Rick Wakeman - Help / Eleanor Rigby

The blues can be detected throughout modern music, from the way lyrics are written to the way songs are performed. Blues plays a huge part in R&B music, inspiring the use of music breaks, personal lyrics and call and return rhythmic styles. Modern artists also still use the extremely expressive singing style to entertain audiences during live shows. Hip hop artists have often sampled blues music to create new songs that get an emotional boost from the original piece. Modern blues artists still record in the raw singing style that originally defined the genre more than a hundred years ago.

Across modern pop, R&B and hip hop, you can hear the influence of blues as singers bend certain notes for greater emphasis and impact. The legacy of blues shines through as modern writers work to put together emotionally raw work that can touch an audience rather than creating direct narratives in their songs and music.

Appreciating music starts with exploring all genres, and understanding how they are connected and how they have built upon one another. Jazz, R&B and blues are all closely linked, yet each has a distinct sound that touches people in different ways. Each genre has also influenced the world in different ways, both artistically and socially.

Source: Understanding the Influence of Jazz, RB, and the Blues

Rick Wakeman - Help / Eleanor Rigby

• Composed by: John Lennon, Paul McCartney
• Released on: The Other Side of Rick Wakeman album
• Duration: 8:31

"Rick Wakeman recorded a series of acclaimed new age albums, and maintained a prodigious recording and touring schedule, balancing his rock, new age, religious, and solo piano work, and played in clubs rather than studying technique."

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Dinah Washington - Beggin' Mama Blues

Jazz, they’ll tell you, is a living, breathing American genre. It has no specific definition. It can withstand anything from the rhythms of an African tribe, to the swing of a big band, to the soaring vocals of an operatically trained singer and beyond... it can absorb almost any other type of music, dress it up or down, or turn it inside out and make it a part of the jazz label. Many artists who’ve made a name for themselves in other genres have successfully crossed over onto the jazz stage, and jazz has welcomed them with open arms.

With all of the freedom and flexibility of jazz music, it’s no surprise the evening’s master session focused largely on improvisation. After all, being able to weave in and out of melody and emulate rhythms and sounds coming from surrounding instruments is often considered the hallmark of jazz singing. But, as it turns out, improv isn’t just about spontaneous noise.

Improvisation should tell a story... to encourage aspiring jazz singers to consider improvisation like they would the lyric. Moments of scat, those seemingly nonsensical syllables that jazz singers utter in the midst of a song, should... come directly from the heart and have real thought and meaning behind them.

The audience was treated to a thrilling example of this heartfelt jazz riffing when Ms. Reeves interrupted... by adding her own scat improvisations... The two voices then blended in a beautiful impromptu duet in which their joyful master apprentice relationship was made wonderfully clear.

Ms. Reeves also pointed out that any jazz song or jazz performance has the power to shift and change. A jazz singer... is a vocal instrument in a band, and she enthusiastically suggested that up and coming jazz singers should explore different rhythms, phrasing, and tempos with each new performance of the same material. She likewise asked students to pull from the various sounds they hear in other instruments to color and reshape their own vocal timbre whenever they feel inspired to do so. Mr. Elling drew on that theme by commenting that performances can also be influenced by other variables, including the mood of the audience, or the order in which the songs are sung.

Source: American Voices: Jazz Singing by Dianne Reeves

Dinah Washington - Beggin' Mama Blues

• Composed by: Wilbert Barranco
• Genre: Jazz, Blues
• Recorded in: December 1945

"Dinah Washington was well known for singing torch songs. She produced 45 R&B charted hits between 1948 and 1961, including 16 Top 15 placements between 1948 and 1950."

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Shed Seven - Chasing Rainbows

Southern music entered the nation's consciousness late in the nineteenth century. Until that time national audiences had heard only caricatures of Southern music in the performances of the black face minstrels,  Northern, White song and dance men who roamed the country sporting corked faces and grotesque darky dialects. In 1865, however, a small group of African American entertainers, the Georgia Minstrels, inaugurated a brand of minstrelsy that, while still suffering from stereotypes of the genre, enabled Black performers to slowly develop a form of entertainment more truly representative of their culture and music. At least as late as World War I, minstrel troupes featuring African American performers such.

Country music has become America's favorite. Its styles and themes seem to appeal to much of the nation's adult White population. This trend may reflect a southernization of the North, but it also suggests the musics and the cultures that created them are becoming part of the national mainstream. But country musicians are still overwhelmingly from the South, and their lyrics often self consciously reflect Southern preoccupations and longings.

Southerners export musical treasures to the world and absorb much in return. Their styles may no longer be as regionally distinctive as many would like, but how could it be otherwise when the folk cultures that produced these traditions are undergoing a similar transformation? Happily, many of the older traditions, such as old time fiddling and string band music, clog dancing, and Sacred Harp singing, are preserved and revitalized by increasing numbers of young people. New Orleans has seen a revitalization of the brass band as young musicians rediscover it, and scores of Cajun youth have taken up the accordion and the Louisiana French music of their ancestors.

Source: Southern Music by Bill C. Malone

Shed Seven - Chasing Rainbows

• Released on: Nov 4, 1996
• Genre: Rock, Indie Rock
• Duration: 4:23

"Shed Seven is a British indie band formed in 1994 consisting of Rick Witter, Paul Banks, Tom Gladwin, Joe Johnson and Alan Leach. They released four albums and scored fourteen Top 40 singles."

