I’m up watching a doco – Blind Willie’s Blues. I love blues. The best blues. The good blues. The true blues. But I hardly ever write about it.
There’s a funny relationship between me and blues music. I do not go to blues-club meetings, there are a lot of local blues bands that have sent me albums and I have hated them. That generic, churgling, boogie sound can be really irritating.
But it’s a bit like reggae – the genre (at its very best) is sublime. And yet maybe it’s the local treatment of it that has ruined a lot of the feel for me. Because the feel isn’t there in so many of the hokey local efforts.
I grew up learning about the blues through the British Blues Boom music – the early Fleetwood Mac, Cream and Yardbirds, Led Zep, The Rolling Stones – and all of that music means a lot to me. As a teenager I was reading Guitar World magazine so I was hooked on the stuff in there, some of it already in my mum’s record collection (Robert Cray, Eric Clapton), some of it new to me from those pages (Eric Johnson and the shred-heads of the day). But the blues was always an important component of many of the Guitar World features and interviews (and lessons).
Things get funny too – when some people try to tell you what is and isn’t blues.
I know it’s not strictly true, but personally it is – when I say: Captain Beefheart’s Safe As Milk is one of my favourite blues albums ever – but you’ve probably got more chance of finding it in an alternative section, than in blues. And definitely in the generic, catch-all, rock section.
So, we’ll leave the problem of genre-allocation aside – it plagues all music.
I’m currently all about the Charley Pattons and Blind Willie McTells, Robert Johnson (always) and Muddy and Hooker and things like that.
So I want to talk briefly about the things that first made an impression on me – very much the artists that were translating that sound, and in some cases were influenced by the British Blues Boom/ers who were first influenced by that sound….
Some of these records and artists I don’t even love anymore. But they were crucial gateways for me. They were the first things that made me sit up and take notice. Ages and stages. That’s all it ever is.
Gary Moore’s blues records don’t, as a whole, mean that much to me now, for instance, but I’ve still got a soft spot for Still Got The Blues. (I actually think it’s Crap – but Still Good Too. Lol. If you can follow that confusion. And if not, follow the link…)
Robert Cray moved toward a horn-drenched Stax-soul styled sound but Bad Influence was a revelation when I first heard it – and is still a favourite. And Eric Clapton, well I couldn’t e less interested in him now, but he still nailed a version of the sound on several of his solo records – and with his formative John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers work, with Cream, with The Yardbirds and with Derek & The Dominoes.
But when I think of absolute favourite blues albums, records that blew me away when I first heard them and still do now, I think of the following (in no specific order):
B.B. King: Live In Cook County Jail – I know that many people consider Live At The Regal as “the classic” but I have always preferred this. I took a long time to get B.B. The dude doesn’t even play and sing at the same time! But you hear his tone, his soul, his feel and his band’s immaculate groove and it all combines in to a magical experience. And you hear that on this album. Every time.
John Mayall: The Turning Point – Mayall is the Godfather of British blues and his Bluesbreakers band was the breeding ground for so many of the big names in British blues, rock and pop music. But this late-60s live gig blew me away because of the instrumentation rather than the instrumentalists. Here we have no drums – and as a person raised on the sound of the backbeat, forever listening out for the percussive groove – I loved hearing the lack of drums. Slide guitars, harmonicas, saxophone, flutes and acoustic guitars formed their own groove. It’s a beguiling, hypnotic sound that made an impression as soon as I heard it – I guess about 15 years ago – and an album I recently picked up on vinyl to re-enjoy.
Muddy Waters: Hard Again – a great “twofer” because you get Muddy Waters, a king of the blues, and that amazing Albino Texan guitar maestro, Johnny Winter, on the same album. Muddy Waters albums account for several treasure-troves of goodness in my collection, but this is the one that I go back to because it shows how blues influenced rock’n’roll and then rock, in turn, re-influenced blues.
Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings – I have The King Of The Delta Blues Singers on vinyl but this double-disc is some of the greatest, freakiest, late-night-alone music you could ever hear. I told you the story of how I came to Robert Johnson – it was the movie Crossroads. And these songs retain their magic every time I scare myself with a listen.
Paul Ubana Jones: Blessings And Burdens – I’ve written about Paul Ubana Jones before. I think he’s deeply talented. And I bought this album for $5 in an Auckland music store, on holiday, just weeks after seeing Paul play for the first time. His music moves through several genres, but watch the guy live, he’s a bluesman, as set-closing epics such as Hoochie Coochie Man and his own Raga – Bird Without Song will attest.
Etta James: Etta James Rocks The House – that voice is in full display on this early-career live concert workout. She is Ray Charles and Billie Holiday at the same time.
Stevie Ray Vaughan: In Step – every single one of SRV’s albums is a classic, if you ask me. But this was the first full album of his I heard. I heard the news that he died soon after hearing this album. I was actually quite depressed. Riviera Paradise is like the distillation of his career in one beautiful eight-minute segment. He was the closest thing to Hendrix that there’ll ever be, and he had the sound of Albert King, Freddie King and so many others in those huge hands of his.
Albert King: Born Under A Bad Sign – I came to Albert King through B.B. King, Gary Moore and Stevie Ray Vaughan, but I have to include this album in its own right because the title track and Crosscut Saw (as well as Oh Pretty Woman) combine passionate blues guitar playing with R’n’B backing and those gruff-but-somehow-smooth vocals.
So many more. But that’s the starter kit.
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