Favorite Slide Guitar Songs

[ouchmonkey]

Thank you Magic Sam!

I was beginning to despair a little

but Chess wasn't a reissue label, it was a contemporary pop label!

Chess was set up to release Blues music by delta musicians moving to Chicago.
IIRC it was Muddy Waters band that were the catalyst for that,
the move from a rural to urban location toughened the music, Waters went electric, drummers became integral to the bands - a lot of this was just to be loud enough to play over the noise of the crowds.
Chess did record R&B and Soul too because the music developed quickly in that direction - more urban, more sophisticated - but it was set up to be a blues label.

As for Robert Johnson,
the idea he was part of some down-home backwards looking thing is looking at it from now, not then. He was pushing forward. His last, unrecorded, band was supposed to have a drummer and sound more like what would, years later, be rock 'n' roll.
The crossroads myth is also attached to him 'cos he was considered kinda OK on the circuit - went away for a summer - and came back, as in the myth,
startlingly better.
It's less mythically thought he went away and learnt from an unrecorded musician called Ike Zinneman.

 

[rutabowa]

Chess was set up to release Blues music by delta musicians moving to Chicago.
IIRC it was Muddy Waters band that were the catalyst for that,
the move from a rural to urban location toughened the music, Waters went electric, drummers became integral to the bands - a lot of this was just to be loud enough to play over the noise of the crowds.
Chess did record R&B and Soul too because the music developed quickly in that direction - more urban, more sophisticated - but it was set up to be a blues label.

i was making the point though that the reason it was sold by the brothers for so much money was that had become a hit-producing label (and the big-selling hits weren't blues).

 

[ouchmonkey]

i was making the point though that the reason it was sold by the brothers for so much money was that had become a hit-producing label (and the big-selling hits weren't blues).

this is fair enough, but you know what I'm saying - it wasn't really a contemporary pop label, unless you want to make a semantic point about how Chicago Blues was the contemporary pop music of it's milieu.

which you could, if you were arsed like...............

 

[rutabowa]

but the later big hits on Chess couldn't be described as blues at all really, that's what i'm saying. listen to The Book Of Love and try and find any blues in it! it is more doowop or something, pop music.

 

[ouchmonkey]

What, for eg, about Chess records in the 50s with most of the major blues artists - now that was no two bit operation was it? Those two brothers must have been millionaires. In fact a quick Wiki says they sold the label for $6.5m in 1969. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_Records

The Chess brothers ran clubs in Chicago - they set up a record label, Aristocrat records, and put out a few jazz vocal type things before they noticed that the cities black population wanted recordings of the blues being played by people like Muddy Waters. So they set up Chess, and it made them, eventually, rich.
The idea it was a cynical money making ploy is a bit harsh, it could just as easily have fell on it's ass.

but the later big hits on Chess couldn't be described as blues at all really, that's what i'm saying. listen to The Book Of Love and try and find any blues in it! it is more doowop or something, pop music.

I'm not arguing that everything on Chess is blues.
I'm not even really arguing with you at all

 

[rutabowa]

oh no i'm not saying saying they were just cynical business men! just commercially aware... but my original point, from when Chess was 1st brought up on this thread, was that early acoustic blues (ie Robert Johnson and co) wasn't big business in the 1960s it was a very niche market... whereas Chess was definitely a more commercial concern, and as such it moved away from blues to poppier stuff.

no, no argument from me either everyone has had interesting things to say!

 

[Magic Sam]

I was beginning to despair a little

It's less mythically thought he went away and learnt from an unrecorded musician called Ike Zinneman.

Thats right, that story comes from Son House. House was playing with Charley Patton at Dockery Plantation (where Patton lived) and Johnson was there (House and Patton would have been in their late 20's early 30's and Jonson in his late teens). Johnson was picking up their guitars and playing in between their songs but not very well by all accounts as House and Patton made fun of him and told him to stop making a racket (or words to that effect). House said that Johnson disappeared for the best part of 18 months and the next time he saw him he was playing in the street in a sharp suit and he couldn't believe his ears. Johnson was doing all the things that Patton/ House did but with all of these bass notes that sounded like 2 guitars playing at once. House (who had a religious upbringing) remarked "there is only one way you get that good so quick".

What House didn't know was that Johnson had got married and moved away but spent his evenings with Zinnerman playing their guitars into the night.

Zinnerman like Henry Sloan who tutored Charley Patton all those years before must take great credit for Johnson's rise to prominance.

 

[rutabowa]

though bluesmen (and everyone really) were also pretty capable of self mythologising so who knows!

 

[Spion]

As for Robert Johnson,
the idea he was part of some down-home backwards looking thing is looking at it from now, not then. He was pushing forward. His last, unrecorded, band was supposed to have a drummer and sound more like what would, years later, be rock 'n' roll.

Hmmm, ISTR reading there had been a trend for 'down home' in black and white music in the early 30s prompted by the wave of migration north. I'm not saying he wasn't moving forward but that at one point he fitted that trend

 

[Magic Sam]

There is a very good essay on Johnson here if anyone is interested ?http://www.earlyblues.com/robert_johnson_essay.htm

 

[Magic Sam]

Back to the thread anyone remember this?
Spoontastic