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Ornette Coleman - Joy of a Toy

The musical vehicle for lament was appealing, aside from the words, which only increased the appeal to the audience and, therefore, the reach of the message. White audiences started listening, and the messages began to reach people who might otherwise not pay attention. Commenting on the role of music in the South African battle against Apartheid, a struggle that mirrors the American experience in many ways.

Indeed, the music of protest can be, and has been, enormously powerful in changing public opinion, and consequently, improving the guarantees of rights, justice, and the rule of law for minority populations. For this reason, perhaps most emphatically, musical expression is protected as speech by the First Amendment.

Historically, it appears that the idea of suppressing blues music because of its message simply never came up. While there are some prosecutions targeting the speech of radical political movements, those cases usually focused on whether the speech incited violence. Blues music, as seen in the examples cited above, typically fell well short of that.

Not so in Nazi Germany, where powerful forces were at play to suppress certain types of degenerate music. We see it today in China, where Tibetan musicians are jailed for singing songs that lament the plight of the Tibetan people, and the oppression by the Chinese government in that land. Eastern bloc nations during the Cold War were similarly harsh with anyone who dared express dissent, through any medium. Little wonder that no significant musical genre was generated by Soviet oppression or emerged as the expression of the hardships and sorrows of those victimized.

Source: The Blues and the Rule of Law: Musical Expressions of the Failure of Justice by David Pimentel

Ornette Coleman - Joy of a Toy

• Composed by: Ornette Coleman
• Recorded on: May 22, 1959 and January 31, 1961
• Genre: Free Jazz, Hard Bop

"Though now celebrated as a fearless innovator and a genius, Ornette Coleman was initially regarded by peers and critics as rebellious and disruptive. Coleman freed jazz from chord changes, fixed rhythms, and conventional harmony."

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Nina Simone - Backlash Blues

The personalized, solo elements of the blues may indicate a decisive move into the twentieth century American consciousness, but the musical style of the blues indicates a holding on to the old roots at the very time when the dispersion of Negroes throughout the country and the rise of the radio and the phonograph could have spelled the demise of a distinctive Afro American musical style. While it is undoubtedly true that work songs and field hollers were close to the West African musical archetype, so much of which had survived the centuries of slavery, blues with its emphasis upon improvisation, its retention to call and response pattern, its polyrhythmic effects, and its methods of vocal production which included slides, slurs, vocal leaps, and the use of falsetto, was a definite assertion of central elements of the traditional communal musical style.

The fact that the blues remained wholly traditional, yet forward looking at the same time is reflective of the collective African American identity.

The downhome blues may have appeared old fashioned to the older generation, but the unfamiliar sense of homesickness drew the new arrivals to the bluesman because, as Titon suggests, the familiarity of the southern music steadied them. The sound of strings moaning under the pressure of a bottleneck and the locomotive rhythm of the harp invoked an image of the South tinted with nostalgia. A number of popular blues tunes during this period revolved around returning to the South. I Can’t Be Satisfied, his 1948 version of I Be’s Troubled, resolves to return to the South, the oppressive setting that drove him and thousands of other African Americans to the North.

Source: From the Delta to Chicago: Muddy Waters’ Downhome Blues and the Shaping of African American Urban Identity in Post World War II Chicago by Jennifer Goven

Nina Simone - Backlash Blues

• Released in: 1967
• Genre: Jazz, Soul, Blues
• Recorded in: December 19, 1966 - August 26, 1969

"Nina Simone's vocal career began in 1954 in an Atlantic City, New Jersey, nightclub when the club owner threatened to fire her unless she sang too. In the 60s, she added protest songs and performed at civil rights demonstrations. Her popularity grew as she added folk and gospel selections to her repertoire."

Leon Bridges - Blue Mesas

Most theories on modern popular music center on the premise that this music is controlled to serve the economic and political interests of the businesses that create and distribute it. Such an early influential treatment was offered by Theodor W. Adorno. Adorno placed popular music within the capitalist state as a product that is mass produced for public consumption. For his examples of popular music, he used popular songs from his native Germany and Tin Pan Alley songs from America. Adorno theorized that music mediated between the state and its citizens. The corporate apparatus created music that affirmed government hegemony, packaged it as a commodity, then mass produced it. Popular music stripped the audience of power by making them passive receptors of its sounds.

Blues music’s rhythms give a good example of its oppositional quality. Blues songs feature syncopation, the accenting of beats or pulses typically unaccented in metric music. African music had long cultivated polyrhythms, with layers of rhythms that complemented and played off each other like a musical conversation. A dominant meter, around which most Western music is centered, was never the intention. This metrical patterns in blues was both an active preservation of African rhythms and song structure and a conscious undermining of the rhythms of most Western music... Different approaches to rhythm reflect the natures of the different cultures. The polyrhythms of African music suggest the timing of the natural world and the human body. Western rhythms are more like artificial, regularized time units necessary to an industrial society, like a mechanized machine. African rhythms reflect a culture not regulated by clock time and one that used music to get out of time, as in the attainment of ecstatic states of consciousness during religious rituals... the first pulse being the action of a body to raise a hand to strike and the second louder pulse being the sound created when the hands hit the instrument, be it drum, guitar, or piano. An example of this would be the syncopated work songs associated with chain gangs or railroad workers. The rhythms of the songs sung by the workers reflected the natural syncopation of their work, the action of lifting a hammer up and a second louder sound of the hammer hitting a railroad spike.

