The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #26

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    I don't understand this thread. Maybe Joel's gone coo-coo! This is the Lessons folder, isn't it?

    Blues-blues isn't jazz-blues. Shouldn't it be under 'Other Styles' or something? Not that I care, I'm just wondering.

    Because we've gotten so far away
    But that's not true at all. There's plenty of blues players playing blues-blues today and plenty of jazz players playing jazz-blues. Nothing's changed at all.


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  3. #27

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    Actually, I think the idea of the blues as the expression of black suffering is outdated. I think it's become a cliche. In today's world I'm not sure it's very relevant any more.

    This is not to say it should be forgotten, any more than the Holocaust should be forgotten, but we can't live in the past. The blues is perhaps a generic way of expressing human despair because of its structure and nature but, in the end, it's only a feeling, the expression of a feeling. And it makes good music.

    Jazz has incorporated the blues sound into its genre, and makes the music more interesting, but 'Blues For Alice' hasn't really much relationship to what Bukka White was doing in the video. There's musically a historical relationship but that's all.

    So I don't think we've 'gotten far away', it's that we've moved on - as we should have done. It's not being disrespectful of the past, it's just that life is about movement, change and progression.

  4. #28

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    makes me want to get a dobro. Lonnie Johnson always one of my favourites - out and out blues player but with Ellington, Louis. And Eddie Lang, the classical and ragtime influence.... there’s jazz right there.

  5. #29

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    Quote Originally Posted by joelf
    Greenie was the best of the white boys! Even BB said he gave him chills. He still does that to me!
    He was my favourite of the brits for sure. Eric who?

  6. #30
    joelf Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by ragman1
    I don't understand this thread. Maybe Joel's gone coo-coo!
    Maybe?

    You're late, dude. I 'went coo coo' in 1954---the year I was, er, released from inside Bess Fass...

  7. #31
    joelf Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by ragman1
    So I don't think we've 'gotten far away', it's that we've moved on - as we should have done. It's not being disrespectful of the past, it's just that life is about movement, change and progression.
    Bill Evans; Chick Corea; Pat Metheny---etc., etc. Did they 'move on'; 'get far away'---or have the courage to be themselves and play what was in their own souls and cultures? I respect them for the latter---very much---and also wish sometimes they'd have further investigated the middle option.

    Yes, jazz has gotten away from its heartbeat and roots. Yes, an art evolves and moves on. (The change was mostly in harmonic affectation and to more 'harmony-first, and the 'straighter' orientation of the 8th note---in 'mainstream' jazz). No, I'm not one of those 'retro' people (ick!). But I want to hear the roots in there somewhere. Shoot me...

  8. #32

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    And Eddie Lang, the classical and ragtime influence.... there’s jazz right there.
    and blues !

    Ragtime Crazy - WILLIAM MOORE. Ragtime Blues Guitar 1928

  9. #33

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Lonnie Johnson always one of my favourites .
    Me too, definitely.

  10. #34

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    Quote Originally Posted by joelf
    I want to hear the roots in there somewhere. Shoot me...
    Well, you hear the roots every time you hear a blue note. One b3 over a dominant and bob's your uncle :-)

  11. #35
    joelf Guest
    If even one of us learns something from this, yeah, it belongs in the 'lessons folder'...

  12. #36
    joelf Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by ragman1
    One b3 over a dominant and bob's your uncle :-)
    Bob?

    'What about Bob?'--Julie Haggerty...

  13. #37

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    Quote Originally Posted by ragman1
    Well, you hear the roots every time you hear a blue note...
    it is precisely a reduction of the blues to a musical dimension, and even more a Western vision of the blue note on the third, between major and minor, as it always presents itself in African music, the "so called" african pentatonic mode, which are far from the degrees of temperate music (listen for example to xylophones). Even the great musicologist and composior André Hodeir (Ana Livia Plurabelle, Bitter Ending, from James Joyce), admirer of Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker, and great connoisseur of contemporary composition Art music, is sning himself on this subject (book Hommes et problèmes du Jazz, 1954)

    from this point of view, I rather agree with Joelf

    moreover, "Roots" has a relatively precise meaning about the history of the American Black People

  14. #38

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    You know, anyone would think the coloured people were the only ones who had suffered. Everyone's suffered, right? What about the Red Indians? The Aborigines, the Africans, the Chinese, the Jews, the Christians, all those in the Middle East living with wars, sanctions... everybody, including you and me.

