propriety. As ragtime seized the imagination of the white middle class, the self-appointed guardians of culture became increasingly alarmed. Dismay grew into panic as they found they were helpless to stop the onslaught of what composer Edward McDowell called “****** whorehouse music.”

The region north of Memphis, up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, and over to Kansas City was the most fertile territory for the growth of ragtime into a distinctive new genre in the 1880s and 1890s. St. Louis had been an important hub of black musical activity since at least the 1860s, and by the 1870s had the third largest urban black community in the nation. Targee Street was a residential street in the Chestnut Valley District, the section of town where many of the bordellos and saloons that provided work for early ragtime musicians were located. “Music was a necessity in the world around Targee Street,” according to Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy. “In every house there was a guitar. In many of the saloons and fancy establishments there were pianos. On these guitars and pianos of the Negro Sporting world ragtime music was created.”

It is likely that black urban guitarists were playing syncopated instrumental solos in the 1880s and 1890s, but there is no hard evidence that this was the case. The evidence is stronger that singers accompanied ragtime songs – ragtime was more a vocal style than an instrumental style in the 1890s – with a syncopated style of guitar accompaniment. The recordings of Henry “Ragtime” Thomas, a performer who recorded in the 1920s, but whose style and repertoire are rooted in the late nineteenth century, may be the best examples of the ragtime guitar style of the 1890s. Guitarists also were often found in urban “jig” bands – mixed string and brass ensembles that very likely played syncopated music at least as early as the 1880s, and possibly as early as the 1840s.

Piedmont Blues

Guitar Rags

Ragtime guitar developed most fully as a distinctive and cohesive style in an area running north from Jacksonville, Florida to about Richmond, Virginia, west through Louisville, Kentucky and into eastern Tennessee. While the style throughout this area is rooted in a common folk ragtime tradition, researchers and writers tend to break this arc into two distinct regions. Piedmont ragtime typically is viewed as an adjunct to the African-American blues style of the region running along the southeastern seaboard, while Kentucky “thumbpicking” is seen as the foundation of “Travis picking,” the style of playing popularized by white country guitarist, Merle Travis.

The Piedmont ragtime guitar style seems to have its roots in the region’s string band and African-American banjo traditions. The Piedmont has a rich history of black string bands that, according to folklorist Barry Lee Pearson, set it apart from some other sections of the South, “where the evolving blues form quickly superseded and largely eradicated pre-blues styles. In the Southeast, the transition was slower and never complete.” While commercial ragtime and the classic ragtime of Scott Joplin and his followers were several steps removed from the style’s folk roots, Piedmont guitar rags rarely strayed far from their country origins. Many Piedmont rags are guitar versions of string band-style pieces, meant for dancing.



In western Kentucky, most specifically in Muhlenberg County, a style of fingerpicking emerged, typically called “thumbpicking” or “thumb style,” which, like the Piedmont style, uses the fingers to play a syncopated melodic line on the treble strings while the thumb plucks a bass line on the beat. Also like the Piedmont style, flashy guitar rags were often the showpieces for Kentucky thumbpickers, with “Cannon Ball Rag” the piece that still defines the accomplished guitarist. This style would become enormously influential in country music as “Travis picking,” named for country guitar great, Merle Travis (1917-1983), a Muhlenberg County native.

Travis was influenced by white Muhlenberg guitarists Mose Rager and Ike Everly (father of Don and Phil, the Everly Brothers), who in turn had learned from Kennedy Jones (1900-1990). Jones, according to journalist and author Bobby Anderson, was “the one man who brought it all together. … More than anyone else, “Jonesy” was responsible for the sound that later became known as the ‘Merle Travis Guitar Style.’” Jones credited his style to his mother, Alice DeArmond Jones (1863-1945), but it is nearly certain that origins of Travis picking lie in a black guitar tradition that had existed in the region for many years. Jones’ greatest contribution seems to have been the fusion of a fingerpicking style that he had learned from his mother with the African-American ragtime style he heard from black players, especially the remarkable guitarist and fiddler Arnold Shultz (1886-1931).

