Favorite Slide Guitar Songs

[skyscraper101]

Just been listening to the new raconteurs track 'Top Yourself' with a nice slide guitar action in it and I was wondering what everyone's favorite slide guitar moments are in music?

I quite like some of the White Stripes tracks, earlier Aerosmith, Black Crowes, and even occasionally the Charlatans. Who does it for you?

 

[rutabowa]

robert johnson's crossroads blues

http://ddata.over-blog.com/xxxyyy/0/01/36/34/robert-johnson---the-crossroads.mp3

 

[ouchmonkey]

Elmore James

 

[Spion]

/\/\/\/\/\ yep, Dust my Broom

 

[Sunspots]

My favourite is...

 

[Yetman]

John Lennon - How do you sleep

Fucking amazing slide guitar playing by Mr George Harrison

 

[EddyBlack]

 

[EddyBlack]

Or



as well as crossroad blues.

 

[dream_girl]

Nanci Griffith - Ford Econoline

 

[Spion]

I just don't see the appeal of Johnson - his stuff is rough as arseholes

 

[Kaka Tim]

George Thoroughgood and the destroyers did some pretty mean dirty slide guitar stuff.

 

[Kaka Tim]

I just don't see the appeal of Johnson - his stuff is rough as arseholes

Eric Clapton and co's vanilla blues that way >>>>>>>>>

 

[rutabowa]

I just don't see the appeal of Johnson - his stuff is rough as arseholes

there are a lot rougher blues guitarists from the time, tho you can hear him getting more pissed as the session goes on (i prefer the rawer ones anyway). his appeal is partly the raw emotional power, the propulsive rhythm, and the futuristic sound, he invented rock and roll, if you listen to other blues from the same period you can hear how far ahead robert johnson was from most people.

 

[EddyBlack]

Clapton leaves me cold to be honest. Johnson's style combines rythym, superb passionate vocals as well as extrordinary playing and songwriting. The recordings are very old, but that doesn't bother me.

He was a master of many styles. This is a love song, it isn't slide, but Spion made me do it.

 

[Spion]

there are a lot rougher blues guitarists from the time, tho you can hear him getting more pissed as the session goes on (i prefer the rawer ones anyway). his appeal is partly the raw emotional power, the propulsive rhythm, and the futuristic sound, he invented rock and roll, if you listen to other blues from the same period you can hear how far ahead robert johnson was from most people.

I was under the impression Johnson was a locally-based and/or backward looking trend at the time, his recordings selling 'down home' music to black folks that had headed north in the 'great migration' to the industrial cities. There was a similar rustic trend in the white music market at the same time too I believe

plenty of people were making finely honed blues-based music at the time, especially the female singers with multi-piece bands

 

[Spion]

Eric Clapton and co's vanilla blues that way >>>>>>>>>

Naaah, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed, Sonny Boy, Lightnin Hopkins is more my thing - the 50s/60s electric stuff

 

[Weller]

Ry Cooder - the soundtrack to paris Texas was what first got me into slide - not a bad film either


Vigilante man...

 

[rutabowa]

I was under the impression Johnson was a locally-based and/or backward looking trend at the time, his recordings selling 'down home' music to black folks that had headed north in the 'great migration' to the industrial cities. There was a similar rustic trend in the white music market at the same time too I believe

no not at all, he was right at the dawn of electric rock music, right at the forefront. if he had stayed alive a bit longer no doubt he would have gone electric, like Elmore James.
yes there were slicker bands but that's just a different thing, more pop music. i don't think robert johnson was ever a big seller but that's not the point, it was his innovation that is important (and i happen to love the sound of it too but of course it is not for everyone)

 

[rutabowa]

Naaah, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed, Sonny Boy, Lightnin Hopkins is more my thing - the 50s/60s electric stuff

robert johnson is (one of) the links between rural blues and all that stuff though

 

[Kaka Tim]

Naaah, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed, Sonny Boy, Lightnin Hopkins is more my thing - the 50s/60s electric stuff

Good - I will refrain some sending you something to clean your ears out with.

