Forum / Squeeze Me Lemon Till The Juice Runs Down My Leg, Luv, And Then, When You're Done, Would You Please Fetch Me A Cuppa, With Just A Spot Of Cream?
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Chris OkumAug 14, 11:31pmDoes anyone here know, or, rather, understand why it was that men born in the United Kingdom between the years of 1940 and 1950 felt themselves to be the logical heirs to the African-American Delta Bluesmen? Because I was listening to Humble Pie during my luch break and it suddenly hit me, or, rather, I got really irritated with the almost minstrel-ish voice of the lead singer. And then I got to thinking about other British rock bands - the usual suspects (the Beatles, excluded, of couse, as I don't feel the ever really indulged in this kind of racial mischief [I could be wrong, though]), and I started to wonder why it is that this particular group of men identified with not only the musician- ship of their wannabe-progenitors, but also their oppression, as if growing up in Leeds in 1947 was tantamount to being born in Biloxi in the early part of the 20th Century. I mean, this has been going on for years, and it's just accepted, as if, yeah, you know Keith Richards, he's on the continuum with Howlin Wolf and Blind Lemon Jefferson, and so is Jimmy Page, and I don't understand why that is, when the act itself it so clearly an act, and a campy one at that. Does it have to do with the British class system? Is it so bad that a lad from Art School in London really does feel oppressed, as oppressed as Robert Johnson did? Or as constantly hornswoggled as Chuck Berry must have been? The farther we get away from the 60s the weirder it seems to me that this really happened, that white men were allowed to get away with these kind of shenanigans. I know Elvis did it first, but I can see the cause of his identification, it makes sense? Steve Marriot? Robert Plant? Not so much.
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Carol ReidAug 14, 11:44pmIt does have to do with the class system and with the tough life for the working classes in Northern England. I think Eric Burdon spoke about this quite eloquently somewhere. I'll look around and if I can find what I'm talking about.
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Carol ReidAug 15, 12:05am
Not what I was looking for but you might find this worth watching.
http://www.blackbullblues.com/blues-docus/documentary-how-britain-got-the-blues/
It doesn't really answer the question of Having the Right to Sing the Blues, though.
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Chris OkumAug 15, 12:11am
Thanks, Carol!
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Barry BasdenAug 15, 12:39amWow, what a treasure. It's on youtube, too, broken up into 6 or 7 parts.
Here's part 1:
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Gary HardawayAug 15, 01:57amIt's the sound, not the experience.
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Charlotte HamrickAug 15, 03:02amExactly what Gary said. I'm a white middle class woman who grew up lower middle-class rural. Can I not identify with the blues? Maybe I didn't have the exact same experiences as Robert Johnson or Led Belly or a host of others but everything is relative. Music is the rock bottom basis that unites us as humans, imo.
Plus no one can know another person's pain. No one can judge another person's pain. -
Chris OkumAug 15, 04:32am
Eh, I see what I said has already been misinterpreted. But that's okay.
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Amantine BAug 15, 07:15amChris,
Elvis did not so much imitate their style as grow up among them, which would make the sound a natural
progression for him at such an early stage in his musical formation. I've heard a couple of very early rare recordings of his and the musical authenticity is unmasked. Calvin Newborn for one is among the originals who is said to have taught Elvis a few things on guitar and the Men’s Improvement Club was a regular haunt Elvis frequented as a youngster to watch and listen to local blues musicians. In his particular case I think the tragedy was an inversion where he was forced to play the role of a white cool American ladies' man and never got to play and perform the intrinsic music that was part of his musical upbringing. What he did do was infuse elements of it into the music he played, which I reads more as a homage than riding the back of the proverbial 'colonial monkey'. This one can hear too of his relationship with gospel,something he was surrounded by growing up.I think overall, it was part of the condescending social propagandist mindest of the era of sanitising a sound: much like 'Spaniosity', for example in classical composition where you can find 'spanish music' written by non-Spanish composers: Bizet's Carmen perhaps the most accessible and well known example. Over ninety composers are discussed in this context in a book on Art Song Composers of Spain; An Encyclopedia, by Suzanne Rhodes Daayer.
The offence might feel hardly as deep but it is, at a certain point, a form of indefensible artistic patronisation... which is what I think is the point your try to make.I think there is a difference between influence, inspiration, homage and interpretative pillaging.
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Amantine BAug 15, 07:37am
ps Chris,
Here is an example of 'Africaniosity' that curls my toes in distaste.
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Sam RasnakeAug 15, 02:59pmA meeting of minds, hearts, hands, and ears - the great Albert King & Stevie Ray Vaughan ... performing "Born Under a Bad Sign" (written for William Bell & Booker T. Jones)
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Oliver HuntAug 15, 05:13pmYou have to consider that Plant and Terry Reid- and Plant has admitted as much- were basically aping Janis Joplin.
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