Just why is blues so important when learning bass?

[Happy Jack]

[quote name='witterth' post='706288' date='Jan 9 2010, 08:46 AM']EDIT:BTW, don't call ANYONE a "cat" unless they are LITERALLY a cat......dear me!!!......[/quote]

Is it Ok to call them a pussy?

[EssentialTension]

I'm a big blues fan and I'd certainly support the comments about its importance to modern popular song forms.

However, I think one of the reasons that blues has got a bad name - a boring name perhaps - is because, since the British blues boom of the late '60s, your average pub blues band or pub blues jam has a strong tendency to repeat the same old songs in the same old arrangement. So pub blues has increasingly less and less reference back to, say, Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf, to Skip James or Robert Johnson, but instead merely repeats the way, say, Fleetwood Mac or Savoy Brown or whoever did it. There are standard arrangements of a limited list of blues songs such that the tradition has a tendency to petrification.

I don't mean to over-generalize because I know there are plaenty of both traditionalist and creative blues musicians around but I hope people might get my point.

[skankdelvar]

[quote name='Paul S' post='706283' date='Jan 9 2010, 08:16 AM']Surely that is the nature of being in a covers band? A lot - if not most - music, not just blues, is written buy someone who is communicating some kind of life experience. Do you have to be similarly placed in order to play it? The majority of us middle-aged pentatonic heroes would be struggling to get together a set list from our demography, I would suggest [/quote]

True, one doesn't have to a razor-wielding ex-con to knock out Leadbelly songs. And yes, it ain't easy, but it does seem a bit incongruous sometimes. And can lead to faux-pas.

I remember one singer of my acquaintance who always - mistakenly - modified the line 'Little John The Conqueror Root" to "His John The Congeroo", seriously insisting that it was as per the original and quite clearly a reference to eels.

'Petrification' - for me, that about sums up the state of much of the blues canon. And as a blues-player, that worries me a bit.

Edited January 9, 2010 by skankdelvar

[Spoombung]

[color="#FF0000"][size=6]Beware of Eric Clapton and Paul Weller disease.[/size][/color]

[Chris2112]

[quote name='snip' post='705402' date='Jan 8 2010, 12:57 PM']Absolutely Brilliant...

How does he get that sound.? I know he's playing a Pedulla bass, but what amp is he using.?[/quote]

That will be the Bartolini pickups, primarily...awesome sound! Perhaps I shall invest in some for my basses!

[iconic]

[quote name='OutToPlayJazz' post='705098' date='Jan 8 2010, 08:16 AM']Blues (and the precursor, Ragtime) are the foundations upon which all of our popular music is built. The basic chord useage of I-IV-V and the use of the pentatonic scale/minor blues scale are the building blocks for practically all popular music.

As an accomplished classical player in my late teens/early twenties I learned to improvise at blues jams. I learned a lot of valuable life skills through "The Blues." [/quote]

I went back thru this thread guys, grateful thanks for the help and examples of blues, but it didn't answer my question as to [i]why [/i] is it important, for me this was a more a fundamental answer to the question, which was purely put due to my lack of understanding, thanks OTPJ.

I have found these Blues pentatonic scales are very, very useful... simple and sooo close to my own thoughts of a 'funk/disco' scale, I mean you could play notes in any order and still sound musical!

....strangely the 1,4,5 chord run sounds more bluesey as 1,3,5 to me, but I'm tone deaf

[iconic]

[quote name='Chris2112' post='707357' date='Jan 10 2010, 07:18 AM']That will be the Bartolini pickups, primarily...awesome sound! Perhaps I shall invest in some for my basses![/quote]


lovely sound.....hmmmmm

[karlfer]

Love playing the blues.

Shortest ever blues toon,

Didn't wake up this morning.

Coat ready and waiting.

[skankdelvar]

[quote name='iconic' post='707361' date='Jan 10 2010, 08:16 AM']I went back thru this thread guys, grateful thanks for the help and examples of blues, but it didn't answer my question as to [i]why [/i] is it important, for me this was a more a fundamental answer to the question, which was purely put due to my lack of understanding, thanks OTPJ.[/quote]
Okey-Doke. IMO, the 'importance' of the blues rests in more than the nuts and bolts of how you play it. I'd argue that it's significant for other aspects:

* If you want to know where you are, it's a good idea to know where you started from. So the Blues is 'important' because it's been enormously influential. As explained above, Blues is at the root of much of today's popular music. Musically, R&B is the most obvious linear descendent. Rap continues and extends the 'attitude' side of things.