 

[Spion]

no not at all, he was right at the dawn of electric rock music, right at the forefront.

That's quite a claim. He was a small time guitarist who toured juke joints and did 1 or 2 recording sessions amidst a context of much more successful artists. In what sense was he at the forefront?

I read Elijah Wald's Escape from the Delta recently. He argues a pretty convincing case that Johnson was one trend (a rustic sound for migrants to the north in his case) among many in music at the time and the impression we have of him as some sort of primordial force in the blues is just a modern myth made by the music industry to sell 'the blues' (to mostly white people from the 60s onwards) as a genre which many artists of the time wouldn't recognise

 

[cliche guevara]

No one has mentioned "Freebird" yet.

 

[EddyBlack]

 

[gloom monger]

There's a great Jesus Lizard track with a mean slide guitar intro. Dirty.

Can't remember name.

 

[EddyBlack]

That's quite a claim. He was a small time guitarist who toured juke joints and did 1 or 2 recording sessions amidst a context of much more successful artists. In what sense was he at the forefront?

I read Elijah Wald's Escape from the Delta recently. He argues a pretty convincing case that Johnson was one trend (a rustic sound for migrants to the north in his case) among many in music at the time and the impression we have of him as some sort of primordial force in the blues is just a modern myth made by the music industry to sell 'the blues' (to mostly white people from the 60s onwards) as a genre which many artists of the time wouldn't recognise

So why does you're favorite Elmore James play Robert Johnson songs? Dust my broom, Sweet Home Chicago etc.

 

[rutabowa]

I read Elijah Wald's Escape from the Delta recently. He argues a pretty convincing case that Johnson was one trend (a rustic sound for migrants to the north in his case) among many in music at the time and the impression we have of him as some sort of primordial force in the blues is just a modern myth made by the music industry to sell 'the blues' (to mostly white people from the 60s onwards) as a genre which many artists of the time wouldn't recognise

i just don't agree with that.
you've heard elmore james? that is a one very direct influence robert johnson had. just because he didn't sell records at the time doesn't really matter, he was/is a musician's musician, they could hear that what he was doing was new

obviously one person never invents a whole new genre of music! but he has had a disproportionate influence.

 

[Spion]

So why does you're favorite Elmore James play Robert Johnson songs? Dust my broom, Sweet Home Chicago etc.

ISTR from reading Wald's book that a lot of his songs weren't very original at all, and were adaptations of common tunes of the day. But someone's borrowed my book so can't check it just now

 

[Spion]

you've heard elmore james? that is a one very direct influence robert johnson had. just because he didn't sell records at the time doesn't really matter, he was/is a musician's musician, they could hear that what he was doing was new

How do you know they heard him, and only him, and that his tunes were not very similar to what a number of musicians at the time were doing? And how do you not know he was in fact a reflection of what he was hearing around him, and it sold, as part of a trend for the rustic among nostalgic migrants to the north?

You're just asserting his primacy in some sort of cause and effect without any evidence. I'm saying he was one among many and was only elevated years later in a marketing myth-making exercise (based on the Wald book, which is a work of history, analysing the music people were listening to at the time using documentary sources and interviews).

 

[Big Jim]

 

[EddyBlack]

How do you know they heard him, and only him, and that his tunes were not very similar to what a number of musicians at the time were doing? And how do you not know he was in fact a reflection of what he was hearing around him, and it sold, as part of a trend for the rustic among nostalgic migrants to the north?

You're just asserting his primacy in some sort of cause and effect without any evidence. I'm saying he was one among many and was only elevated years later in a marketing myth-making exercise (based on the Wald book, which is a work of history, analysing the music people were listening to at the time using documentary sources and interviews).

I think you may be right to be fair, in terms of his direct importance on the Chicago electrified scene. The Mississipi Delta area is not that big for the travelling musician circuit. And as you say part of that was borrowing or modifying songs off eachother. Johnson for example took Preaching Blues from Son House and put his own take on it.

The likes of Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters where younger contempories of these earlier musicians before they went to Chicago. There is nothing to say that Elmore James didn't hear Dust My Broom off one of the other many players.