[Harp-L] Re: More Recognizable blues tunes



John Frazier wrote:
He asked for tunes that your average non-blues aficionado would recognize.

Hell, I don't recognize half of those. LOL

When I read your excellent original prime-the-pump list, I knew that it must've been in response to a question, but I didn't see the question, and my pump got all primey and all.


It inspired my first response, based on the idea of songs that felt like blues and yet had highly unique melodies.

I then got into the car to hunt down some dinner for the wife and me and the pump really took off. Got home and knocked out the second list, again having little to do with what I now know to have been the actual question, and everything to do with beautiful blues songs with unique melodies.

I knew the odds were good that I had gone off-subject, but it still seemed like a worthwhile list to make for the general discussion.

The blues recordings I enjoyed the most through the years, and almost all of the blues recordings that really stick with, me push one edge or another, and make themselves unique and recognizeable AND ARE STILL BLUES. Fixin' To Die by Bukka White and Hard Time Killin' Floor by Skip James come to mind. Heck, most of Muddy's best material doesn't sound like anything else.

When I was a kid I and I'd read an interview with a great musician, I was skeptical when they'd say that the blues is not a form or scale, it's a feeling. But the truth of that observation is made clear when you try to say one thing is blues and another thing is not. (In the 60's there were actually some boneheads who proclaimed that Bessie Smith's recordings were not 'real' blues.)

Hence, Kenny The D's Postulate: if something sounds or feels 'bluesy' then it is The Blues.

In any case, the tunes I put on my list all sound like standards to me, are really unique and seriously blues.

K the D







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