Source: Rock 'n Roll Stew: The Rolling Stones and Blues Music through the Looking Glass of American Culture in the 1960's by Henry Canning Woodward

Leon Bridges - Blue Mesas

• Released on: Gold Diggers Sound album
• Release Date: July 23, 2021
• Genre: R&B, Soul

"Leon Bridges albums resulted in four Grammy nominations and a win in the category of Best Traditional R&B Performance. Bridges soon expanded his audience with featured appearances on songs by artists ranging from the similar traditional roots."

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Audio Formats and Preservation

Sound Preservation and Different Audio Formats

Image by Mick Haupt

The process of transferring of information to other sustainable and accessible formats is known as digitization, bearing the challenge of transcoding all media content, as well as related information such as metadata in a proper way. This means managing file based digital data in a sustainable way, so that access, documentation and authenticity can be enabled and preserved in the long term.

Sound Preservation
The Recorded Sound Collection at the Library of Congress is an Audio Visual Conservation in Culpeper, VA. Items date from the late 1880s to the present day and include everything from music to radio broadcasts to spoken word recordings to field recordings of traditional music, oral histories and actualities.
Each year, donations, acquisitions, and copyrights are added through formats from cylinders, 78, 45, or 33 1/3 RPM records, reel to reel audio tapes, 8 tracks, cassettes, CDs, or even wire.

For shattered cylinder, if the Library inherits all its pieces, some formats more stable than others, using a variety of means, and carefully glue it back together. Worn out or heavily worn 78 platters can be played for maximum sound quality by experimenting with stylus sizes. Tapes affected with sticky shed syndrome, a wearing away of the glue that holds magnetic particles to tape, can be baked at a low temperature, a process that reactivates their magnetic bindings. Almost all items require some degree of cleaning.

Deterioration of Sound

Because recorded sound is so pervasive in modern life, we may not realize how susceptible it is to deterioration and loss. Since the end of the nineteenth century, technological innovations have enabled people to record sound with greater ease and fidelity. Experts have experimented with and improved techniques of recording and playback, and developed new audio media, or carriers. For analog sound carriers, levels of risk vary according to their physical composition, storage conditions over time, and access to playback equipment and the knowledge to use it. The availability of proper storage space, functioning playback equipment, and expertise in working with obsolete formats diminishes.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, open reel quarter inch tape was the preferred medium of professionals. Never perceived as being permanent, tape was considered to be, and probably was at the time, the best affordable medium available for long term preservation. All the while, it was hoped that modern science and technology would develop a permanent medium. That never occurred, and worse, by the early 1990s, many preservation master tapes were found to be unplayable because they suffered from sticky shed syndrome. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, both digital audio tape, DAT, and the recordable compact disc, CD-R, were thought to have promise as preservation media, but they have proved to be unreliable for archival purposes. As a result, the original recordings that were reformatted for preservation have often outlasted the reformatted versions.

Image by Chris Lawton

Deterioration of Sound Formats

• Brown wax cylinder - Fingerprints on playback surfaces leave behind organic compounds that not only attract dust and dirt, but also encourage microorganism damage. Wax cylinders are also fragile and can be easily broken through improper handling.

• Shellac 78 RPM Record - Shellac discs are a robust and relatively stable format. Shellac discs become more brittle over time, particularly if stored without sufficient temperature and humidity controls. The organic cellulosic material present in most discs is susceptible to fungal growth, especially if conditions are humid or if the discs are exposed to water and not quickly dried. Exposure to water can also cause networks of fine cracks on the playback surface, a condition referred to as crazing.

• Vinyl Records - Vinyl records are the most stable physical sound recording format developed to date, they can last 100 years in a controlled environment. However, heat and ultraviolet radiation both degrade the polymer. Vinyl softens and flows when exposed to excessive heat, which deforms the grooves. Excessive heat, ultraviolet radiation, and humidity accelerate the degradation and deplete the available stabilizers. Dust and foreign matter, such as oils from fingers, can cause distortion and surface noise in playback, these deposits can promote fungal growth and damage the playback surface. Water can combine with the offgassing of hydrogen chloride to form hydrochloric acid in excessively hot conditions. Heat and pressure can also cause the record to warp, which can adversely affect playback. Vinyl records are relatively soft compared with shellac records, and they are susceptible to mechanical damage, such as scratches. Consequently, they require much lighter downforce from the tonearm on a playback device than do shellac records. Because polystyrene is softer than PVC, these records are also more susceptible to mechanical damage caused by the playback needle gouging the surface as it plays.

• Wire Recordings - Early non stainless steel wires may be susceptible to corrosion and rust. The most serious deterioration is caused by wire breaking and becoming tangled, as the wire travels through the playback mechanisms at a high speed. Splices or repairs were achieved by tying the wire in a standard square knot and pulling it tight. Some early practitioners bonded wire ends together with a lit cigarette.

