Observations about the blues vocabulary of the 1920s-1940s.

[brent.h]

..

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Could you give examples that proof your observations?

[Bobby Timmons]

I think that's accurate, I've noticed that before too. Laying hard on the blues scale was more a hard bop thing that came later.

However, If you're looking at examples for your own approach, I've noticed that different players play the blues vastly differently, so it's more about what you're going for than figuring out what is 'right' or accurate etc.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Any number of solos/riffs from earlier eras such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Lester Young, Benny Goodman, Charlie Christian.

That's still to vague for me. I can agree or disagree if you tell me "Listen to what X is doing in tune Y recorded on day Z in measure so-and-so." Or show me a Youtube link with a time stamp. Or a transcription.

[Christian Miller]

#1: In my exploration of jazz from the 1920s to 1940s, it seems that the blues vocabulary quite often incorporated the following:

• the b3
• the 'rub' between b3 and natural 3
• the b7
• the 'rub' between b7 and natural 6

#2: The b3 and b7 seemed to always be played within/close to the context of a major 6th sound (Root, 3, 5, 6). They were hardly played in isolation.

#3: The b5, though not completely absent, was not used as frequently.

#4: Could this be why more 'modern' blues vocabulary using minor pentatonics with b5 (blues scales) don't quite gel so nicely with older swing tunes to my ears?

Thoughts?

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Edit:

For example, over a C6 chord, the blues vocabulary I've seen/heard seems to use the notes C, E, G, A with a healthy dose of Eb and Bb. The bluesy sound that was conveyed happened when the Eb rubs against the E, and the Bb against the A. It's not often that I see an F# or Gb.

A man after me own heart.

Short answer - yes? Or perhaps - maybe.

A lot of stylistic shifts in that 20 years.

1920s jazz blues rather major key. Often major pent with b3 grace notes.

That said the b5 is everywhere in swing music. Check out the riffs in Benny’s Bugle for example. Loads of Benny stuff actually.

Though the minor pent appears to be more of a fixture in Parker’s music including the b5 and b7. I talk about it a little here

Without a full musicological survey it’s hard to say for sure. Just my impressions.

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[pamosmusic]

A man after me own heart.

Short answer - yes?

I disagree with #3, the b5 is everywhere in swing music. Check out the riffs in Benny’s Bugle for example. Loads of Benny stuff actually.

Though the minor pent appears to be more of a fixture in Parker’s music including the b5 and b7. I talk about it a little here

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Yeah b5 is everywhere but maybe a slight modification would be that the actual “blues scale” is a pretty modern invention.

a lot of the time that sucker shows up without the flat 7 … or sometimes like 1 b3 4 b5 and back down. But something you could really call a blues scale seems like sort of an invention of the electric blues later … and even they’re pretty artfully disguising it

[Bobby Timmons]

^ I don't know what genre and period you mean by electric blues so maybe I'm unnecessarily countering you. But blues scale was part of jazz back in the day. CP used it some like Christian said. Then the hard bop guys like Jimmy Smith and Bobby Timmons used it all the time.

[Christian Miller]

Yeah b5 is everywhere but maybe a slight modification would be that the actual “blues scale” is a pretty modern invention.

a lot of the time that sucker shows up without the flat 7 … or sometimes like 1 b3 4 b5 and back down. But something you could really call a blues scale seems like sort of an invention of the electric blues later … and even they’re pretty artfully disguising it

Yes agreed. What do we call the major triad with that #11/b5? ;-)

Anyway I honestly don’t know. There’s not much blue water pitches wise between what Lester young plays on the A of Lady be Good and the notes Freddie King - and therefore his UK acolytes - played on the I chord of a blues. Those guys played the changes. I associate the minor blues on everything a bit more with later players. But maybe I’m wrong ;-)

The use of the minor pentatonic melody on the other hand is quite common in 60s jazz. An obvious example being Sonny Moon for Two but many more.

So I don’t know when this pops up. Bird is clearly playing minor blues phrases on the I chord in Billies Bounce solo at one point despite his tendency to play major on I most of the time.

As a theoretical concept? No idea!

Another question, when did compers start playing dominant quality chords on a blues? Swing to my ears sounds 6 most of the time, Chicago jazz straight major. By the bop era, dominant chords everywhere on piano.


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[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

I found this interesting:

[Christian Miller]

It’s also worth noting that djg analysed my Bb7 chord tone phrase in the Experiment thread as an F blues thing. It’s quite ambiguous


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[Christian Miller]

This is also an ideal source for an Ethan Iverson rant or two! I’m sure there’s one on DTM.

