Bluesmen influenced by rock and

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

A good while back, Allen Lowe and I had a short conversation in some thread I can’t remember in which he said that a lot of bluesmen had been influenced by sixties rock and had said that their work had been tightened up or sharpened up by working with these musicians. I said that I thought the big influence on blues in the sixties was from R&B and soul, cited a few examples (I think) and asked him for more details.

The thread went somewhere else, as threads often do, so we never got any farther than this. But I think it’s an interesting topic.

I was listening to a twofer LP set of Buddy Guy yesterday and was reminded quite forcibly of this R&B/soul/funk influence, so I thought I’d set down some examples of the impact of popular black music on his and other bluesmen’s work. In one way, it’s a no-brainer to say that bluesmen of the fifties and sixties were alive to the general current of popular black music of the post-war period; they were, after all, part of popular black music of the period. One thing that’s particularly interesting is that there are a fair number of examples of bluesmen recording Soul Jazz tunes, too.

Buddy Guy is one of those. He recorded Bobby Timmons’ ‘Moanin’’ for Chess and was with Junior Wells when they recorded ‘Chitlin’s con carne’. But his ‘mainstream’ blues records are full of contemporary dance rhythms, or Johnny Ace ballad progressions; none more explicitly so than ‘Hully gully’ and ‘Bandstand’ but also: ‘I got my eyes on you’; Treasure untold’; ‘Every girl I see’; ‘100 dollar bill’, ‘Watch yourself’; and ‘Slop around’, to name just a few. And ‘When my left eye jumps’ is a slow version of the Roy Milton & the Solid Senders hit ‘Information blues’, recorded in 1949 and making #2 on the R&B chart.

Of course, the prime candidates for the influence of contemporary black music on bluesmen are Slim Harpo and Lowell Fulson, whose big hits – ‘Baby scratch my back’ and ‘Tramp’ – were only a couple of well-known examples of their work in this vein. (And Harpo was co-composer of ‘Tramp’, be it noted; I expect he got a lot of royalties from Otis Redding’s recordings of those songs, both of which show the influence of James Brown’s rhythmic developments.) Harpo songs like ‘Rainin’ in my heart’, like some of Buddy Guy’s songs, also show a Johnny Ace influence.

Albert Collins, too, included soul jazz in his act; his first LP included Jimmy McGriff’s ‘All about my girl’ and a later live album done in Toronto started off with this number; and Collins later (in 1986) got McGriff to guest on his album ‘Cold snap. He had met McGriff in 1965. There are plenty of soul and funk influences in Collins; ‘Doin’ the sissy’ sounds like it was influenced by the Meters; Wilson Pickett’s ‘”Mustang Sally’ as an integral part of Collins’ act, too. His album ‘Don’t lose your cool’ includes the great Oscar Brown Jr song ‘… But I was cool’, as well as Percy Mayfield’s ‘My mind is trying to leave me’. Chris Foreman, of the Deep Blue Organ Trio is on that album.

Starting off as a fine down home blues singer and pianist, Jimmy McCracklin had a huge hit with ‘The walk’, very much a dance number, in 1958. And in the sixties, he was well known for incorporating lots of soul influences in his very successful recordings for Art-Tone and Imperial.

Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson is another bluesman who incorporated Soul Jazz and funk ideas very successfully into his music. He and Larry Williams had a hit in 1967 with ‘Mercy, mercy, mercy’ – not as big a hit as Cannonball, but there we are. But Watson became a real black music icon in the seventies, recording funk hit after funk hit for Fantasy and DJM, without ever really moving far away from the blues and becoming an unsung influence on Prince (as well as a prime source for hip hop sampling).

Earl King, with whom I’m not too familiar, is another whose work for Blue Thumb in the late sixties shows a lot of soul influence.

Another bluesman with a love for R&B trends is Jimmy ‘Fastfingers’ Dawkins. In particular, his Delmark LP, ‘Blisterstring’ includes ‘Chitlin’s con carne’; Smiley Lewis’ ‘Blue Monday’; Chuck Willis’ ‘I feel so bad’, revived a few years before by Ray Charles; and a nice instrumental version of ‘Ode to Billie Joe’.