• Cartridges, 8 tracks, Compact cassette, and Microcassette - The inevitable loss of tape lubrication within cartridges can cause the tape to wind improperly or stick together when unwound during playback. The pinch roller in some cartridges was made of improperly cured rubber, which can allow the roller to become dented or misshapen, particularly if exposed to excessive heat. Both of these factors contribute to a risk of tape snarls and catastrophic malfunction. The portable design of cartridge and cassette tapes encourages listening in all environments, and this makes them especially susceptible to binder hydrolysis. High capacity tapes use very thin polyester tape and are at a high risk of deformation, especially when stored in hot and humid environments.

• Digital Audio Tape (DAT) - The pure iron pigments used in the magnetic layer of DATs are susceptible to oxidation, rust. Binder hydrolysis in the polyester urethane binder has proven to be a prevalent issue with many DATs, causing complete loss of information. The high speeds produced by the rotating heads passing by the moving tape exacerbate damage to the information layer. After the error threshold is crossed, the information is irretrievable. These factors combine to make DATs a very high risk format.

• Pressed Compact Disc - Both polycarbonate layers are susceptible to damage. Scratches and abrasions to the bottom layer can cause read errors and, if severe enough, can prevent successful playback. The top layer, where the information is actually stored, can be damaged by acidic inks from pens or markers used to label a CD, or from dyes and adhesives used to decorate and label the disc. Accelerated testing conducted at the Library of Congress has indicated that the reflective metallic layer can delaminate from the polycarbonate plastic when a disc cycles repeatedly through heat and cold.

Image by Carlos Felipe Ramírez Mesa

Sound Archives

The Library of Congress numbers in excess of three million items and adds a further 75,000 sound items each year.

The National Archives multimedia collections include nearly 300,000 reels of motion picture film and more than 200,000 sound and video recordings.

The Association for Recorded Sound Collections, Inc. is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and study of sound recordings in all formats, consisting of more than 1000 knowledgeable members who really care about sound recordings.

The Audio Engineering Society was founded in the USA in 1948. An international organization that unites audio engineers, creative artists, scientists and students with over 12,000 members.

Additional information about preserving and archiving sound:

Sound Preservation at the Library of Congress

Research in Federal Records and Presidential Materials by Media Format

The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC)

Archiving, Restoration and Digital Libraries

Preservation: Audio

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The Warning - Escape The Mind

This indefinite role of the creator further complicates the role of the artist and what impact they may have on the creation of particular works... their impact comes within a particular historical horizon. The artist is limited by his or her place in the world and to some extent is at the mercy of what they can create. The artist may have the knowledge of how to create these works, but their impact cannot be known without the communities that make the works possible... because they cannot control the impact of the art that they create after it is completed. They may be responsible in part for the work’s revealing qualities, but are not the sole reason why a work may impact the world as it does. The truth or its unfolding has a much richer process than simply applying paint to a canvas or in playing particular notes. These creations must resonate within a community in order to make a profound impact upon its people... Often times, it is not one, but many artists who create multiple works that make up a style which defines an epoch... Therefore, the unfolding of truth is not simply a matter of creating a work, but creating a work that impacts a whole community in a profound manner.

The process of creation has no real bearing on the outcome, which is the point at which revealing occurs. What is missing is the dynamism that art can have in cases of music. Even if we are to put aside the process of creation, in music we find a more difficult task of pointing to where we can find revealing. Is the point at which revealing occurs in the recording of a song, in its playing, or in its written composition? The answer to this question alters the evental nature of art and music tremendously. If we limit events to the playing of a song, then all recorded material has a different kind of eventful nature and is thus a different form of revealing. 

Source: The Event of Blues Music and the Effects of Technology on the Artistic Event by Adam Rejak

The Warning - Escape The Mind

• Released on: April 14, 2015
• Released on: Escape the Mind album
• Genre: Rock, Indie Rock

"The Warning learned to play rock songs, often via the Rock Band video game series, and posted videos of their performances to YouTube. In 2014, at 12 years old, Paulina Villarreal Vélez was profiled in the women's drumming publication Tom Tom Magazine."

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Theory Of A Deadman - Santa Monica

When the British beat boom struck in the mid 1960s, blues songs entered the repertoires of countless local bands, though many of the musicians barely realised the origins of the music they were playing. Distinguishing themselves from the more commercial, and less bluesy, sound of The Beatles... which had in turn been learned from black American blues artists. 

British blues bandleader John Mayall was promoting the music with an almost missionary zeal, drawing attention to its black origins in articles, interviews and liner notes and making converts like Marsden aware of the blues as a genre in its own right, not just a tributary of British beat music. Many others took up the cause... Local blues performers continue to emerge in the new century... And the old ones keep on going... blues remaining the foundation if no longer the sole ingredient of their music.

For the most part, though, New Zealand’s blues performers adhere to the music’s blue collar ethos, playing in bars more often than concert halls, more journeymen and women than superstars. On the upside, the genre they have chosen is an enduring one that has outlasted fads and fashions, and ensured long careers for its practitioners.

Source: The Blues Down Under by Nick Bollinger

Theory Of A Deadman - Santa Monica

• Written by: Dave Brenner, Dean Back, Tyler Connolly
• Released on: Gasoline album
• Released on: March 29, 2005

"Theory Of A Deadman includes traits of music styles, such as country and acoustic, in addition to their post grunge and alternative rock foundation. Nine of their singles have entered the top ten of the US Billboard Mainstream Rock chart, including four songs that peaked at number one."

