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Joe Williams: Beyond the Blues (Stryker in Jazz Times)


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I once saw him sing "Georgie Rose" .  (IIRC He was backed by the Clayton-Hamilton band. )  I I'd never heard the song before and it was wonderful.  Unfortunately I don't think he ever recorded it.  I do love the nightclub recording with Ben Webster. I've been planning to post about my many heretical opinions about jazz and one of them was going to be "Joe Williams sings ballads better than he sings the blues." 

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12 hours ago, medjuck said:

I've been planning to post about my many heretical opinions about jazz and one of them was going to be "Joe Williams sings ballads better than he sings the blues." 

I've been under the impression that this evaluation of his work has been repeated more than once ? So it's not quite THAT heretic, it seems. ;)
And there is a point to it, IMO.

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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ALSO - yes. On a case by case basis. But I think what was hinted at here (and in reviews I read not terribly long ago but cannot pin down right now) was simply that overall, blues singing was not his real forte compared to his ballads. And of course it also depends on every listener's definition to what extent part of his recorded legacy will be considered either as "blues singing" or as "blues-tinged ballad singing".

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Joe Williams sang songs really well. ALL songs, including "blues songs".

To silo him off into "this" and "that" is a leftover of a marketing mindset. An enlightened 21st Century outlook calls for looking at music such as his wholistically, finding the real crafts and the real arts, the core of his singing. Then, if you just absolutely HAVE to market Joe Williams, market ALL of him as a single piece, because everything he sang was of a single piece.

Are we ready to go forward in our thoughts, or are we forevermore stuck in the record store filing system?

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