Blues ♫ Music only | ...That you listen now, or recently, or you love...

[Wombat]

Samples

 

[Wombat]

Disc 9 alternate takes.

 

[digicidal]

It almost doesn't matter the genre... metal, country, punk, blues... my favorite band has a few of each.

This is a little of both...

 

[audimus]

Blues is my go to music most days and I prefer the Chicago electric style - Buddy Guy, Luther Allison, etc. but have a collection of recordings of all styles from the last 5 or 6 decades.

Unfortunately, the downside of listening to revealing equipment is how bad so many of the recordings are. I don’t mean the Blues from 60 years ago but even ones in the last decade. Probably have every Buddy Guy album.

What are your recommendations for particularly good recordings?

I am not sure I can point to any particular CD as exceptional but the following do stand out in my collection for sound quality. I find the key to a good electric blues recording/mastering is a really deep “black” silence for riffs and voice to cut through and the quivers and vibratos to come through that make it the blues. Room correction to smooth out lower frequencies does wonders.

These are purely from a recording quality perspective. Your tastes for the actual music may vary

Various - The Alligator Records 25th Anniversary
Various - Alligator Records 35x35
Various - Alligator Records 40th Anniversary
Various - Blind Pig Sampler Prime Chops
Various - Blues Masters Volume 9 (Varying quality as a compilation from multiple sources)

Buddy Guy - Bring ‘Em In
Buddy Guy - Skin Deep
Buddy Guy - Living Proof
Susan Tedeschi - Just won’t burn/The best of
Bernard Allison (Luther’s son) - Times are changing
Johny Adams - There is always one more time

 

[Wombat]

I take it as it comes. Blues is blues except for the 'second-hand' stuff that lower-middle class(and up) pretenders churn out. Sorry, Eric.

 

[audimus]

And for a live performance, of all the zillion live things I have heard, just can’t get over this one particular performance by Robert Cray at CrossRoads Festival (even amongst his own renderings). Like Clapton’s first rendering of Layla where he channeled his innermost feelings, this one has it. And for guitar players, check out his fingering (only possible with his really long fingers)

 

[Wombat]

And for a live performance, of all the zillion live things I have heard, just can’t get over this one particular performance by Robert Cray at CrossRoads Festival (even amongst his own renderings). Like Clapton’s first rendering of Layla where he channeled his innermost feelings, this one has it. And for guitar players, check out his fingering (only possible with his really long fingers)

Robert Cray grew up in a 'comfortable' military family. His blues are copy-cat and styled rather than lived - as are most modern exponents.

I don't mind that but the early artists are of more interest to me, even if the recordings are rough-and-ready.

Having said that, I was turned on to early blues artists through the British bands in the 60s. Stones, Mayall. Animals, etc. and do like modern takes.

I have a few crossroads videos that I much enjoy.

 

[audimus]

Robert Cray grew up in a 'comfortable' military family. His blues are copy-cat and styled rather than lived.
I don't mind that but the early artists are of more interest to me, even if the recordings are rough-and-ready.

Having said that, I was turned on to early blues artists through the British artists of the 60s. Stones, Mayall. Animals, etc.

I have a few crossroads videos that I much enjoy.

Personal choices obviously vary since blues encompasses a very wide range of styles. That I understand.

I don’t buy that copycat label although I hear it a lot. You need to have lived hard times, etc., otherwise you are a copycat, etc. It is more of an intellectual rationalization than an emotional listening of music.

Blues is a feeling of your emotions and expression of it. It may have initially come through in the US with a history of pain related to living conditions, but they also adopted music traditions that existed before with the instruments and voices they had. Feeling of despair, pain, lost love, frustration, etc., don’t go away or are any less because one grows up in an easier life than in that past. Nobody owns the blues to call others a copycat or everyone is a copycat because every blues player out there grew up deeply influenced by the style of someone before them.

What matters is whether one is expressing blues and whether it moves you. This is true if it is Opera, Gospel or Country.

Having said that not everyone playing blues can get the emotional part right. Joe Bonamassa is technically brilliant but his songs lack that emotional appeal. John Mayer, a little better but similar. But it is not because they had an easy life and I wouldn’t call them copycats, just that they have mastered the art form but not the expression. Clapton or Clay have had their own personal issues that they put into music and wonderfully so adopting that art form.

Or to bring up the methodology of this site, perhaps we should make people listen in a blind test of blues of musicians that have had a hard life and those that haven’t and they don’t know how they grew up or their race and which is which and see if they can distinguish between who is legit and who is “a copycat”. If they cannot reliably distinguish, does how they grew up matter?

 

[Wombat]

Personal choices obviously vary since blues encompasses a very wide range of styles. That I understand.

I don’t buy that copycat label although I hear it a lot. You need to have lived hard times, etc., otherwise you are a copycat, etc. It is more of an intellectual rationalization than an emotional listening of music.

Blues is a feeling of your emotions and expression of it. It may have initially come through in the US with a history of pain related to living conditions, but they also adopted music traditions that existed before with the instruments and voices they had. Feeling of despair, pain, lost love, frustration, etc., don’t go away or are any less because one grows up in an easier life than in that past. Nobody owns the blues to call others a copycat or everyone is a copycat because every blues player out there grew up deeply influenced by the style of someone before them.

What matters is whether one is expressing blues and whether it moves you. This is true if it is Opera, Gospel or Country.

Having said that not everyone playing blues can get the emotional part right. Joe Bonamassa is technically brilliant but his songs lack that emotional appeal. John Mayall, a little better but similar. But it is not because they had an easy life and I wouldn’t call them copycats, just that they have mastered the art form but not the expression. Clapton or Clay have had their own personal issues that they put into music and wonderfully so adopting that art form.

Or to bring up the methodology of this site, perhaps we should make people listen in a blind test of blues of musicians that have had a hard life and those that haven’t and they don’t know how they grew up or their race and which is which and see if they can distinguish between who is legit and who is “a copycat”. If they cannot reliably distinguish, does how they grew up matter?

Not disagreeing. I just like the feeling in the old(historical, lived) stuff more than the feeling in the newer stuff.

Nothing wrong with good modern 'blues' although the accolades seem to go to guitar virtuoses.

 

[Wombat]

Some fun and sizzle:

 

[audimus]

Yes, you don’t hear too many songs with s%@# in the lyrics and a mea culpa when you hit the wrong note.

I mean on a professional stage. We amateurs do it all the time.

 

[digicidal]

New sounds from an old pro...

And old sounds from new ones...

 

[audimus]

Good contrast that shows up the difference between playing the blues and playing cool guitar licks.

 

[digicidal]

Good contrast that shows up the difference between playing the blues and playing cool guitar licks.

True... although the bigger difference it shows is the one between studio work and live shows IMO.

 

[Wombat]

Good contrast that shows up the difference between playing the blues and playing cool guitar licks.

Performing lived blues vs playing with/at/imitating blues.

Johnny Cash was a Blues singer.

 

[Wombat]

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8a8cutYP7fqHny-LuwLz32F0o8fEF4ad

 

[Wombat]

Samples

 

[Wombat]

The mostly unknown Doc Pomus:

Disc 1 is Doc and his blues. Disc 2 shows some of his day job compositions, songwriter for the music industry.

Samples: https://www.amazon.de/Doc-Pomus-Singer-Songwriter-Various/dp/B007V1D4G8

Background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doc_Pomus

 

[Maxicut]

JUSTIN NGARIKI is Australia's most unsung blues guitarist. Here's just a quick lead break with his local pub band "The Dastardly Bastards" (the sound isn't the best sorry)

 

[Wombat]