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Anita O'Day - Green Eyes

It seems there were 25 or 30 records by blues artists on or related to the 1927 flood. The songs present a variety of commentary on the flood. The ones by the few artists that were from the area, who might have actually experienced the flood, like Charlie Patton or Alice Pearson, tend to be the most realistic in their descriptions, the most accurate in their details. Some of the others are inaccurate, based on hearsay, some sentimentalize the flood, some even trivialize it, or find some way to connect it to the man woman theme, or sexual double entendre, getting back to more standard blues themes.

There had been generic flood songs in the 1920s... On the religious side, in gospel music, there were some recordings that saw greater significance in this flood... A black preacher in Memphis, the Reverend Sutton E. Griggs, saw the flood as a metaphor of black white cooperation, the people trying to shore up the levees, something that led to better race relations, although the historical fact about it was that there were some major race related problems related to the relief effort.

Blues is a music that's highly personalized, that deals with fairly intimate personal relationships, so you have to read through the songs to see broader social issues. But the personal relationships described in the blues are affected by social conditions of poverty, racism, the nature of work, rural life, and so on, and these shape how people relate to each other. You have to do a little bit of projection from those lyrics, blues are not usually songs of ideology or protest. But you can detect an overriding aura of dissatisfaction in the blues. They deal with the changes and fluctuations of life, and the possibilities of change, too, on a very personal level.

Source: Delta Blues Music by Mai Cramer and David Evans

Anita O'Day - Green Eyes

• Written by: Nilo Menéndez, Eddie Woods, Eddie Rivera, Adolfo Utrera
• Released in: 1965
• Duration: 2:36

"Anita O'Day career spanned the late swing and bebop eras, inspiring many singers who followed her. She began her performing career as a ballroom dance contest winner in the 1930s, which is when she adopted the stage name O’Day."

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Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) - Stare

Thus, as cultures develop and change, specific dances, folk art, songs, or history are sometimes lost to progress. Efforts to preserve cultural artifacts are often difficult, if not impossible. Information about blues singers’ lives is often unavailable or lost because many of the blues singers were mostly rambling sorts who didn’t leave behind much in the way of estates, memoirs, letters, or other personal papers or belongings. Fortunately, performances are a means to preserve specific songs, dances, and history... the emergence of a tourist market frequently facilitates the preservation of a cultural tradition which would otherwise perish. The performance of native dances in Hawaii, for example, allows that community to retain an important aesthetic component of its culture. In the same way, blues festivals preserve one of the Delta’s best known cultural artifacts.

Interviews with festival spectators seem to support the theme of preservation... Festival promoters create themes or slogans to stress the importance of preserving one of America’s oldest musical genres. For example, the theme for the 24th Annual Mississippi Delta Blues and Heritage Festival was Taking It Back to Where We Started. The front cover of the festival program underscores this preservation theme, sporting a drawing of a transient 1920s blues family in motion. In the foreground, a family of three is pictured walking down a dirt road. On the left, the father is dressed in overalls with a guitar strapped to his back. On the right, the mother is carrying a basket, presumably filled with food and water. In the middle, a young boy is holding the hands of both parents. In the background, many of the images found in Delta blues songs are present, a large green field, a barn, and a fast moving train. The festival theme is positioned underneath the drawing, thus accentuating the relationship between preservation and a Delta that no longer exists.
Source: *Blues Tourism in the Mississippi Delta: The Functions of Blues Festivals by Stephen A. King

Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) - Stare

• Released on: Elogram album
• Released in: April 2016
• Genre: Electronic

"In 1968, Roy Wood, guitarist, vocalist and songwriter had an idea to form a new band that would use violins, cellos, string basses, horns and woodwinds to give their music a classical sound, allowing rock music to pick up in a new direction. The orchestral instruments would be the main focus, rather than the guitars."

*PDF Link to Blues Tourism in the Mississippi Delta: The Functions of Blues Festivals by Stephen A. King

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Joni Mitchell - A Case of You

By the mid 1960s, popular music in Brazil had been influenced by, and or at least had incorporated some elements of rock and roll... blues influences such as the famed blue note broadly to address a few examples in Brazilian music. However, this does not mean that Brazilians had been playing the blues, far from it. In fact, Bossa Nova music... popular in the late 1950s and 1960s among the Brazilian upper socioeconomic cohort, hardly fit into the musical genre universally recognized as blues. That is, Bossa Nova and its musical and sociocultural frameworks... were worlds away from blues culture and from the musical landscapes of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, or Howlin’ Wolf for example, former cotton sharecroppers who in turn, had a specific tonality, instrumentation, with different musical and cultural languages and styles inherently tied to the African American Mississippi Delta blues world or the Chicago blues world. Among other Brazilian artists and bands... were not blues musicians, despite being influenced by African American funk and soul music.

