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(Bit of context to OP - I mentioned not going to chord IV in bop and earlier jazz blues and this wasn’t a thing in jazz until the 60s but deleted it because I felt it was unnecessary.)
Originally Posted by Bop Head
Yeah, that’s not really what I meant. I would say that was more common in Chicago Blues as well. What I think of the IV chord in jazz I think of more of the Blue Note/Soul Jazz thing which makes me think of 60s jazz. No doubt there’s a counter example or two somewhere….
i could imagine chord IV starting with a misheard V+ (very common in 20s/30s music) but that’s just my theory.
Anyway, the takeaway for me is that blues isn’t always just blues. The tunes have specifics to them just like any song.
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09-04-2022 03:42 AM
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This is a 24 bar blues of course. ‘Boogaloo’ groove
Someone on the forum who shall go nameless once posted that they didn’t think Barry Harris was very bluesy and was too classical. I’ve heard others say the same thing about Stitt.
One of the most sophisticated bebop takes on the blues
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Unfortunately an unable video editor shows (as it often happens) other musicians while he plays his solo.
Lonnie Johnson recorded with Louis Armstrong and Ellington and influenced Robert Johnson and Elvis.
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Ah yeah! One thing you get a lot with the early stuff is tunes where the form includes the 12 bar but also other sections like Tishomingo Blues, Royal Garden Blues and so on. This is nice example with Lonnie doing his thing Originally Posted by Bop Head
i mean there’s not so much of a divide between early jazz and blues stuff
WC Handy pumped out a few of them. Always liked St Louis Blues. Bill does it nice
There are tunes which have a strong blues feel to them without having a blues form too. I always liked playing/singing this one
Or for that matter Lonnie playing a strong blues vibe over a usually non bluesy Tin Pan Alley standard.
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“The Sidewinder” reminds me of going to acid jazz parties in the 90ies. I just cannot remember which hip-hop band sampled from it. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Regarding Barry: Cannonball Adderley would not have engaged him if he could not play blues. Barry just quit after one tour and one album as he did not like the touring life.
In interviews Barry recalls playing a lot at dances in his early career in his youth, a time when there was not such a strict division between jazz and rhythm & blues (or “race music” as it was called before). Barry complained in one interview that drummers do not know how to play “the shuffle” any more, ”the best rhythm of them all”.
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I have the following theory: Originally Posted by Christian Miller
If you look at a quick change blues like in many rhythm & blues, rock & roll, chicago blues tunes:
| I | IV | I | I |
| IV | IV | I | I |
| V | IV | I | I |
you will notice that there is a IV chord in the second bar of each four bar phrase. There has always been a strong stress on the IV chord in folk blues and derived urban forms like Chicago Blues and Detroit Blues (John Lee Hooker; Detroit again LOL). There is even often the following form, starting on the IV:
| IV | IV | I | I |
| IV | IV | I | I |
| V | IV | I | I |
On the other hand many traditional jazz blues in the Armstrong / Bessie Smith vein have a V in bar 2.
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Cool didn’t know about the Chicago/Detroit blues variant, any tunes that spring to mind? Originally Posted by Bop Head
I do tend to see that music as a separate stream budding off early blues/swing music. Charlie Christian being important to blues and R&B as well as jazz guitar, for instance. Which is simplistic…
As you say everyone was covering different gigs, so of course there was a cross pollination in the 50s and 60: and being able to appropriately play all the variants was presumably an important part of being a pro back then. Wayne Shorter plenty of those gigs (and he’s a big blues player, regardless of all the chord scale guys thinking that’s what he’s about.)
So yeah, maybe. Parker also liked a V in bar 2 (or a ii V) but he also liked a IV7 and he loved to play the blues scale on IV7
There’s probably a phd in researching this, and I’m not really up for doing the work haha
As a teacher i think it makes the most sense to identify the basic form
ie
I x 4
IV x 2
I x 2
V x 2
I x 2
And then just introduce all the possible variations from there. A lot of guitarists I’ve taught see them IV in bar 10 as fundamental, when it’s not even fundamental to rock music, let alone the IV in bar 2. So when it comes to jazz blues the logic is less clear.
When in fact all you are really doing with JB is using a ii V in 9-10 and setting up with some sort of passing chord in bar 8 which could be IV7, bIIIo7, bIIIm7, minor ii-V whatever…. That’s it for the basic framework.
(Add any other passing chords that fit the melody, like a IV- in bar 5 for Things Ain’t What They Used to Be and do something in bar 2 if it’s right for the song. And yet people inflexibly play the IV7 in bar 2 and so on. Drives I mad it does!!! Learn the bloody song. Get off my lawn!!)
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And then there’s playing the major 7 on chord IV7…. And the Ionian blues. Or maybe, the anti-blues!
Bird identified this as a Lester Young thing to a young Miles (it’s in Berliner.) maybe that’s what he was thinking when he wrote this
According to Ethan Iverson Basie often comped IV6 under Prez here. Tbh I find it hard to hear on those old sides, but it’s interesting.
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and me. Originally Posted by Bop Head
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There's alot of great listening in this thread...
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"...Cool didn’t know about the Chicago/Detroit blues variant, any tunes that spring to mind?.."
Chicago style...one blues band that received little recognition (my take) Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Michael Bloomfield was way ahead of most all 60s players..Hendrix excepted...
their first album..very raw recording..sounds flat..recorded in a small room?..but Bloomies solo work shines bright..listen to Mellow Down Easy
so wish it could be remastered and re-released..but sadly...
