Interesting Quote by Bob Koester

[robertoart]

On 14 June 2016 at 10:04 AM, Rooster_Ties said:

Isn't defining what "is" and what "isn't" a particular kind of music (or what that music is "supposed to be" about) -- either explicitly, or by inference -- more the purview of the Wynton Marsali and Stanley Crouches of the world?

Just thought I'd drop a sneaky body punch into this conversation. Are the Reagan kids cool? A bit flighty.... but you bet! Do they listen to Jazz or Blues vocalists 

[JSngry]

These guys?

[Hot Ptah]

At the blues concerts I have attended in the past three or four years, the audience has been small, almost all white and white haired. It looks like a bus brought the audience from an assisted living facility. Maybe that is just Kansas City. Whether it is Bobby Rush or a white guy with a guitar before them, the audience seems to be too small and old to be much of a statistical sample of anything these days.

Also, I have always listened to a good amount of blues radio programs which feature new releases, on public and community radio stations. I think that Koester's quote applies more to the blues recorded before, say, 1985. In recent decades, sorry, but the purely vocal blues new releases tend to be just not that good.  Once the originators and those who learned with the originators left the scene, the blues artists who emphasize the vocal strike me as mostly not that compelling. 

We haven't had the likes of Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, Howlin' Wolf or Bobby "Blue" Bland in his prime, for a long time.

When I saw Bobby "Blue" Bland and Etta James live toward the end of their lives, the audiences were mostly white and very appreciative.

I agree with Koester that there once was a group of white listeners who branched out from 1960s and 1970s rock and got interested in other music to some extent but not fully. This audience is mostly gone now, either dead or no longer going to concerts or following music much as far as I can tell. This audience liked Eric Clapton for blues, the Mahavishnu Orchestra for jazz, Commander Cody for country. But that's ancient, and largely irrelevant history by now.

Edited July 14, 2016 by Hot Ptah

[robertoart]

On 18 June 2016 at 1:06 PM, JSngry said:

These guys?

One of the kids gave a good serving to Trump on Aussie media a few weeks back. That's all. They're probably collectively not very cool at all. i bet they've never heard a real Hammond Organ in their lives either  

 

 

Edited July 15, 2016 by robertoart