The introduction of blues in Brazil perhaps dovetails with the perception that American musical traditions, i.e.; folk, country, blues, ironically, which origins stemmed from the lowest socioeconomic U.S. demographic cohort, originate from a place that carries a strong or high cultural cachet as opposed to the perception that Brazil’s national popular music carries low cultural capital... That is, Brazilians suffer from a Periphery Complex, and despite that MPB, Música Popular Brasileira, Brazilian Popular Music, has long been tied to Brazil’s nationalistic sentiments, the processes of cultural imperialism and the Americanization of Brazilian music... possibly stems from a long Brazilian obsession with U.S. culture, music and mores. The perception that Brazil was and is, and will always be, the country of the future, has perhaps led many Brazilians to believe that by listening and/or playing música americana, American music they may have a chance to participate, imagine, and even belong to the modern world. However, playing music from a foreign country, sung in a foreign language, and from an alien culture, comes with its own predicaments. One of them, is the notion of authenticity.

Source: When Brazil Got the Blues: The Diffusion of Blues in Brazil by Alan P. Marcus

Joni Mitchell - A Case of You

Written by: Joni Mitchell

Genre: Jazz, Pop/Rock

Released on: June 22, 1971

"One of the most influential singer songwriters to emerge from the 1960s folk music circuit, Joni Mitchell became known for her starkly personal lyrics and has received many accolades, including ten Grammy Awards and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997."

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Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go

In the U.S., folkies took a leadership role in the exploration of blues roots. They worshipped authenticity, which was taken to mean an aged black man playing an acoustic instrument... Contemporary white performers were acknowledged only if their work focused on pre World War II forms.

In the United Kingdom, black American blues became available in appreciable numbers after World War II through records left behind by American G.I.s and sold in secondhand stores, product mail ordered by young enthusiasts, and pressings leased by English jazz labels. The trad jazz fad of the 1950s represented a pale, but enthusiastic, attempt to recreate the Chicago and New Orleans styles popular in the 1920s, best known as dixieland in the United States.

The Stones, formed in 1963, went on to become the British blues revival band both to achieve broad based popularity and advance the genre beyond the mere imitation of old models.

Source: Blues Revival by Frank Hoffmann

Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go

• Written by: Nicky Wire
• Released on: May 20, 1996
• Genre: Rock, Alternative Rock

"On December 31st 1999, Manic Street Preachers said goodbye to the 20th Century with a gig at Cardiff Millennium Stadium, attended by upwards of 50,000 people. They have had eight top ten albums and fifteen top ten singles."

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Pepper Adams - Out of This World

To grasp the significance of that, you have to bear in mind how fantastically few record collectors possessed such an interest at the end of the 1930s. Early jazz was a thing in certain hip circles, but only a few true freaks were into the country blues. There was twitchy, rail thin Jim McKune, a postal worker from Long Island City, Queens, who famously maintained precisely 300 of the choicest records under his bed at the Y.M.C.A., had to keep the volume low to avoid complaints. He referred to his listening sessions as séances. Summoning weird old voices from the South, the ethereal falsetto of Crying Sam Collins.

In the ’50s McKune would become a sort of salon master to the so called Blues Mafia, the initial cell of mainly Northeastern 78 pursuers who evolved, some of them, into the label owners and managers and taste arbiters of the folk blues revival. An all white men’s club, several of whom were or grew wealthy, the Blues Mafia doesn’t always come off heroically in recent, and vital, revisionist histories of the field, more of them being written by women... Still, no one who seriously cares about the music would pretend that the cultural debt we owe the Blues Mafia isn’t past accounting. It’s not just all they found and documented that marks their contribution.

Source: The Ballad Of Geeshie And Elvie by John Jeremiah Sullivan

Pepper Adams - Out of This World

• Composed by: Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer
• Released in: 1961
• Recorded on: March 2, 1961

"Pepper Adams lead a long and fruitful career spanning 28 years, and over 600 recordings. He gained an early ear for the music from listening to the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, and Fats Waller’s nightly radio show, and would go on to make a name for himself on the Detroit scene."

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DIIV - Follow

Photography tells one story of American roots, and the way that it is preserved and displayed will tell another side of that story. Both stories deal with the value of content. One is from the beginning, and the other is for the future. The BCAH is now charged with the preservation of Susan’s photography. Because the center is neither strictly a museum nor strictly an archive, there is constant confusion about what to do with some of the remarkable materials housed there. I believed her photography could combine blues music and public history, creating a cultural narrative of the Austin blues scene... To archive these photographs was not enough. They needed an exhibition that drew on the lore of Austin cultural history and told the often lesser known story of musicians who had paid their dues for years before getting the recognition they deserved... The project is ongoing, and includes a photography exhibit, a small book of photos, and a digital oral history project that includes interviews with musicians and patrons. Hopefully, through its fruition, public history will breed cultural tourism in the form of a revised Austin music narrative. 

In many ways, Austin music tourism is focused more on promoting music than on combining music and history, and as a result, the back story often gets left out. The goal of the Susan Antone Photography Exhibit is to join history with popular culture, bringing together an academic institution and a nightclub in order to fill in some blanks that get left out of the master narrative. The goal of Austin music tourism will never promote the blues the way that Mississippi does because Austin is not just about the blues. But the city could take a lesson from the efforts going on to embrace history and culture across the Mississippi Delta in how to harness the two without dismissing either one.

Source: The Blues Is Alright: Blues Music as a Root for Cultural Tourism and Public History by Katherine Duvall Osteen

DIIV - Follow

• Written by: Zachary Cole Smith
• Genre: Rock, Shoegaze
• Released: Jun 26, 2012

"Zachary Cole Smith formed DIIV in 2011 as a forum for his own songs. He enlisted childhood friend Andrew Bailey on guitar, bassist Devin Ruben Perez, and drummer Colby Hewitt as his live band."