Schultz was a favorite at white square dances, where he played with both black and white groups. “The first time ... I ever seen Arnold Shultz ... this square dance was at Rosine, Kentucky,” recalled Bill Monroe, who grew up in Rosine. “Arnold and two more colored fellows come up there and played for the dance. He was powerful with it.” Schulz never recorded, but it is clear he was an innovator, combining the syncopated country dance music style of the region with harmonic innovations he picked up performing on steamships traveling the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

At the core of Schultz’s style, by all indications, was country ragtime music with roots firmly set in the nineteenth century. Schultz was not the only black practitioner of this style of guitar playing in Western Kentucky. Other African-American guitarists – undoubtedly some of the generation prior to Schultz – also contributed to the birth of “Travis Picking.” “Colored fellers way back yonder played the thumb pick just as far as I can remember,” according to Mose Rager. Tommy Flint, another well-known Muhlenberg guitarist, cites Amos Johnson, Jim Mason and Jody Burton – all black guitar-playing coal miners – as important influences on thumbpicking. Amos Johnson’s signature piece was “Amos Johnson Rag,” which was transformed into “Guitar Rag,” a hit for Merle Travis in the 1950s.

Examples in Country guitar....


Steve Rector plays "Guitar Rag" (kentucky style"Thumb Picking" . he also talks about Merel Travis and Amos Johnson )





Merle Travis performs "Lost John" (kentucky style"Thumb Picking" )

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Country music with guitars is actually a white american imitation of the blues with twang

Country music is primarily a fusion of African American blues and spirituals with Appalachian folk music, adapted for pop audiences and popularized beginning in the 1920s. The origins of country are in rural Southern folk music, which was primarily Irish and British, with African and continental European musics.[61] Anglo-Celtic tunes, dance music, and balladry were the earliest predecessors of modern country, then known as hillbilly music. Early hillbilly also borrowed elements of the blues and drew upon more aspects of 19th-century pop songs as hillbilly music evolved into a commercial genre eventually known as country and western and then simply country.[62] The earliest country instrumentation revolved around the European-derived fiddle and the African-derived banjo, with the guitar later added.[63] String instruments like the ukulele and steel guitar became commonplace due to the popularity of Hawaiian musical groups in the early 20th century.[64]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_the_United_States#Country_music







Jimmy Rogers, the "Father Of Country" music was basically a Blues musician

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Almost all of the early Country pioneers (Carter Family, Jimmie Rogers, Hank Williams to name a few) claimed to have learned the guitar/blues music directly or indirectly from black musicians. Roscoe Holcomb, claimed he was taught the guitar by a black man and you can hear the blues in his guitar playing but his vocals are pure nasal, country twang.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Click here to view the original image of 531x494px.

Sylvester Weaver
(July 25, 1897 – April 4, 1960)

On October 23, 1923, he recorded in New York City with the blues singer Sara Martin "Longing for Daddy Blues" / "I've Got to Go and Leave My Daddy Behind" and two weeks later as a soloist "Guitar Blues" / "Guitar Rag". Both recordings were released on Okeh Records. These recordings are the very first country-blues recordings and the first known recorded songs using the slide guitar style. "Guitar Rag" (played on a Guitjo) became a blues classic and was covered in the 1930s by Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys as "Steel Guitar Rag" and became a country music standard too.

Weaver recorded until 1927, sometimes accompanied by Sara Martin, about 50 additional songs. On some recordings from 1927 he was accompanied by Walter Beasley and the singer Helen Humes. Weaver often used the bottleneck-style method, playing his guitar with a knife. His recordings were quite successful but in 1927 he retired and went back to Louisville until his death in 1960. Though many country blues artists had a revival from the 1950s on, Weaver died almost forgotten.

In 1992 his complete works were released on two CDs, the same year his (up to then anonymous) grave got a headstone by engagement of the Louisville-based Kentuckiana Blues Society (KBS). Furthermore the KBS has annually honored since 1989 persons who rendered outstanding services to the blues with their Sylvester Weaver Award.

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Sylvester Weaver was a versatile guitarist of Louisville origin who made the first solo recordings of blues guitar playing. Information is lacking on Weaver's early years, though it is not unreasonable to assume that during this time he may have had some connection to the Louisville Jug Bands led by Earl MacDonald and Clifford Hayes. Sylvester Weaver first turns up in New York in 1923, where on October 23 of that year he accompanied vaudeville blues singer Sara Martin on two numbers, "Longing for Daddy Blues" and "I've Got to Go and Leave My Daddy Behind," for Okeh. Two weeks later, Weaver cut his first pair of solo recordings, "Guitar Blues" and "Guitar Rag" for the same concern.