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I just remembered that there exists some very rare footage that shows the late Barry remembering his Rhythm & Blues roots. I looks like s/o (probably the singer) spotted him and pulled him to that organ. He seems shocked at first by the sheer volume of an electric blues band but he plays that game and later on seems to even find some fun in exploring that instrument. Originally Posted by Bop Head
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Regarding Chicago and Detroit I was talking about the original African-American artists like Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Buddy Guy, Sonny Boy Williamson I and II, Otis Spann, Hubert Sumlin, Sunnyland Slim, John Brim, elmore James, Lttle Walter etc. that published records on labels like Chess (there produced by bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon) — Musicians that travelled from the rural South to Chicago (or Detroit like John Lee Hooker) to work there and who brought their music with them and electrified it in the cities. (Muddy Waters was by random recorded by field researcher Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in Clarksdale, Mississippi, before he moved to Chicago to work as a truck driver for the slaughterhouses.) Originally Posted by wolflen
Mike Bloomfield (who was a great guitarist, no doubt, and a major influence on the above mentioned Robben Ford AFAIK) comes more from the more polished linage of people like T-Bone Walker, BB King or Lowell Fullson IMHO.
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Originally Posted by Swingstring
Think of this chart as music's forms.
See that one at the top, Tomarctus?
He is the blues back in about 1860.
Blues may be the least limited form.
Try thinking of the blues in that way.
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Still searching, meanwhile same nice kazoo and harmonica work from the days before the invention of digital tuners. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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While still searching for some folk (or derivative) blues starting on the IV in bar 1 I listened to some Sunnyland Slim. A certain type of intro he often plays reminds me of rhythmic stuff Monk is sometimes doing. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Early electric Chicago/Detroit Blues roots in rural blues from the South. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Charlie Christian and T-Bone Walker were from Oklahoma and had the same guy teaching them. Charlie Christian was probably rather influencing the more polished forms of rhythm and blues like Jump Blues or West Coast Blues (L.A. based). Nat King Cole’s guitarists Oscar Moore and Irving Ashby were also important, I think.
As I said before, one of Kenny Burrell’s influences is T-Bone Walker. He recorded “Stormy Monday” several times and still plays it from time to time:
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Where exactly do you mean? In bar 6 of the head I hear him anticipating the one chord. I think that is a way of forward motion in the sense of Galper (though not sure if that is mentioned in his book), maybe resulting of superimposing a 3/4 over a 4/4, too tired today, will may check against the Omnibook tomorrow. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
But is that the one you are talking about?
EDIT: Question answered by myself. Had a 15 km walk in the woods behind me so I was really tired
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Last edited by Bop Head; 09-04-2022 at 10:07 PM.
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[QUOTE=Bop Head;1217423]Regarding Chicago and Detroit I was talking about the original African-American artists like Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Buddy Guy, Sonny Boy Williamson I and II, Otis Spann, Hubert Sumlin, Sunnyland Slim, John Brim, elmore James, Lttle Walter etc. that published records on labels like Chess (there produced by bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon) — Musicians that travelled from the rural South to Chicago (or Detroit like John Lee Hooker) to work there and who brought their music with them and electrified it in the cities. (Muddy Waters was by random recorded by field researcher Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in Clarksdale, Mississippi, before he moved to Chicago to work as a truck driver for the slaughterhouses.)
Mike Bloomfield (who was a great guitarist, no doubt, and a major influence on the above mentioned Robben Ford AFAIK) comes more from the more polished linage of people like T-Bone Walker, BB King or Lowell Fullson IMHO.
..all good...Butterfield did have two members of Muddy Waters band working on that first album..Sam Lay and Jerome Arnold..Butter was respected by the Chicago blues community as was Bloomie..
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Bloomfield was very deeply into older acoustic styles before he started playing electric. The biggest influences on him as an electric player were Chicago guys he learned from directly (especially Otis Rush) and BB. He was a walking blues and gospel encyclopedia, so I’m sure he listened to plenty of T-Bone and Fulson, but he wasn’t much like either of them stylistically. Originally Posted by Bop Head
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First of all, to clarify: I did not want to sound racist in the sense of “whiteies can’t play no blues”. Among my favorite players are Steve Cropper, Roy Buchanan and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
And as s a musician and “whitey” I have experienced myself the mutual respect with people of color such as Maceo Parker, The Wailers and Fishbone.
The context was that Christian Miller had asked me for an example of a certain blues pattern starting with two bars of IV so the first two four-bar phrases are the same. That is a phenomenon of rural folk and country blues and the derivative first generation of big city electric blues from Chicago and Detroit (another one I have forgot to mention is Jimmy Reed).
Otis Rush is the second generation, he was born two years after Muddy Waters cut his first sides. And while maybe being a busier player he belongs for me (regarding the bigger picture) into the same tier as BB, T-Bone and Fulson – a slicker, jazzier, more polished sound than the electrified delta blues of Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf, often with a horn section.
T-Bone and Fulson were important influences of BB so Bloomfield must have been at least indirectly influenced by them. But I have to admit that I have not occupied myself with Bloomfield much so far. After having listened to that first Butterfield Blues Band album now — that is really rather on the delta than on the polished side or somewhere in between.
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Finally found a blues song starting on the IV. Interestingly the changes go Originally Posted by Christian Miller
| IV | IV | I | I | I |
| IV | IV | I | I | I |
| V | IV | I | I | I |
There is a I chord inserted at the end of every blues phrase. In rural blues musicians would often take liberties with the 12 bar pattern making it 11 or 13 (listen to Lightning Hopkins or early John Lee Hooker—that vocal, guitar and foot tapping only stuff—for that)
But I have not listened to this one for a long time and had never realized they had made sort of a regularity from a irregularity.
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Another one by Muddy Waters starting on the IV chord, this time regular 12 bar:
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Kenny Burrell plays a composition by Gene Krupa and Roy Eldridge
Cecil Payne on bari, Tommy Flanagan, piano, Doug Watkins, bass, Elvin Jones, drums
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From the same album
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