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Frazey Ford - Saul

The blues is a blending of African and European traditional music characterized by its melancholy, or blue, notes expressing suffering and deprivation... many of the country blues musicians had ceased playing music or lived in obscurity until blues revivalists searched them out. Jesse Fuller from Jonesboro, a one man band, and harmonica player Buster Brown from Cordele benefited from the renewed interest in their music.

From the mid 1920s into the early 1930s, artist and repertoire, known as A&R, staff scoured the South and northern cities in search of talent for the race record subsidiaries of major record companies, and in Atlanta they recorded a distinct style of country blues performers. The use of twelve string guitars, more strumming than picking, irregular rhythms, and a nasal vocal technique typified the Atlanta sound... By the time the blues began to have an overt influence on white musicians,... in the late 1960s and early 1970s, white performers had overtaken their Black peers in popularity, and increasing numbers of white musicians... blues tourism and the record industry continues to homogenize the genre, and the distinctive traditions of the early blues records and the Atlanta style no longer remain.

Source: Blues Music by Ian Hill

Frazey Ford - Saul

• Released on: November 16, 2021
• Genre: Folk, Country
• Duration: 3:50

"The Be Good Tanyas gained more widespread recognition, especially in the U.S., when one of Ford's songs, In Spite of All the Damage, was included on the soundtrack to the Showtime series, The L Word. Additional placements in television and films followed, as did another album."

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The London Suede - Sometimes I Feel I'll Float Away

There are plenty of times where simple is better, but if you’re looking for some inspiration to break out of the same melody... look no further than Bebop. Bebop melodies are known for dynamic contrast, astonishing speed, and dense complexity. A good bebop melody can be exhilarating and yet still catchy enough to be memorable. Charlie Parker’s Ornithology is a great example of a melody that is chromatic, complex, longer, and yet, extremely catchy and memorable. Learning to use chromatic tones, voice leading, melodic contrast, and more will be time well spent for any producer.

Syncopation is the art of accenting notes that are between the beats. If you are counting in eighth notes, in a One and Two and Three and Four fashion, the and words would get accented if you were playing a syncopated rhythm. Rhythmic hits and accents that are syncopated can help to show cultural roots as well as to make a piece of music seem like it is in an exotic time signature or setting.

Source: Music Theory : Why Producers Should Learn Jazz by Matt Vanacoro

The London Suede - Sometimes I Feel I'll Float Away

• Released in: 2013
• Released on: Bloodsports album
• Written by: Brett Anderson, Richard Oakes

"Suede kick started the Brit pop revolution of the 1990s, reviving the romance and drama of glammy guitar rock for an era that got mired in the swirling neo psychedelia of shoegaze and Madchester. Brit pop soon became defined by boisterous hooks and lager swilling loud guitars." 

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Count Basie - Down By the Riverside

Though it began as a general term for African American music, the synthesis of styles that became what is now called rhythm and blues caught on among a wide youth audience during the post war period and contributed to changing the racial divide in American society and music of the mid twentieth century. Initially, white artists such as Elvis Presley performed and recorded, or covered, rhythm and blues works by African American composers in order for those songs to be marketed to white audiences. But the effect was to bring both audiences and artists with an interest in this style of music together... and mixed groups of youths sang doo wop together on the street corners of many urban centers. This provoked a strong reaction of proponents of segregation and was one reason why rhythm and blues and early rock and roll were often seen as dangerous to America's youth. But with young people of all backgrounds identifying with these new musical styles, a generation was becoming ready for a more equal society.

In the 1960s, a rhythm and blues style known as soul emerged in which the influence of gospel vocal style was stronger, though the lyrical emphasis was usually very secular... Their vocalists often sang in an uninhibited and emotionally direct style. In major cities, teenaged vocal groups with little or no instrumental accompaniment were a growing presence. They took their inspiration from both gospel singers and successful African American pop stylists... The term doo wop is well known now, but it was not applied to these groups until much later, and it refers to the vocables and nonsense syllables these group sang to compensate for their lack of instruments. All of these styles were significant to the development of rock and roll a few years later.

Source: Rhythm and Blues by Library of Congress

Count Basie - Down By the Riverside

• Released on: Brother John Sellers Sings Blues & Folk Songs album
• Genre: Jazz, Blues
• Released: 1954

"In 1936, Count Bassie led the Count Basie Orchestra for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two split tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and others."

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Joe Henderson - Blues for a Four String Guitar

The string playing techniques used by blues guitarists are akin to those developed in the Sahel. The kora, a Mandinka 21 string harp, is played in a rhythmic melodic style that uses constantly changing rhythms, often providing a ground bass overlaid with complex treble patterns, while vocal supplies a third rhythmic layer... similar techniques can be found in hundreds of blues records. The same holds true for the vocals. The emblematic song coming from the Sahel is a solo, no call and response there, moaning kind of song, done by an individual with a raspy voice, in a declamatory vocal style. Blues expert, Alan Lomax, called it a high lonesome complaint.

The typical blues, a high lonesome complaint of its own, is also sung by one individual with a string, guitar, or wind, harmonica instrument in a throaty style. In addition, the long, blending and swooping notes of the blues... And so are producing a note slightly under pitch, breaking into a vibrato or letting the note trail off and finishing it above what is expected.