The Sara Martin selections represented the first time on records that a popular female singer had been backed up solely by guitar, and were an immediate success. Weaver would be assigned to cut 25 more selections accompanying Martin in the years through 1927. As to the fate of Weaver's own first recorded solos, they were equally well-received and would prove massively influential in the country market. "Guitar Rag" was later re-invented by Bob Wills into "Steel Guitar Rag" and became a country standard. Through the end of 1927, when Weaver decided to retire from music altogether, he recorded a total of 26 solo sides, and on some of the later ones Weaver was joined by another guitarist, Walter Beasley. In addition to his own solo selections Weaver made four recordings in accompaniment to Beasley. All of the issued records were avidly snapped up by customers in the rural mail order market, and both the Weaver solo items and the Weaver and Beasley records were well-known to string band musicians in the American south and west. Sylvester Weaver's work lies stylistically between blues and country music, and he had considerable impact on both musical fronts; among his recorded solos he made both a banjo record and several solos which make use of a bottleneck style slide (probably a pocket knife in Weaver's case). Although four of Weaver's pieces, including the banjo solo, were rejected by Okeh, all but one of these have been recovered and issued since.

After his heady days in New York had ended, Sylvester Weaver returned to Louisville and entered another line of work. Weaver was almost totally forgotten by the time he died in 1960. One player who still recalled Weaver was Lonnie Johnson, who remembered him as a good player, outstanding songwriter, and somebody who deserved a great deal more credit for his efforts than he would ever receive in his lifetime. In 1992 the Kentucky Blues Society raised enough funds to place a headstone on the grave of Sylvester Weaver, and this same organization presents its Sylvester Weaver Award annually to "those who have dedicated their lives to presenting, preserving, and perpetuating the blues."

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Sylvester Weaver - 1st to record blues guitar



guitar rag........ Sylvester Weaver

The earliest fingerpicking styles evolved slowly, handed down from guitarist to guitarist in the Appalachian regions. One of the first influential guitarists from this area was a black man named Sylvester Weaver. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1897, Weaver was apparently the first blues guitarist to ever record. His 1924 recording of "Smoketown Strut" for Okeh demonstrates the basic elements of country fingerpicking with its syncopated bass, clearly articulated melody line in the key of C, and the use of a roll similar to that later popularized by Earl Scruggs and Merle Travis. Weaver also composed a tune called "Guitar Rag" which upon even casual listening is clearly the antecedent to the famous "Steel Guitar Rag" composed and recorded by Leon McAuliffe with Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys in 1936.

Smoketown Strut (not Weaver )




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Influence in Country music

Leon McAuliffe & Cimarron Boys - Steel Guitar Rag



Bob Wills - Steel Guitar Rag 1936



Barbra Mandrell - Steel Guitar Rag

 

[IllmaticDelta]

North Mississippi aka Hill Country Blues

Until 1991, North Mississippi Hill Country blues was barely acknowledged as its own subgenre; Mississippi blues was generalized to mean Delta blues, period. Then two things happened that led the blues world to start making distinctions. Filmmaker Robert Mugge's documentary Deep Blues was released, with peerless blues writer Robert Palmer as host and narrator. The movie spotlighted Hill Country artists R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough and Jessie Mae Hemphill and distinguished them stylistically from the Delta artists also featured. Fat Possum Records also launched, with Burnside and Kimbrough as flagship artists; the label has since recorded albums by such other Hill Country artists as T Model Ford, Asie Payton, Robert Belfour and Charles Caldwell, and released archival material from trailblazers like Joe Callicot and Mississippi Fred McDowell.

As a result, McDowell is now perceived as a stylistic pioneer rather than being lumped in with other Delta greats, and contemporary Hill Country artists are rightly seen as the last regional bluesmen. In addition, thanks to Otha Turner and Hemphill, the Hill Country south of Memphis is recognized as the last bastion of pre-blues fife and drum music. The North Mississippi Allstars (see last month's column) carry the torch for these greats, as does Memphis one-man band Richard Johnston with Foot Hill Stomp.

Hill Country blues is basically a droning, one-chord boogie without fixed verse-chorus patterns; because it doesn't change chords, the music moves more on rhythm and melody alone than do other blues, and in the hands of a master like Kimbrough it can be positively trance-inducing. Perhaps the earliest recorded example is the 1929 "Cottonfield Blues," by Garfield Akers with Joe Callicot (available on Mississippi Masters: Early American Blues Masters). Though he wasn't recorded until the late '50s, McDowell was the most prolific and most influential early Hill Country bluesman. He taught Burnside, his next door neighbor, his bottleneck guitar style and tunes like "Shake 'Em on Down."

This style of hill-country blues is separate and distinct from the Mississippi Delta blues pioneered by pre-war performers like Robert Johnson, Son House, and Charley Patton, and later amplified (literally and figuratively) by such Delta migrants to Chicago as Muddy Waters and Robert Nighthawk. In contrast to the familiar 12-bar blues pattern, the North Mississippi style is characterized by elongated bar lines and one- or two-chord modal forms. There is a kind of trance-inducing drone quality to these blues that seems to draw upon the music’s deepest West African wellsprings.

