This week I’m asking you for a bit of advice. I need help educating myself on blues, rhythm & blues, and soul, and I’m not sure where to begin. I’ve kicked around in Wikipedia a bit, and looked for some comps and collections on eMusic, but I need more focus. More guidance. I already know I love the music, but I want to know about it. I need context.
As a weirdo kid of 12 or 13, I listened to the Oldies station constantly (on purpose and for reasons that were my own, but that I’ll skip for now). Oldies radio gave me a broad and useful introduction to music. Unfortunately, the Oldies format tilts heavily to Motown and 60s soul, and was fairly lean when it came to black performers from the early 50s. But that’s mostly what I’m looking for, pre-war / post-war blues. And rhythm and blues.
Put simply, I want to start with Fats Domino, with what might be my favorite song of all time, and work backwards.
This song is one of the few that is with me all the time. I am always just seconds from singing it or humming it to myself. Seriously, when Fats the stomps on the rest and sings “Baby, don’t you let your dog bit me”—I think it’s my favorite moment in music. Ever.
So yeah, that’s my starting point, but that’s not all I know. Back when I lived in the Woodlands, and had band practice at Fransisco’s Wednesday nights, I used to roll into town listening to Clint Broussard’s Blues in Hi-Fi show on KTRU. Sadly, as many shows as I used to catch, I’ve been AWOL for years. But that’s the music I’m looking for now. I’ve been going through some recent ClintB setlists on KTRU looking for sign posts, but it’s frustrating how little I can glean from just the names (uh, maybe I should start actually listening to the actual show again?).
Here’s some examples of what I know I like (in addition to obvious stars like Fats, Little Richard, and Ray Charles, who enjoyed success into the Rock era):
- Slim Harpo
- Jimmy Reed
- Arthur Crudup
- Memphis Minnie
- Mississippi John Hurt
- Big Joe Turner
- The Clovers
The above list is heavily informed by the listening habits of my friend Ben Murphy, who made me a starter mix. But the stuff he’s recommended is more spare that what I want. I’m looking for full-band blues or R&B, with interplay among piano, guitar, horns and maybe some harmonica.
It’s the sort of thing I know I’ve heard on Blues in Hi-Fi, but I’m not sure where to get exactly what I want: songs where piano, guitar, and mouth harp follow each other with short instrumental runs. How’s that for specific?
If you can, recommend some great compilations or singles collections I should check out. Also, and this will get you bonus points, let me know if there are any books, blogs, and/or podcasts I should be studying. I searched in vain for a Clint Broussard blog, but he’s nowhere to be found on the Web (which is really too bad).
For me, this is kind of an intimidating undertaking. Like saying I want to become knowledgeable about wine or cigars. There will be much toiling and ignorance, but for some reason I’m thinking you readers and fellow NAP-pers can help me out.
It’s amazing what you can find with a little ignorant toil. This area in American music is one of which I have almost no knowledge. Have you thought about asking John Lomax about it? I think it runs in his veins.
I love putting the effort into something that has grabbed my attention, for whatever reason, and blundering around trying to pull all the pieces together. That, to me, is the essence of loving music.
This website, as far as pre-war blues, is the best source i’ve found and it has tons of actual music to download and listen to for free.
You can’t go wrong with Roosevelt Sykes. Personally I like his solo piano stuff which still has that big boogie sound, but there are many recordings of him with a full band.
This is a Chicago sound – and if you keep going down the Chicago style road you’ll hear plenty of full band stuff until you finally end up with the Blues Brothers.
Here’s a late era Sykes video.
The Kansas City Blues scene also had that big sound. And of course there’s B.B. King, the King of the big time boogie.
Nothing wrong with it either. I like a lot of the sparse stuff too but it’s not any more authentic. Blues came about during the Recorded Music Era and people have been “selling out” in all styles of Blues since inception.
And as far as Soul. Start with the early James Brown (of course), get all the James Brown. Damn that stuff is tight.
Look out for Baby Huey and the Babysitters too. Don’t know how much recorded stuff is out there.
Speaking of podcasts, I found this looking for a podcast of the Blues Before Sunrise radio show. Unfortunately BBS doesn’t seem to have a podcast but the one above looks pretty good.
Thanks for the recommendations everyone. That pre-war blues blog is amazing. There’s a lot to digest there.
I’m a big Sonny Terry fan. You should check out his ‘Sonny is King’ album.