One shouldn’t forget Otis Rush, either. Otis made an album for Cotillion, in about 1969, with some rock musicians – an album so inexpressibly uninteresting that I only listened to half of it, when it came out. But later, much better, albums such as ‘Cold day in Hell’ (the title track being a cover of a track on Bobby Bland’s ABC LP ’The dreamer’) also included the Jimmy Smith number, appropriated by Jimmy McGriff, ‘Motoring along’. Rush was another who recorded Chuck Willis’ ‘I feel so bad’ (for Blind Pig).

Even T-Bone Walker was using contemporary black dance rhythms in the recordings he made in the late sixties and early seventies, as albums such as ‘The truth’, ‘Funky town’ and ‘Rare and well done’ show. A lot of this material shows the influence of Lowell Fulson’s ‘Tramp’. (I say nothing about the album Lieber and Stoller produced.)

And who could have more of a soul influence in his work than Albert King? Recording with the Stax house bands, King was a consistent hit from 1966 to 1974.

Well, I suppose the answer to that is Little Milton who, in my view, perfected the art of melding blues and soul. Everything he did seems to me to have achieved the perfect balance between those two kinds of music.

Now, it may well be that my general taste for black pop music led me to focus on those bluesmen who did reflect R&B, soul and funk in their work, at the expense of those who didn’t. I have very little Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller), Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf in my collection, and almost all of that early stuff, though I do have my daughter’s copy of Muddy’s 12 inch EP of ‘Mannish boy’ and ‘Hoochie coochie man’, which was a very big hit here when it was used for a Levi’s Jean advert. That was produced by Johnny Winter and, I just listened to it, is terribly hard; I couldn’t listen to more than a minute or two of each cut. There’s little doubt in my mind, therefore, that my historical appreciation of this issue is coloured by my personal taste.

So it would be pretty helpful to me to know which bluesmen were influenced by rock and, in particular, which recordings or albums give strong evidence of this (if only so I can avoid buying them by mistake).

MG

[Big Beat Steve]

I think you have already named most of the main exponents of 60s/early 70s bluesmen who picked up on then-current soul-R&B/rock music that would supersede straight blues/R&B as the black pop music of its time.

I am not that familiar with many of those later recordings as I normally cringe at "funked-up/souled-up" (read: contrivedly modernized/updated) R&B/blues and really prefer 50s R&B/blues (though I can understand the artists' desire to show they still were "with it").

One that comes to mind (as I have both earlier and later recordings by him), apart from Slim Harpo and Jonny Guitar Watson, are Earl Hooker's LPs from the later 60s where his guitar work really shows the signs of the times (more rock than soul IMO, though).

I wonder, OTOH, how to rate Hound Dog Taylor there. He did go beyond the black audience "electric blues" (to my ears, anyway) but how to categorize him? Electric blues-cum-garage rock? Great to my ears but really rather unclassificable.

[John L]

I think that most major bluesmen in the post-WWII period show a strong influence of R&B. It is true that the early Muddy Waters had stronger roots in Delta Blues and earlier Chicago traditions. But if you listen to the early recordings even of Sonny Boy Williamson and Howlin' Wolf, you will hear a lot of R&B jump feeling, as well as a judicious use of 9th and passing chords, that show a strong influence of the type of R&B that was emerging in L.A. at the time. Of course, T-Bone Walker himself was one of the fathers of that sound.

Many of the last generation of true bluesmen, who came of age in the late 50s-1960s, were strongly influenced by Soul (the sanctified sound) both from jazz and R&B. Maybe that is part of the distinction that you are getting at.

The influence of rock was weaker back then, but become stronger in the 70s and 80s. Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan were highly influential for blues guitar players in that regard.

Edited June 19, 2012 by John L

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I think you have already named most of the main exponents of 60s/early 70s bluesmen who picked up on then-current soul-R&B/rock music that would supersede straight blues/R&B as the black pop music of its time.

I am not that familiar with many of those later recordings as I normally cringe at "funked-up/souled-up" (read: contrivedly modernized/updated) R&B/blues and really prefer 50s R&B/blues (though I can understand the artists' desire to show they still were "with it").