* Prior to the Blues, popular music lyrics tended to be fluffy nonsense descended from the theatrical / music hall tradition -"Come into the garden Maud" etc. The Blue's street-level, blue-collar lyrics ushered in the possibility that songs could be about ordinary people and their daily lives. Much of modern music takes this approach.

By the standards of the day, early blues tended to be much ruder and tougher. Hence the word play in Blues that veils innuendo and protest. When someone's singing about a 'Jelly-Roll', they're referring to a penis. So, when a female singer's going on about Her Man and his Big Jelly Roll, it's as if Leona Lewis is on primetime TV [i]openly[/i] singing about getting a big c*ck up her.

* Recorded Blues music was Black America's earliest incursion into mass media. After a period when it fulfilled a role of 'community cohesion', it crossed over into the mainstream, via it's offspring '50's R&B', Soul and Rock & Roll. This seriously pissed off interest groups ranging from Media owners through Churches to the Ku Klux Klan. One of the reasons they burned Elvis records in the street was because he came on like a black dude. So White America feared for it's impressionable youth. Which can only be a good thing.

* The naked exploitation of the old Bluesmen by white record executives informs Black musical history and explains the significance of Motown, Sugar Hill and Death Row as vehicles for Black musical autonomy.

The Blues (or 'Race' music, as it was called till the 60's) was one of the catalysts for change which makes our society free-er today than it was 50 years ago.

Edited January 10, 2010 by skankdelvar

[EssentialTension]

[quote name='skankdelvar' post='707764' date='Jan 10 2010, 03:27 PM']Rap continues and extends the 'attitude' side of things.[/quote]
Rap seems to me to be a kind of altered (but not totally altered) 'talking blues'.

[Bloodaxe]

[quote name='skankdelvar' post='707764' date='Jan 10 2010, 03:27 PM']Okey-Doke. IMO, the 'importance' of the blues rests in more than the nuts and bolts of how you play it. I'd argue that it's significant for other aspects:

<snip>[/quote]

I'd agree with m'learned colleague's appraisal & add in this grandiose oversimplification...

In the late 40s there was the svelte, urbane Jazz & it's poor country cousin The Blues. Jazz had it made, it was hip, swingin', cool, & all sorts of other baaadd sh*t. So it pretty much put its feet up for the next 70 years.

The Blues, however, seemed to be good at making friends from different backgrounds. Probably its first new pal was Country. Helped by Blues' sister Gospel, they arrived at the idea of Rock 'n' Roll - where colour didn't seem to matter (Blues & Gospel was for Black people, Country was for the White Folk, but R 'n' R was for anyone who wanted to have a party). Rock 'n' Roll went on to become the dominant form of popular music in the Western world.

Meanwhile Blues split, caught a northbound freight train & moved to the big industrial cities where there was work. Some folks added into this & set up Motown (part of the blues that stayed south found a cozy nest in a place called Stax), these extra influences brought Soul into being. As time passed & tastes changed, Soul begat Funk & Funk begat Disco.

While all that was going on a few middle-class white guys in London, Birmingham & points North got bored with Rock 'n' Roll & went back to "the source" - The Blues. To begin with they tried to be as "authentic" as they could be, but it dawned on some that they were stained-glass window designers from Richmond & not particularly downtrodden or repressed, let alone discriminated against or enslaved. So they started to write things from their standpoint & so we got Rock. Some art students got bored with this, nicked a load of stuff off some dead guys & perpetrated Prog Rock, which caused a huge backlash that instigated Punk. Rock caught on to Punk's vibe & mutated into Heavy Metal.

In the late 70s & into the 80s, Motown & Stax became a fixture on the club scene in the north of England. Out of the Northern Soul scene came BritPop. In the US of A, Funk + Jamaican "toasting" caused Rap.

And so it goes on...

Jazz has pretty much stayed as jazz. But look at what grew out of the Blues - that's why it's important.

Pete.

Edited January 10, 2010 by Bloodaxe

[fatback]

[quote name='Bloodaxe' post='707805' date='Jan 10 2010, 04:09 PM']And so it goes on...

Jazz has pretty much stayed as jazz. But look at what grew out of the Blues - that's why it's important.

Pete.[/quote]

Wow. As neat a piece of music history as I've seen.

Nice one.