Hill Country, an area of small farms, often owned by African-Americans who gather at juke joints on Saturday nights to hear a much more conservative form of the blues. Propelled by severely syncopated rhythms and drenched in modal drones, Hill Country blues is the most African-sounding music left in North America.

"In the Hill Country," explains Luther dikkinson, leader of the North Mississippi Allstars, "it boils down to the rhythm and the melody, because the chord changes are all implied. The melody implies the changes, but the chords don't change. By contrast, Robert Johnson was much more sophisticated harmonically--he'd have intricate chord changes and turnarounds and even a bridge sometimes.

"But I think it's the trancelike one-chord sound of the Hill Country that makes it sound contemporary," he continues. "It's the primitiveness that makes it sound modern. People have grown up on Mississippi and Chicago blues, so that's an established sound. But you put on a Junior Kimbrough record, and it sounds like it came from Mars. And a lot of punk kids can get into it, because there's a lot of one-chord music out there these days."

The north Mississippi sound is characterized by a repeated use of one particular chordal run. There are only one to three chords in its progression on top of a driving beat. While the southern regions developed what is known as the 12-bar blues pattern, the hill country stays with an elongated bar line rarely changing its modal form. It becomes a hypnotic drone to symbolize its feeling. Guitar players standardized what is called “open tuning,” meaning all the strings are tuned to notes within a major chord, and the chord could be played when all strings are strummed open with no finger-fretting on the left hand. This allowed more use of the slide which evolved from a literal “bottlenecking” of the guitar.

Luther describes the hill-country style this way: "If you take Fred McDowell's style of music and Othar Turner's style of music, within that is the hidden secret of the hill-country blues. Othar just uses rhythm and melody -- he's either playing a fife or singing with only drums behind him. Fred McDowell is basically rhythm and melody, too. He'd take a song like "My Baby Don't Stand No Cheatin',' and he would never change chords. He would play the whole song over just a drone, that one chord. He's beating out a rhythm with his thumb and playing a melody with his slide. In Delta and Chicago blues, there's always chord changes. You do the I, IV, V, turn around, whatever. Hill-country blues rarely changes chords. It makes it real trancey, groove-oriented. It's like Parliament's first record! [Laughs.] Or Miles Davis. That's what, to me, makes it sound more modern or more palatable to contemporary ears."

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Carlos Santana talks about hearing the blues for the first time and how he was moved by blues music.

Santana became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered rock, salsa and jazz fusion. The band's sound featured his melodic, blues-based guitar lines set against Latin and African rhythms featuring percussion instruments such as timbales and congas not generally heard in rock music

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Led Zeppelin, Eddie Van Halen, Allman Brothers on the Blues

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Riff driven Music

The term riff driven is used to describe a piece of music that relies on a repeated instrumental riff as the basis of its most prominent melody, cadence, or (in some cases) leitmotif. Riff-driven songs are largely a product of jazz, blues, and post-blues era music (rock and pop). The musical goal of riff-driven songs is akin to the classical continuo effect, but raised to much higher importance (in fact, the repeated riff is used to anchor the song in the ears of the listener). The riff/continuo is brought to the forefront of the musical piece and often is the primary melody that remains in the listener's ears. A call and response often holds the song together, creating a "circular" rather than linear feel.

A few well-known examples of riff-driven songs are "I Feel Fine" by The Beatles, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by The Rolling Stones, "Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin, "Outshined" by Soundgarden, "Enter Sandman" by Metallica, "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple and "Symphony of Destruction" by Megadeth.

a term and style that has been appropriated in the Rock/Metal world.

starts @ 40:37...41:16-> 42:10 lays down the truth

 

[mamba]

Dope thread. Cacs can never really engage in revisionist history when it comes to the blues.

It'll always be ours. Can you imagine a cac tryin' to sing this in an authentic fashion:



If you brehs aren't hittin' up blues spots in your city, you're missing out. Nothing like a good live jam while tossing back a few brews with a pretty lady or two.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

The Black Keys play with that groove based, Hill Country blues sound



The Black Keys - Busted Live




The Black Keys - Psychotic Girl Live




The Black Keys - Stack Shot Billy

 

[mamba]

Cac tryin' to do Elmore



Seeing how it looks in action gives you a greater appreciation of what those brehs were doing on the guitar.

the real deal

 

[IllmaticDelta]

One of the key sounds of Black scared music is the piano and this has a strong Blues root.