EDIT: Boom! But of course
The History of the Blues…Scale? (guest post by Asher Tobin Chodos) | DO THE M@TH

Blues is of course an idiom above all. All great blues players understand that and ground their music in the oral tradition, but I wonder if jazzers do (mea culpa)


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[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Yeah b5 is everywhere but maybe a slight modification would be that the actual “blues scale” is a pretty modern invention.

a lot of the time that sucker shows up without the flat 7 … or sometimes like 1 b3 4 b5 and back down. But something you could really call a blues scale seems like sort of an invention of the electric blues later … and even they’re pretty artfully disguising it

It was there earlier than in electric blues in the rural styles of blues and from there it got into the electric styles that build directly on those rural styles -- mostly because people like Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker or Jimmy Reed were originally from the south. Listen to those John Lee Hooker recordings where it is only him, his guitar and his foot. Or Lightning Hopins (Texas). Or the earliest Muddy Waters takes recorded by Alan Lomax in Stovall, Mississippi in 1941.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

There is a lot of bending the five of the key down a half step and back in blues harp.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

What I am missing here as well is the chromatic cliche from the major third to the fifth or the other way round. Which is a general jazz cliche. Think Blue Monk or Basin' Street Blues.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Very archaic; this instrument is where Bo Diddley got his name from.

[Christian Miller]

What I am missing here as well is the chromatic cliche from the major third to the fifth or the other way round. Which is a general jazz cliche. Think Blue Monk or Basin' Street Blues.

Yeah. This is funny one because it’s absolutely something you have in European Romantic music too and yet I associate it with a blues sound. I’m thinking also of the Cockney Knees Up lol. OI!

An interesting one (to me) is the aug sixth, or as we’d call it the bVI7 chord. The seventh of the chord descending to the 7th of the V chord gives a very blues melody. But while this is not the original resolution of this chord in European music it is certainly not unknown in the European canon .

Im also always struck by the bluesiness of the last moments of Brahms 4th symphony when the 1-2-b3-4-#4-5 bass line the movement is built on ends up in the melody again, and then a retrograde in the brass. This is no doubt coincidence in this case, but it is an aural association that I find hard to unhear.

So I wonder if some aspects of Western harmony became appropriated and heavily used by jazz musicians and pianists in particular to channel some of the effect of microtonal blues intonation on a European equally tempered instrument. Just an idle thought really, I don’t know.

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[pamosmusic]

^ I don't know what genre and period you mean by electric blues so maybe I'm unnecessarily countering you. But blues scale was part of jazz back in the day. CP used it some like Christian said. Then the hard bop guys like Jimmy Smith and Bobby Timmons used it all the time.

Sure ... I mean the Kings, etc. 40s 50s city blues. Not useful as a genre, I guess, but a stage in the evolution or something. I'm not up on the history, frankly, but I have learned a whole bunch of blues guitar stuff from my long-haired high school days.

Anyway ... some nuance ... I feel like all the pitches included in a blues scale are around in loads of stuff (the last few of Now's the Time are somewhat F blues-scaley).

But most of the time, all those extra notes in a blues have specific behaviors and particular jobs. Like most of the time, "blues scale" isn't a particularly useful way to describe what's going on to me. That's obviously true of a lot of scales, but less so I think with the usual blues scale we think about. Like, saying Bird is using a dominant scale a lot, doesn't really describe what's going on very well, but you still hear him use the scale in runs fairly often so there's some sense to it. Blues scale is a little weird. In general, blues uses pretty much every note but they all have particular roles.

Some examples, I guess.

1. If you listen to Freddie King for example play the flat 3 in a blues, he always nudges it up slightly. Not a full bend up to the major third, but ever so slightly. Maybe not even a quarter step.
2. The b5 blue note comes all the time along with the major third.
3. the b5 blue note tends to be part of devices, rather than part of longer scale runs.
4. the 6 often replaces the b7 or bends up to it.

That I can think of, a lot of the time when I've seen a straight up run of that blues scale, it was root, b7, 5, 4 bent up to b5, 4, b3 1

I don't know. It's an interesting thing. I think, at least in blues-rock stuff later, they collected the notes, put them in order inside an octave, and then kind of forgot what they all did.

[Christian Miller]

I don't know. It's an interesting thing. I think, at least in blues-rock stuff later, they collected the notes, put them in order inside an octave, and then kind of forgot what they all did.

as usual I blame the 'education' aspect

As much as we may malign them for not quite "getting it" and being super cringe etc, the UK blues boom guys who became the blues rock and proto-metal musicians of the late 60s and 70s listened and cribbed everything by ear. They also play the changes. They play those notes 'in the cracks.'

While I'm sure the blues scale was a known thing back in the 70s and earlier, I would put it's use as the basis for 'blues playing' down to GIT in the 80s and guitar mags honestly. And GIT probably cribbed at least some of their theory from Aebersold and Berklee.

But to say the minor pentatonic/blues scale doesn't exist... I agree with Ethan.

Clearly it's a melodic device that gets used a lot. But I understand the impulse to deny its existence for cultural reasons... I feel the same way about scales generally, melodic minor, and so on, even people clearly play scales on record.

[Christian Miller]

Actually one of the first solos I learned on electric (not with a slide for some reason) was Mick Taylor's solo on the Rolling Stone's live version of Love in Vain. I remember being confused by all the funny notes haha. This isn't the blues scale!

And yet it is completely a blues solo of course.

So the blues rockers had a real sense of blues idiom and vocab. I think they were very serious about that stuff... super studious.