One that comes to mind (as I have both earlier and later recordings by him), apart from Slim Harpo and Jonny Guitar Watson, are Earl Hooker's LPs from the later 60s where his guitar work really shows the signs of the times (more rock than soul IMO, though).

I wonder, OTOH, how to rate Hound Dog Taylor there. He did go beyond the black audience "electric blues" (to my ears, anyway) but how to categorize him? Electric blues-cum-garage rock? Great to my ears but really rather unclassificable.

As I said, I'm not that familiar with Earl Hooker. Thanks for that.

I don't know Hound DOg Taylor's work at all.

MG

I think that most major bluesmen in the post-WWII period show a strong influence of R&B. It is true that the early Muddy Waters had stronger roots in Delta Blues and earlier Chicago traditions. But if you listen to the early recordings even of Sonny Boy Williamson and Howlin' Wolf, you will hear a lot of R&B jump feeling, as well as a judicious use of 9th and passing chords, that show a strong influence of the type of R&B that was emerging in L.A. at the time. Of course, T-Bone Walker himself was one of the fathers of that sound.

Many of the last generation of true bluesmen, who came of age in the late 50s-1960s, were strongly influenced by Soul (the sanctified sound) both from jazz and R&B. Maybe that is part of the distinction that you are getting at.

The influence of rock was weaker back then, but become stronger in the 70s and 80s. Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan were highly influential for blues guitar players in that regard.

Thanks. So, who were the bluesmen who were influenced by Hendrix and Vaughan?

MG

[cih]

It'd be hard to determine how far the blues artists whose styles were rooted in earlier periods, like Muddy, John Lee Hooker etc - were influenced back by the rock artists who were influenced by them in the first place (and who played with them in Europe etc). Any back influence is (or was) often presented in the literature as 'corruption'. By the seventies I would imagine everyone playing electric blues, without horns, is influenced by rock?

[paul secor]

The bottom line is that many blues musicians recorded r&b and soul tunes and played them on their gigs because the wider black audience had lost interest in blues, and the musicians had to play what their audiences wanted to hear or they were out of work. Later, when young white audiences picked up on the blues, many blues musicians' playing became rock influenced and many recorded with rock musicians.

Musicians, in general, tend to go where the money is.

[Eric]

I don't know Hound DOg Taylor's work at all.

MG

I know exactly one song of his, "Give Me Back My Wig" from an Alligator sampler. Raw and crazy fun

[Neal Pomea]

Jimmy Reed? Big influence in Louisiana.

Paul "Little Buck" Sinegal with Clifton Chenier's band and later C.J. Chenier.

[Dan Gould]

I'm surprised MG didn't mention Junior Parker. Honey Drippin' Blues on Mercury's Blue Rock subsidiary has some great almost pure-soul cuts. I know the Duke sides are essential, and Allen will say the Sun sides are more so, but I loves me Junior's Mercury recordings, too.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

The bottom line is that many blues musicians recorded r&b and soul tunes and played them on their gigs because the wider black audience had lost interest in blues, and the musicians had to play what their audiences wanted to hear or they were out of work. Later, when young white audiences picked up on the blues, many blues musicians' playing became rock influenced and many recorded with rock musicians.

Musicians, in general, tend to go where the money is.

Well, yes, but Jimmy Reed had hit after hit in the sixties, mostly the early sixties, but one as late as '66, and G L Crockett had one in '65 in imitation of Reed; Little Joe Blue and J L Hooker both had sixties hits, so did Koko Taylor, Freddie KIng and ALbert (on King, not Stax), Sonny Boy WIlliamson, and not forgetting Tommy Tucker; and B B KIng and Junior Parker were hardly out of the R&B charts in the sixties. SO it looks as if there was always a bit of room for straight ahead blues. COmpanies like Chess, Peacock, Nashboro and Vee-Jay continued ot make that kind of record, so there must have been money in it for them. The sixties were perhaps a period of transition in which blues was a viable way to make a good living for many, though the writing may have been on the wall. But some of the borrowings from R&B could be observed in the fifties and I think that was because the people concerned liked it.

