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Just curious, has anyone tried learning lines from singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey? If yes, how do you like it, and how has it changed your playing?
I'm currently checking out Bessie Smith on the tune Backwater Blues. Just trying to learn the melody and the inflections is such a challenge. I'm starting to feel like learning vaudevillian/classic blues lines is sorta 'closing a huge knowledge gap' for me.
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07-19-2024 01:24 PM
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Just second hand via Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith was one of her two biggest influences, the other being Louis Armstrong.
Big Mama Thornton would be one of the more blues based disciples of Bessie Smith.
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Billie Holiday, wow. That's like super difficult. How do you copy her time-feel?
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I'd say just sing along with the recording (also at half speed to get into the details) until you nail it. That's the classic way.
Originally Posted by brent.h
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Just reflecting on this: is there an actual style called vaudeville blues? "Classic blues" to me evokes Robert Johnson and the like, very different from the (bit younger) music I know as "vaudeville" via Rob Mackillop's site, and that's very close to classical music. Originally Posted by brent.h
The WP article on vaudeville does mention blues but AFAICT only to mention that a number female performers (including Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith) started out in vaudeville theater.
(Thanks for getting me to read up on "vaudeville"
)
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It is similar to Louis Armstrong's rhythmic timing, which is classic. As Bophead said, singing and trying to play what you hear is the key. Master a rendition of a song they performed that exemplifies their playing style and go from there. Originally Posted by brent.h
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Blues from that era are (often) much more complex than the blues that came later on. Not just the vocalizing. We tend to assume musical evolution goes from simple to complex but as the old song says, "It ain't necessarily so." Originally Posted by brent.h
Here is Duke Robillard doing an old blues in an old-timey way. (The whole album is worth checking out.) Nice changes, indeed.
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Yes, it's a lot richer and more complex. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
Quite sad that this sound/tradition has been reduced to the blues scale.
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I think we must look at two main strains of blues which are not strictly divided. Originally Posted by brent.h
One side is the rural, more modal, more African regarding rhythm and melody, blues, leading from work songs and field hollers ...
.. over singers like Leadbelly and Lightnin' Hopkins ...
... to the electric Chicago and Detroit blues of Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. (And later to the British invasion.)
The other strain starts where the first strain became a part of early jazz with its harmony derived from classical post-romanticism and impressionism. There you have what you call vaudeville blues.
It goes on with the blues of the territory bands of Basie, McShann, Kirk and the like to the jump blues of Louis Jordan and Co. to the sophisticated blues of T-Bone Walker and Lowell Fulsom.
Those two strains are not strictly divided. BB King for example (whom I consider a representative of the second strain) who would later name Fulsom as a major influence also learned a lot under the wings of his uncle Bukka White, a Delta blues singer and slide guitar player.
Listening to blues a lot will inform your jazz phrasing and your sense of rhythm in a positive way.
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I was gonna say... Originally Posted by Bop Head
... that maybe things got more complex after the original working song music evolved into more "classy" variants which were then slowly forgotten because integrated into jazz"The other strain starts where the first strain became a part of early jazz with its harmony derived from classical post-romanticism and impressionism. There you have what you call vaudeville blues.
He also wouldn't mind performing with more traditional ("strain 1") players if I am not mistaken (George Harmonica Smith?)BB King for example (whom I consider a representative of the second strain) who would later name Fulsom as a major influence also learned a lot under the wings of his uncle Bukka White, a Delta blues singer and slide guitar player.
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^ Regarding BB: He was a superstar and a nice guy and would perform with a lot of people (also e.g. Dizzy Gillespie or Dave Brubeck) but his later own backing bands would always consist of drums, bass, a second guitarist able to comp jazzy, keyboards (organ and piano) and a horn section (a setting derived from jump blues) and those bands would play work-out arrangements and not the sort of collective improvisation you find in electric Chicago blues.
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About BB. Yeah, the horns were important to him. And the jump blues influence (-he did a lot of Louis Jordan tunes over the years), even though he wasn't really a jump blues guy when he came into his own.
If I had to play one song for someone who asked, "What's so great about BB King?" I'd play this one, the Live in Japan version of "Darling, You Know I Love You." (Early in his career, BB sang the lyric---and he was a great singer---but later on he dropped it.)
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