Even an untrained ear can recognize the similarities between the blues and Islamic influenced West African music, but parallelisms are also strong between the blues and the chanting of the Qur’an. Melisma, changing the note of a syllable while it is being sung, and wavy intonations are the basis of these Islamic styles and they became the traditional techniques of blues singers.

Source: African Muslims and American Blues by Sylviane A. Diouf

Joe Henderson - Blues for a Four String Guitar

Released in: January 1964

Written by: Elmer Bernstein, Mack David

Duration: 01:55

"Joe Henderson had a very distinctive sound and style which, although influenced a bit, also contained a lot of brand new phrases and ideas. Henderson had long been able to improvise in both inside and outside settings, from hard bop to freeform."

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Elvin Jones - I'm a Fool to Want You (Live At Carnegie Hall)

After its origins in New Orleans, jazz music spread to other major cities throughout the U.S. In the early 1900s, the first jazz recordings were made, which helped spread the genre's popularity. In addition, New Orleans jazz performers moved or ventured to other locations and brought their music with them. A few other notable cities with an early jazz culture or proliferation were New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Kansas City, MO, and Denver. Some distinctive jazz styles developed in each of the cities and took on particular characteristics of their own.

Brass bands originated in Great Britain in the early 19th century and flourished with the invention of a better valve for brass instruments, they were developed from an earlier culture of musicians gathering together in communities with various groupings of instruments. In addition, military bands and musicians helped facilitate the popularity of brass bands. Industrialization and a rising middle class also led to the growth of brass bands and concert going. Brass bands made their way to America via its European influences. Jazz, as a distinctive musical style, emerged in the early 20th century.

West African drumming and dance traditions greatly influenced the development of culture in New Orleans, and jazz music, overall. In addition to the aforementioned influences, blues, brass bands, and slave songs also contributed to the development of jazz. Blues can be described as Southern Black American folk songs that usually had themes of woe or yearning and followed a fairly simple musical structure... Enslaved populations sang in order to spread messages, build a sense of community, facilitate hope, tell stories, detail their hardships, and more.

Source: What is Jazz Music? by Amanda Ferguson

Elvin Jones - I'm a Fool to Want You (Live At Carnegie Hall)

• Released on: Live At Carnegie Hall album
• Recorded in: September 12, 1971
• Genre: Jazz, Fusion, Hard Bop

"Elvin Jones was exposed to gospel, blues, and jazz through both his parents and older siblings, and his musical talents became evident at a very young age. By his early teens, Elvin was already drumming in the style of his early influences. Jones said he borrowed thirty five dollars from his sister when he got back to buy his first drum set."

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Harold Land - Black Caucus

When it comes to music festivals, few genres have as much history and cultural significance as jazz and blues. From New Orleans to Paris, these festivals bring together musicians and fans from all corners of the world to celebrate the rich traditions of jazz and blues music.

Attending a jazz or blues festival can be an incredibly rewarding experience, both culturally and musically. These festivals provide an opportunity to see some of the world’s best musicians perform live, and to experience the rich traditions and history of jazz and blues music. In addition to music, these festivals also offer a range of cultural events, including food, crafts, and workshops.

Jazz and blues festivals around the world are a celebration of music and culture, bringing together musicians and fans from all corners of the globe. From the historic streets of New Orleans to the picturesque towns of Europe, these festivals offer a unique opportunity to experience the rich traditions and history of jazz and blues music... a jazz or blues festival is an event not to be missed.

Source: Jazz and Blues Festivals around the World: A Celebration of Music and Culture by kix-band (publisher: Robert Mankala)

Harold Land - Black Caucus

• Composed by: Harold Land
• Genre: Jazz, Post Bop
• Released: 1971

"During the '60s, Harold Land, like so many saxophonists, became enamored with John Coltrane, and he found that both his smooth sound and his approach to improvising changed during this period. Land remains one of the most impressive and deep improvisers in jazz."

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Grant Stewart - Modinha

That sound draws thousands to Clarksdale each year for the annual Juke Joint Festival. They come for the familiar licks and wails. Over the years, the town of around 14,000 people, nestled among the cotton fields of northwestern Mississippi, has produced some of the world's most famous blues stars. Many blues greats, including Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, worked the surrounding plantations.

A mix of slide guitar with a howl to the human condition. Blues houses, known as juke joints, opened up. By the 20s and 30s, the first stars emerged, including Robert Johnson, who, per legend, sold his soul to the devil just outside of Clarksdale in exchange for his guitar chops.

These kinds of experiences are what helped forge the blues in the Delta, where places like Clarksdale were built into boomtowns on the backs of slaves and later, sharecroppers. But as musical tastes changed over the years, local blues houses closed down. Farm work dried up. Today, Clarksdale sits in one of the poorest counties in the poorest region of a stubbornly poor state.

Source: Blues is life for Grammy-winning musician Christone Kingfish Ingram by Jon Wertheim

Grant Stewart - Modinha
Written by: Antônio Carlos Jobim
First release in: May 1958
Released in: 2007

"At 17 Grant Stewart took up the tenor saxophone and was soon playing with such master saxophonists as Pat Labarbara and Bob Mover. By 18 he was leading a quartet in Toronto for a regular gig."

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