MG

Oh, and blues was always a minority music in the black community in the post war years, anyway. Only 138 blues singles made the R&B charts from 1942 to 1954 while there were 203 jazz records in the same period. Between them, that's slightly less than a third of all entries. It's better than the sixties, there's no doubt, but not that much better.

[Big Beat Steve]

Unless you instinctively keep thinking of "R&B" as another term for SOUL (as it may have been the case from a certain point in the 60s onwards), I'd guess that the boundaries between "Blues" and "Rhythm & Blues" in the 50s were relatively blurred both stylistically and under marketing aspects (at least in the years before the revival of the "real" blues - i.e. "down-home" blues - happened in the very late 50s/esarly 60s) and likely did not matter THAT much to the black community.

[GA Russell]

I've been out of touch for fifteen years, but it seemed to me in the 90s that all of the current blues people were musically rock people marketed as blues to distinguish them from the hair bands and other types the youngsters were calling rock at the time.

For example, a favorite of mine was Kenny Neal.

I went to the '90 and '91 New Orleans Jazzfests, and the blues stage was occupied by bands who were very rockish.

[danasgoodstuff]

Magic Sam!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Unless you instinctively keep thinking of "R&B" as another term for SOUL (as it may have been the case from a certain point in the 60s onwards), I'd guess that the boundaries between "Blues" and "Rhythm & Blues" in the 50s were relatively blurred both stylistically and under marketing aspects (at least in the years before the revival of the "real" blues - i.e. "down-home" blues - happened in the very late 50s/esarly 60s) and likely did not matter THAT much to the black community.

Not sure I follow that.

I don't think, certainly not in those days, their was confusion between blues and R&B. Here's a list of the blues artists who appeared in the R&B chart in that period. (I excluded Jr Parker because I've never heard his Sun material.)

Andrew Tibbs

Arbee Stidham

Archibald

Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup

B B King

Big Maceo

Big Mama Thornton

Big Three Trio

Brownie McGhee

Danny Overbea

Eddie Boyd

Elmore James

Floyd Dixon

Gatemouth Brown

Griffin Brothers

Guitar Slim

Howlin' Wolf

James Wayne

Jimmy Nelson

Jimmy Wilson

John Lee Hooker

L C Williams

Lightnin' Hopkins

Little Son Jackson

Little Walter

Little Willie Littlefield

Lonnie Johnson

Lowell Fulson

Memphis Slim

Mercy Dee

Muddy Waters

Nighthawks

Pee Wee Crayton

Roosevelt Sykes

Rosco Gordon

Roy Hawkins

Saunders King

Smokey Hogg

Sonny Boy Williams

Sonny Boy Williamson (John Lee)

Tampa Red

T-Bone Walker

Willie Mabon

I odn't think any of them would be thought to be R&B.

MG

[Dan Gould]

I think that's highly debatable. A lot of those names recorded tunes considered to be R&B. Is it not uncalled for to consider "urban" blues to be R&B, or that blues/r&b became nearly interchangeable terms in that era?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I think that's highly debatable. A lot of those names recorded tunes considered to be R&B. Is it not uncalled for to consider "urban" blues to be R&B, or that blues/r&b became nearly interchangeable terms in that era?

Dunno Dan. I@m the one asking questions, 'ere. I am not an expert.

MG

[Big Beat Steve]

I think that's highly debatable. A lot of those names recorded tunes considered to be R&B. Is it not uncalled for to consider "urban" blues to be R&B, or that blues/r&b became nearly interchangeable terms in that era?

Exactly.

To rattle off just a few of those I am fairly well familiar with in your list, MG, I'd file both guitarists like Gatemouth Brown and Pee Wee Crayton on the one hand and vocalists like Big Mama Thornton, combos like the Griffin Brothers (great classic jump blues dancefloor fillers among their repertoire!) and vocal trios such as the Big Three or vocalists such as Willie Mabon MOST DEFINITELY under R&B.