SRV on the Sky is Crying made more sense. Just saying haha.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

as usual I blame the 'education' aspect

As much as we may malign them for not quite "getting it" and being super cringe etc, the UK blues boom guys who became the blues rock and proto-metal musicians of the late 60s and 70s listened and cribbed everything by ear. They also play the changes. They play those notes 'in the cracks.'

I would put it down to GIT I'm the 80s and guitar mags honestly. And GIT probably cribbed at least some of their theory from Aebersold and Berklee.

But to say the minor pentatonic/blues scale doesn't exist... I agree with Ethan.

Clearly it's a melodic device that gets used a lot. But I understand the impulse to deny its existence for cultural reasons... I feel the same way about scales generally, melodic minor, and so on, even people clearly play scales on record.

The British blues rockers from the "Invasion" generation did not only study the records but also soon after many of them were touring through Britain with the African-American masters from the states. The white American blues rockers were also deep into the records, AFAIK the singer from Canned Heat had the biggest blues shellac record collection on earth. Billy Gibbons is deep into sophisticated city blues as well as into the rural stuff, Bloomfield and Butterfield played with black masters as did SRV. There was a lot of mutual respect -- and sometimes still is.

[Christian Miller]

I listened to that Howlin' Wolf London Sessions record obsessively as a teen

[pamosmusic]

But to say the minor pentatonic/blues scale doesn't exist... I agree with Ethan.

Clearly it's a melodic device that gets used a lot. But I understand the impulse to deny its existence for cultural reasons... I feel the same way about scales generally, melodic minor, and so on, even people clearly play scales on record.

Of course that minor pentatonic scale exists … Sonnymoon for Two and Bags Groove would be an odd coincidence otherwise. It also just forms a useful kind of skeleton for hanging a lot of those other notes on.

Still, that particular blues scale as a cohesive melodic device seems really context dependent most of the time, rather than scalar in the way I usually think of them.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

I listened to that Howli' Wolf London Sessions record obsessively as a teen

Had totally forgotten about that one haha. Though I liked the original stuff with Hubert Sumlin more. But I listened a lot to the Muddy Waters and the Bo Diddley sessions from the same series.

I had to compare the Let It Bleed version of LIV (more Country & Western for me but I like it nonetheless; Ry Cooder plays mandolin on that album BTW) with the original -- and now I am wondering: Am I hearing right that Johnson plays a blues with a II V?

[Bobby Timmons]

Sure ... I mean the Kings, etc. 40s 50s city blues. Not useful as a genre, I guess, but a stage in the evolution or something. I'm not up on the history, frankly, but I have learned a whole bunch of blues guitar stuff from my long-haired high school days.

Anyway ... some nuance ... I feel like all the pitches included in a blues scale are around in loads of stuff (the last few of Now's the Time are somewhat F blues-scaley).

But most of the time, all those extra notes in a blues have specific behaviors and particular jobs. Like most of the time, "blues scale" isn't a particularly useful way to describe what's going on to me. That's obviously true of a lot of scales, but less so I think with the usual blues scale we think about. Like, saying Bird is using a dominant scale a lot, doesn't really describe what's going on very well, but you still hear him use the scale in runs fairly often so there's some sense to it. Blues scale is a little weird. In general, blues uses pretty much every note but they all have particular roles.

Some examples, I guess.

1. If you listen to Freddie King for example play the flat 3 in a blues, he always nudges it up slightly. Not a full bend up to the major third, but ever so slightly. Maybe not even a quarter step.
2. The b5 blue note comes all the time along with the major third.
3. the b5 blue note tends to be part of devices, rather than part of longer scale runs.
4. the 6 often replaces the b7 or bends up to it.

That I can think of, a lot of the time when I've seen a straight up run of that blues scale, it was root, b7, 5, 4 bent up to b5, 4, b3 1

Agree. What goes on in different kinds of blues and jazz blues music is very vast. No 1 device would capture it. You have to handle it case by case to get the aunthentic effect.

This is false tho:

Yeah b5 is everywhere but maybe a slight modification would be that the actual “blues scale” is a pretty modern invention.

a lot of the time that sucker shows up without the flat 7 … or sometimes like 1 b3 4 b5 and back down. But something you could really call a blues scale seems like sort of an invention of the electric blues later … and even they’re pretty artfully disguising it

I don't know. It's an interesting thing. I think, at least in blues-rock stuff later, they collected the notes, put them in order inside an octave, and then kind of forgot what they all did.

Have you not listened to Jimmy Smith and Bobby Timmons and the other hard bop players in the 50s? They run straight blues scale, the melody to Moanin is straight blues scale. So it was absolutely a thing and device, it wasn't invented or caricaturized later.

[Christian Miller]

Had totally forgotten about that one haha. Though I liked the original stuff with Hubert Sumlin more. But I listened a lot to the Muddy Waters and the Bo Diddley sessions from the same series.

I had to compare the Let It Bleed version of LIV (more Country & Western for me but I like it nonetheless; Ry Cooder plays mandolin on that album BTW) with the original -- and now I am wondering: Am I hearing right that Johnson plays a blues with a II V?

The live Stones version is way better than the album version

Yes I hear it too. Sometimes I think the main difference between prewar jazz and blues was instrumentation.


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