    But the black guys produced this extraordinary musical genre that's lasted and pervaded so much. That's a little wonder in itself.

  15. #39

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    I like Skip James, he had quite an eerie-sounding voice and he used a D minor open tuning on the guitar.


  16. #40

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    Quote Originally Posted by joelf
    Bob?

    'What about Bob?'--Julie Haggerty...
    Bob's your uncle - Wikipedia

  17. #41

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    A photo I took in 1982 of Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry - rock’n’roll meets the blues!

    They were both appearing (but not together) at the same festival. Chuck suddenly ran on stage at the end of Muddy’s set and hugged him - luckily I had my camera ready, they were only together for a few seconds.

    The Blues Thread-ce175ea7-2308-4a60-90ee-f9fc26e97a5c-jpg

  18. #42

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    Muddy with Tele:

    The Blues Thread-44f92f9d-08bd-4798-ac33-12ac7711c5b6-jpg

  19. #43

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    Couple of early favourites, Sonny Boy Williamson's King Biscuit Time recordings - the first (& only) record I ever learned to play along with all the way through, & Tommy McLennan Bluebird Records Volume ?...

    I taped the Sonny Boy & never returned the McLennan to the library....


    Seeing Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee was a life changer too. Although the sound man told me they'd both asked not to hear the other in their monitor...(I was trying to wangle a recording)

  20. #44

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    I got into blues soon after getting into rock guitar, probably after hearing Hendrix’s ‘Red House’. Then a friend played me Muddy Waters ‘Hard Again’ with Johnny Winters, I was knocked out by it. So we tried to play the blues, but we knew we were just middle-class white boys who couldn’t pull it off, we weren’t stupid. But I took the trouble to read books about the whole history of it, and collected quite a few blues records.

    I once knew a guy who thought the blues started and ended with Clapton, he didn’t care at all for any of the black bluesmen. I thought that was stupid, but he probably wasn’t the only one, sadly.

    When I got into jazz I could hear how some players had a feel for the blues, e.g. Bird playing ‘Parker’s Mood’.

    I think it’s beneficial to at least try and absorb some of the emotion and background of the blues, it can only help your jazz playing surely. I do find some jazz a bit too ‘mathematical’ these days.

    Anyway here’s the track by Muddy that blew me away:


  21. #45

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    Here's a guy who is clearly influenced by pre-war blues guitar - mixing sophisticated lines with downhome blues licks:



  22. #46

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    Quote Originally Posted by joelf
    Bill Evans; Chick Corea; Pat Metheny---etc., etc. Did they 'move on'; 'get far away'---or have the courage to be themselves and play what was in their own souls and cultures? I respect them for the latter---very much---and also wish sometimes they'd have further investigated the middle option.

    Yes, jazz has gotten away from its heartbeat and roots. Yes, an art evolves and moves on. (The change was mostly in harmonic affectation and to more 'harmony-first, and the 'straighter' orientation of the 8th note---in 'mainstream' jazz). No, I'm not one of those 'retro' people (ick!). But I want to hear the roots in there somewhere. Shoot me...
    My theory? Jazz education concentrates on the individual and the measurable. 'Play this scale' 'play groupings of five' and so on...

    Groove is social and you can't measure the blues. So there you go.

  23. #47

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    Duke Robillard recently made an album of acoustic blues songs he loved and learned in his youth. This is one of my favorties, a song from the '20s that is rather more sophisticated than a lot of later blues.


  24. #48

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    Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan at Buddy's club in Chicago, 1989. A 30-minute jam on "Champagne and Reefer"


  25. #49

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    Very important blues guitar player. His rhythm was strong and catchy.


  26. #50

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    One of my favorite records. Guitar Slim doesn't even take a solo on this and it's still great. (I'm not sure he plays at all on this recording.)



    But he could play, of course. And with distinction.