And Brownie McGhee's early output (long before his association with Sonny Terry) has always and by all accounts been classified as very much in the "Urban blues"/City Blues (and therefore R&B, sort of ...) vein (which is why many blues scribes have often wondered how much of a "down home" act the Terry/McGhee due REALLY was at heart (beyond of what the white college audiences clamored for).

And the examples could go on ...

Like I said, the stylistic boundaries were very blurred in the 1945-60 era IMO. Which is not the worst thing because there really is no need to try and pigeonhole everything, particularly if this would otherwise mean that one reverts back to the archaic thinking of those who initiated the "folk blues" revival.

So, really, MG, your list does not leave very much for all those many facets of R&B. So what is it that you would classify as 50s R&B? BLACK rock'nroll only? That would miss the point IMO and is not borne out by contemporary sources either.

In short, really sorry to disagree ...

Edited June 19, 2012 by Big Beat Steve

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I think that's highly debatable. A lot of those names recorded tunes considered to be R&B. Is it not uncalled for to consider "urban" blues to be R&B, or that blues/r&b became nearly interchangeable terms in that era?

Exactly.

To rattle off just a few of those I am fairly well familiar with in your list, MG, I'd file both guitarists like Gatemouth Brown and Pee Wee Crayton on the one hand and vocalists like Big Mama Thornton, combos like the Griffin Brothers (great classic jump blues dancefloor fillers among their repertoire!) and trios such as the Big Three or vocalists such as Willie Mabon (not a zillion miles away from Lloyd Glenn on the one hand and Charles Brown/Johnny Moore on the other) MOST DEFINITELY under R&B.

And Brownie McGhee's early output (long before his association with Sonny Terry) has always and by all accounts been classified as very much in the "Urban blues"/City Blues (and therefore R&B) vein (which is why many blues scribes have often wondered how much of a "down home" act the Terry/McGhee due REALLY was at heart (beyond of what the white college audiences clamored for).

And the examples could go on ...

Like I said, the stylistic boundaries were very blurred in the 1945-60 era IMO. Which is not the worst thing because there really is no need to try and pigeonhole everything, particularly if this means that one reverts back to the archaic thinking of those who initiated the "folk blues" revival.

So, really, MG, your list does not leave very much for R&B. So what is it that you would classify as 50s R&B? BLACK rock'nroll only? That would miss the point IMO and is not borne out by contemporary sources either.

In short, really sorry to disagree ...

Forties/fifties black R&B - well, it's Spoon, Mayfield, Milton, JOe Liggins, Milburn, Julia Lee, Hadda Brooks, Charles Brown, Wynonie, Fess, Roy Brown, Big Joe, Ivory Joe, Bullmoose, Smiley Lewis, Louis Jordan, Todd Rhodes, DInah Washington, Dave Bartholemew, Cleanhead, Piano Red, Billy Wright, and so on and so on. ANd JOhnny Otis, of course. Not Rock & Roll, I think. But quite different, I also think, from the people listed earlier.

MG

[Dan Gould]

I really don't get where you're going MG. Just as one example - B.B. King had his hits - or most of them - playing in front of a "small" big band. The music is indistinguishable from several of the artists you list as being "R&B".

[Big Beat Steve]

MG, you are largely limiting yourself to just one segment of what was commonly filed under R&B, i.e. Jump Blues. Jump Blues is fine (great, in fact), but it is not nearly all of R&B. There were MANY more subgenres of R&B, including vocal groups, vocalists-guitarists, after-hours piano combos, shouters, honkers, etc. etc.

Saunders King, for example, was one of the jazziest blues/R&B guitarists around, and your pigeonholing/category distinction between Memphis Slim on the one hand and Jimmy Witherspoon on the other or Roosevelt Sykes on the one hand and Piano Red on the other (or between Archibald and Professor Longhair) really do appear extremely arbitrary to me. Unless you want to reduce it to a case of "as soon as he plays this chord or uses that inflection in his voice he is no longer blues but R&B" (or vice versa).

Given your awareness of the history of Black music, I most certainly assume you are NOT falling into the trap of equalling "blues" with "true artistry" and "rhythm & blues" with "commericalism" either?

