Robert Johnson?

RandallFlagg

Revered and hailed, I have his complete recordings but I find it pretty hard going to be honest. He doesn't play in time at all and some bars of his songs just get cut short, am I missing something?

Perhaps I just don't get the blues.

RandallFlagg

no wonder he was a solo artist, no drummer could ever play to that beat

kswilson89

It's more about his voice than his guitar playing for me but there's other blues guys I prefer to listen to, gimme a bit of Lightnin' Hopkins any day.

richardhomer

RandallFlagg said:

no wonder he was a solo artist, no drummer could ever play to that beat

I’ve worked with drummers who couldn’t keep time if they were made in Switzerland....

tone1

He is very hard listening at times....I also have the collection but there are other old bluesmen that I prefer.. 

guitars4you

I know what you mean and have thought similar so many times - Yet many like Clapton, can listen to the song, get it, interpret it and create their own version from it - Jut sounds so bad to me -  Certainly raw

Yet I also find similar with Billie Holliday and others just say genius

JezWynd

I love his music but I’ve never been able to master his rhythmic style. Playing his songs in a 4/4 rhythm though, seems to miss part of what makes them so startling.

Corvus

Love him, not everything, but mostly. No point trying to assess this kind of music by bars beats and notes per minute, there's not always a rigid sticking to exactly 12 bars or ideas of fixed rhythms. Try Son House if you want loose... mind he was full of whiskey most of the time. RL Burnside live, the bar counts are sometimes all over the shop but the band follows on without a hitch. Lots of other examples.

For a country boy born into poverty with not much other music to hear & be influenced by there's some good stuff in there playing wise. Diminished chords and inversions, half-dims largish stretches and suchlike. . Several different tunings used. He was no fool.

jonnyburgo

It’s raw and untamed, like a lot of delta/country blues, bum notes and all. It’s very difficult to replicate. I love it though. 

HAL9000

Agreed - not easy listening. Like many others I bought the Robert Johnson King of the Delta Blues album (probably due to Clapton banging on about him) but have only listened to it three or four times. Frankly it’s a bit of a struggle.

I suspect part of the problem is that since the sixties we have come to expect our blues to be regular 4/4 12 bar format and to serve as a vehicle for mucho guitar widdling.

Originally, however, the guitar served as a backdrop to the lyric (which was the important bit) - it didn’t matter if it wasn’t regular 4/4 - that was never the point. Another example might be John Lee Hooker casually throwing in the odd 13 bar verse to make the lyrics fit.

Cols

Try this; there’s a convincing theory that the original recordings are being played back at the wrong speed.  This sounds much better to me.

https://youtu.be/_JKS3j8fl_g

thermionic

That's amazing @Cols! Both the voice and the guitar sound much more natural. I'm convinced. 

thegummy

Isn't it like the way cave paintings are revered and many of the great breakthroughs between then and now where it's more about respecting the contribution made to the progress of human output (music in this case) than actually being enjoyable in itself?

I've never listened to him I don't think, other than the clip you posted, but that very early blues is revered as one of the main roots that basically all rock music evolved from but hard to imagine many people would enjoy listening to that kind of thing the way people enjoy listening to modern rock bands.

At first when I put it on I was thinking "isn't he a camp looking white guy who plays a Strat very competently?" but that was Eric Johnson

thegummy

Cols said:

Try this; there’s a convincing theory that the original recordings are being played back at the wrong speed.  This sounds much better to me.

https://youtu.be/_JKS3j8fl_g

Never heard the original to compare it to but surely it's easy to verify what speed it was meant to be played at? It's not like it's from centuries ago, it can't have been much before the war at the very earliest surely?

Speaking of musical conspiracy theories, there's one that the standard tuning of A=440 is some kind of conspiracy to keep everyone down!

I believe there are also less extreme versions of the theory where they don't believe it's a conspiracy but that music sounds better at other tuning reference pitches. I think it's a load of nonsense - it could only make it sound either slightly higher pitched or slightly lower pitched but nowhere near as higher or lower as simply transposing it. And there's obviously no key that sounds objectively better than others or everyone would just stick to that one.

kswilson89

guitars4you said:

I know what you mean and have thought similar so many times - Yet many like Clapton, can listen to the song, get it, interpret it and create their own version from it - Jut sounds so bad to me -  Certainly raw

Yet I also find similar with Billie Holliday and others just say genius

Now Billie Holiday really WAS something special IMO, what a talent.

StuartMac290

Actually, I love that and most of what he does. I don't find it hard to listen to at all, I find it very relaxing. I'd take that over yer average blooz noodler every time, to be honest

thegummy

StuartMac290 said:

Actually, I love that and most of what he does. I don't find it hard to listen to at all, I find it very relaxing. I'd take that over yer average blooz noodler every time, to be honest

By "average blooz noodler" are you referring to average members of the public going up and down some scales on his PRS to relax after a hard day of extractions and fillings or actual musicians like SRV, Clapton etc.?

bbill335

RandallFlagg said:

 He doesn't play in time at all and some bars of his songs just get cut short,

that's how a folk singer sans band does it. 

ToneControl

there used to be quite a lot of stuff recorded slow and speeded up
Some 80s metal bands did this AFAIK

Sort of the "auto-tune" trick of the day, makes your playing sound faster

HAL9000

thegummy said:

And there's obviously no key that sounds objectively better than others or everyone would just stick to that one.

As I understand things, this is only true for equal temperament tunings. Different keys apparently sound happier, sadder, more melancholy, etc on instruments that are not tuned to equal temperament.

Edit - this explains it better than I can...

https://youtu.be/6c_LeIXrzAk

Samgb

Cols said:

Try this; there’s a convincing theory that the original recordings are being played back at the wrong speed.  This sounds much better to me.

https://youtu.be/_JKS3j8fl_g

The hole in that theory is that when those records were first released and raved about in the 60s, quite a few of Robert Johnson's contemporaries and friends from Son House and Howlin' Wolf to his STEPSON Robert Jr Lockwood, were still around and not one of them said anything about the records being at the wrong speed or sounding weird.
This seems to be an effort from a dude to understand why he cant play or sing like one of the most famous musicians of the 20th Century. Its like saying "well if Louis Armstrong didnt have that gravelly voice i would sound just like him"
Its silly. frankly.