Your Favourite Recordings / Videos of Players Playing The Blues

[ruger9]

Ok he's a blues player but I'm gonna slide this T Bone video in just because he's so great and 3:15 puts it in the jazz category

T-Bone was the bomb, and that's one of my favorite performances. I guess he's "jazzy blues" as opposed to "bluesy jazz."

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

Billy Butler's hit Honky Tonk

For those who don’t know, Butler was a Philadelphian who played with Bill Doggett (another Philadelphian) on the original Honky Tonk about 15 years earlier. That was the big hit version - it was in the top 10 on Billboard’s hot 100 for a week or two and #1 on the R&B chart for many weeks IIRC. He’s also credited as one of the composers. His smooth soul solo is the highlight of the tune.

Butler was on dozens of jazz and blues recordings with top names like Dizzy, Ammons and Stitt. He played the blues on some beautiful guitars. Here he is on a Super 400 with a DeArmond :



a blond L-5S :



an Epi semi :

[wintermoon]

I saw an interview w Doggett and he said he and Butler were playing a gig and Billy came up w the tune on the spot and it went over so well the crowd made them play it 3 or 4 more times, thus a hit was born.

[wintermoon]

Ah ha, said interview, @ 17:00
Bill apparently stopped @ Buddy Rich's hair stylist on the way....

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

Ah ha, said interview, @ 17:00
Bill apparently stopped @ Buddy Rich's hair stylist on the way....

I always thought it was Moe's....

[wintermoon]

I always thought it was Moe's....

that's a phony Moe, this is the real Moe and his sugar bowl cut was real!
hmm, I think I'm gonna name my next band the Phony Moe's

[jazzloverfat]

Blues Groove - Tiny Grimes

Thank you so much for this, I absolutely loved the album!

Do you have anything else similar?

[AllanAllen]

Thank you so much for this, I absolutely loved the album!

Do you have anything else similar?

[pamosmusic]

Had a student asking for a blues he should transcribe and I decided to shake things up and NOT suggest No. 1 Green St. So I suggested this one instead. I've never learned it, so I started transcribing it today.

This solo rules. The whole thing, but especially the opening.

[DawgBone]

No guitar here but blues is more than guitar and this is how it's done. It bothers me how Memphis Slim could be so big that he had his own blues club in Tel Aviv and now no one remember him....

[Strat-itis]

Milt!

[AlmaJ]

For tasteful blues playing with plenty of stealable licks, my favorite recording is Kenny Burrell’s "Midnight Blue" (1963)

[Bob_Ross]

I honestly have no business posting anything in a thread that is championing or celebrating Blues music...because I actually detest the Blues.

Yeah, I said it. I Do Not Like Them Sam I Am.

For a brief period in my very early adolescence when I was first learning to play guitar I was kinda okay with the Blues, because that "dunt-duh dunt-duh dunt-duh dunt-duh" Emaj/E6 idiomatic riff was cool the very first time I learned to play it. But I then quickly became bored with the predictable-to-the-point-of-being-clichéd harmonic structure that defines most Blues tunes. I really do hate it.

(About 30 years ago I composed a tune called "I Refuse The Blues" which -- ironically, and intentionally ironically -- was an actual Blues tune, albeit radically deconstructed. It's okay. Clever.)

So yeah, the Blues and me do not get along.

BUT HAVING SAID THAT... here's my favorite recording of someone playing the Blues. Pat Martino's "The Visit"

[DawgBone]

I honestly have no business posting anything in a thread that is championing or celebrating Blues music...because I actually detest the Blues.

Yeah, I said it. I Do Not Like Them Sam I Am.

For a brief period in my very early adolescence when I was first learning to play guitar I was kinda okay with the Blues, because that "dunt-duh dunt-duh dunt-duh dunt-duh" Emaj/E6 idiomatic riff was cool the very first time I learned to play it. But I then quickly became bored with the predictable-to-the-point-of-being-clichéd harmonic structure that defines most Blues tunes. I really do hate it.

If you don't ever leave the kiddie end of the pool a deep dive isn't possible.

[Bob_Ross]

If you don't ever leave the kiddie end of the pool a deep dive isn't possible.

I wasn't saying my listening to the Blues ended with remedial riffing at age 13; that's just when my enjoyment of the Blues ended. My opinion is based on hearing most every celebrated master of the genre over 5 or 6 decades and thinking "Nope, still doesn't do anything for me."

[Gsjazz]

Lots of recordings that come to mind but I really like Wes Montgomery – Full House (Live at Tsubo)Wes’s blues playing here is phenomenal, particularly on tracks like "Blue 'N Boogie." Tons of great licks, and his sense of swing is unreal.

[John A.]

One of my all time favorites.

[DawgBone]

One of my all time favorites.

I definitely have a lotta love for Mike Bloomfield's work. Outstanding feel and soul. This one reminds me of that earlier BB KIng type playing.