AFAICS it all boils down to a case of R&B being the popular blues of the Black communities in the 1945-60 period and every artist trying to make a living in that field trying to grab a piece of the pie, and thankfully there was enough leeway under the R&B tag to accommodate many variants (stylisticall speaking), and many artists happily moved effortlessly between tunes that a diehard "authentic blues" purist would have approved of and jumping rhythm numbers that satisfied the dancing crowd and turned on the heat in the clubs.

Maybe the post-1960 "folk blues revival" has clouded this fact? See the Brownie McGhee example above, and after all even Big Bill Broonzy's pre-folk blues revival recordings were FAR more citified and urban-oriented than what the college audience would have liked to believe.

Agree to disagree, it remains ...

@Dan Gould: Thanks for your very much to the point example.

Edited June 19, 2012 by Big Beat Steve

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

MG, you are largely limiting yourself to just one segment of what was commonly filed under R&B, e.g. Jump Blues. Jump Blues is fine (great, in fact), but it is not nearly all of R&B. There were MANY more subgenres of R&B, including vocal groups, vocalists-guitarists, after-hours piano combos, shouters, honkers, etc. etc.

Yes, while I was getting the rubbish and recycling out, I realised I should have mentioned the Orioles, Ravens, Dominos etc. And Johnny Ace, too. Perhaps your mention of black rock & roll drove it out of my mind

Saunders King, for example, was one of the jazziest blues/R&B guitarists around, and your pigeonholing/category distinction between Memphis Slim on the one hand and Jimmy Witherspoon on the other or Roosevelt Sykes on the one hand and Piano Red on the other really do appear extremely arbitrary to me. Unless you want to reduce it to a case of "as soon as he plays this chord or uses that inflection in his voice he is no longer blues but R&B" (or vice versa).

I certainly am not equipped to say "as soon as he plays this chord or uses that inflection in his voice he is no longer blues but R&B".

Remember, that entire era of Black music was NOT about "rural" authenticity in the sense that "blues" (without the "Rhythm") was supposed to be limited to those who had just stepped off the Northbound train into Chicago, etc.

And given your awareness of the history of Black music, I most certainly assume you are NOT falling into the trap of equalling "blues" with "true artistry" and "rhythm & blues" with "commericalism"?

Right!

AFAICS it all boils down to a case of R&B being the popular blues of the Black communities in the 1945-60 period and every artist trying to make a living in that field trying to grab a piece of the pie, and thankfully ther was enough leeway under the R&B tag to accommodate many variants (stylisticall speaking). Maybe the post-1960 "folk blues revival" has clouded this fact? See the Brownie McGhee example above, and after all even Big Bill Broonzy's pre-folk blues revival recordings were FAR more citified and urban-oriented than what the college audience would have liked to believe.

Agree to disagree, it remains ...

@Dan Gould: Thanks for your very much to the point example.

Thanks to you both.

OK, so look, is it that you're saying that these influences were already present in blues (whoever we like to include in it) in the forties/early fifties and so their presence in the late fifties sixties wasn't anything remarkable? But the influence of rock musicians later was remarkable, because it was new and foreign, so it's worth talking about? Well, OK, so who did it affect?

MG

[GA Russell]

I remember this from Jerry Wexler's obituary:

Wexler worked for Billboard Magazine, I guess it was ca. 1950. The black records chart was called "Race Records". The editor felt that that was inappropriate, and told Wexler to come up with a new name.

The popular non-blues black music was often called "rhythm" music, so he called the chart "Rhythm & Blues", meaning that the one chart actually included two types of music.

Over time, rhythm music came to be called rhythm & blues because of the chart.

MG, I suspect that you are making a mistake by thinking that a record's presence on the rhythm & blues chart would indicate that it was not considered to be a blues record. I think that all blues records were included on that chart at that time.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I remember this from Jerry Wexler's obituary:

Wexler worked for Billboard Magazine, I guess it was ca. 1950. The black records chart was called "Race Records". The editor felt that that was inappropriate, and told Wexler to come up with a new name.

