Observations about the blues vocabulary of the 1920s-1940s.

[Christian Miller]

Had totally forgotten about that one haha. Though I liked the original stuff with Hubert Sumlin more. But I listened a lot to the Muddy Waters and the Bo Diddley sessions from the same series.

I had to compare the Let It Bleed version of LIV (more Country & Western for me but I like it nonetheless; Ry Cooder plays mandolin on that album BTW) with the original -- and now I am wondering: Am I hearing right that Johnson plays a blues with a II V?

The live Stones version is way better than the album version

Yes I hear it too. Sometimes I think the main difference between prewar jazz and blues was instrumentation.


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[Peter C]

Am I hearing right that Johnson plays a blues with a II V?

Yes, and not only that; the "IV" in this song sounds like there's no 3rd, just an added 5th, so what with the ambiguity of the bass note, it may not be a IV at all (gonna leave that one to the theory junkies)

So, if you give this the standard I-IV-V treatment, you're going to completely change the nature of the song. Wait, isn't that precisely what the Brit Blues boys did with a lot of this old material?

[PMB]

I listened to that Howlin' Wolf London Sessions record obsessively as a teen

IMO, the best Strat tone that Eric Clapton ever achieved is on I Ain't Superstitious from that record, channeling Hubert Sumlin (who was also a guest on the album at EC's insistence). I wouldn't be surprised if the track was a fave of the young Robert Cray:

[PMB]

This is also an ideal source for an Ethan Iverson rant or two! I’m sure there’s one on DTM.

EDIT: Boom! But of course
The History of the Blues…Scale? (guest post by Asher Tobin Chodos) | DO THE M@TH

Blues is of course an idiom above all. All great blues players understand that and ground their music in the oral tradition, but I wonder if jazzers do (mea culpa)


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Thanks for the link, Christian. I'd somehow missed that one.

Fascinated to see Winthrop Sergeant's presentation of the blues scale:



If one can reduce musical vocabulary to a scale (the equivalent of reducing speech to an alphabet), that's pretty much where T-Bone Walker lives.

From a purely theoretical viewpoint, it's a combination of the minor pentatonic and major hexatonic and contains both the major and relative minor blues scales - C, D, Eb, E, G, A / A, C, D, Eb, E, G. The first of these gets a lot less press than the latter but it's a basic ingredient in the lines of T-Bone's musical heir, BB King.

[Christian Miller]

IMO, the best Strat tone that Eric Clapton ever achieved is on I Ain't Superstitious from that record, channeling Hubert Sumlin (who was also a guest on the album at EC's insistence). I wouldn't be surprised if the track was a fave of the young Robert Cray:

It was the only Clapton I liked at the time. I was a Peter Green man.

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[Christian Miller]

Thanks for the link, Christian. I'd somehow missed that one.

Fascinated to see Winthrop Sergeant's presentation of the blues scale:



If one can reduce musical vocabulary to a scale (the equivalent of reducing speech to an alphabet), that's pretty much where T-Bone Walker lives.

From a purely theoretical viewpoint, it's a combination of the minor pentatonic and major hexatonic and contains both the major and relative minor blues scales - C, D, Eb, E, G, A / A, C, D, Eb, E, G. The first of these gets a lot less press than the latter but it's a basic ingredient in the lines of T-Bone's musical heir, BB King.

Also Lester young,
And naturally Charlie Christian


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[Bop Head]

IMO, the best Strat tone that Eric Clapton ever achieved is on I Ain't Superstitious from that record, channeling Hubert Sumlin (who was also a guest on the album at EC's insistence). I wouldn't be surprised if the track was a fave of the young Robert Cray:

I should sue you all for triggering and re-traumatising me into my teenage angst years LOL.

On a more serious note, I think it is interesting to look back musically from time to time and see what and how stuff still resonates in you.

[Bop Head]

And on a even more serious note and back to the OP's topic:

Even in the very early blues recordings there where two streams: the more modal, "more African" stuff and the more sophisticated ("jazzier"?) stuff. People like Robert Johnson would play both.