The popular non-blues black music was often called "rhythm" music, so he called the chart "Rhythm & Blues", meaning that the one chart actually included two types of music.

Over time, rhythm music came to be called rhythm & blues because of the chart.

MG, I suspect that you are making a mistake by thinking that a record's presence on the rhythm & blues chart would indicate that it was not considered to be a blues record. I think that all blues records were included on that chart at that time.

No more than I think that Gene Ammons' 'Red Top','My foolish heart',Johnny Hodges' 'Castle rock' or Dizzy's 'Manteca' weren't considered jazz records.

MG

[Big Beat Steve]

@GA Russell:

I am not so sure about that "Rhythm" tag being applied to categorize "popular non-blues black music". Haven't read that Wexler book but this is the first time I've ever heard of anything like this (and I've read up on a lot about that period). What would that be, then, this "popular non-blues black music"? Gospel? The Ink Spots?

The way I remember reading about this "rhythm" tag (even when referring to pre-war recordings) is that "rhythm" tunes in the repertoire of any artist just referred to uptempo, danceable tunes, that's all. Which did not make them any less "blues" as long as they were "blues" in form. After all, does "blues" have to be slow, low, world-weary?

Isn't it rather so that all this "Rhythm" business came to the fore because after 1945 the instrumentation of many recordings by black artists was augmented, more horns were added and blues turned more openly, more often and more noticeably into "blues with a beat"?

You stated it quite well in your above post when you said (my words) that blues and rhythm & blues are not mutually exclusive (but in fact - my interpretation again - two versions of the same basic musical style).

OK, so look, is it that you're saying that these influences were already present in blues (whoever we like to include in it) in the forties/early fifties and so their presence in the late fifties sixties wasn't anything remarkable? But the influence of rock musicians later was remarkable, because it was new and foreign, so it's worth talking about? Well, OK, so who did it affect?

MG

I am not sure if we are thinking the same way here. The question of whether rock (or other post-blues influences) did make itself felt in blues/R&B is an interesting one and merits to be discussed.

But "these influences" weren't "already present in blues" in the 40s/50s. They cannot have been because there was no "rock" yet, see?

The way I understand it, part of what is commonly considered "blues" evolved into R&B after 1945 (WITHIN the blues idiom). When rock had established itself as a lasting popular music idiom of its own by the early 60s and when 50s R&B had evolved into soul by the 60s it might indeed be interesting to see to what extent these genres helped to influence and modify blues AGAIN. Sort of crossover ...

But is this aspect really on a line with what happened in the "pre-rock" days (disregarding any question of which pre-rock recordings by black artists might make a valid claim to actually being all-out rock'n'roll songs/tunes that just weren't labeled that way yet because that term had not yet been coined )?

Edited June 19, 2012 by Big Beat Steve

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

OK, so look, is it that you're saying that these influences were already present in blues (whoever we like to include in it) in the forties/early fifties and so their presence in the late fifties sixties wasn't anything remarkable? But the influence of rock musicians later was remarkable, because it was new and foreign, so it's worth talking about? Well, OK, so who did it affect?

MG

I am not sure if we are thinking the same way here. The question of whether rock (or other post-blues influences) did make itself felt in blues/R&B is an interesting one and merits to be discussed.

But "these influences" weren't "already present in blues" in the 40s/50s. They cannot have been because there was no "rock" yet, see?

The way I understand it, part of what is commonly considered "blues" evolved into R&B after 1945 (WITHIN the blues idiom). When rock had established itself as a lasting popular music idiom of its own by the early 60s and when 50s R&B had evolved into soul by the 60s it might indeed be interesting to see to what extent these genres helped to influence and modify blues AGAIN. Sort of crossover ...

But is this aspect really on a line with what happened in the "pre-rock" days (disregarding any question of which pre-rock recordings by black artists might make a valid claim to actually being all-out rock'n'roll songs/tunes that just weren't labeled that way yet because that term had not yet been coined )?

Sorry, I think you misunderstood my post. "These influences" (in the first sentence) refers to the influences of R&B, (and later soul and funk) on blues, not the influence of rock on blues, which is dealt with in the second sentence.

MG