Robert Johnson?

thegummy

rossi said:

Blues isnt often smooth and evenly noted like whitey plays it .Listen to John Lee for some timing lessons.I have been told by  several black  muscians I play and sing blues like a black person .I take it a huge compliment I.ts all in the timing not the accent of how clever you play .I dont mimic black singers just have their timing  without thinking .Its all a bit weird and I cant really explain it .In jazz clubs I often sing Billy Holiday" good morning heartache".Never thought I could do it .

That really is racist and silly.

DulcetJones

rossi said:

Blues isnt often smooth and evenly noted like whitey plays it .Listen to John Lee for some timing lessons.I have been told by  several black  muscians I play and sing blues like a black person .I take it a huge compliment I.ts all in the timing not the accent of how clever you play .I dont mimic black singers just have their timing  without thinking .Its all a bit weird and I cant really explain it .In jazz clubs I often sing Billy Holiday" good morning heartache".Never thought I could do it .

One of the regulars that played with Muddy Waters a lot was quoted saying "feel it, don't count it".

Mark1960

I Think it's just a matter of perspective. We have all been influenced by overproduced sanitised music played by fantastic musicians on top quality kit. Remember this was a poor young guy playing on a budget guitar, with strings like cables that were probably years old. The fact that he was able to get any recognisable sounds is pretty amazing really, I wonder what he would sound like with decent kit in a current recording studio. Plus these guys were inventing and pushing the boundries ever forward for this type of music, so hopefully next time you listen to old blues, try to appreciate it for what it was at the time it was done, not by todays standards.

thegummy

Mark1960 said:

I Think it's just a matter of perspective. We have all been influenced by overproduced sanitised music played by fantastic musicians on top quality kit. Remember this was a poor young guy playing on a budget guitar, with strings like cables that were probably years old. The fact that he was able to get any recognisable sounds is pretty amazing really, I wonder what he would sound like with decent kit in a current recording studio. Plus these guys were inventing and pushing the boundries ever forward for this type of music, so hopefully next time you listen to old blues, try to appreciate it for what it was at the time it was done, not by todays standards.

I'm sure everyone appreciates it from an academic or historical perspective, it's just whether they enjoy listening to it or not.

You've chosen negative words "over produced" and "sanitised" but I'd say better sound quality because better technology is available and played in time, for example, because that's what most people like to hear.

Stuckfast

What sounds 'right' timing wise is very much a matter of perception. Listen to any classical performance and the tempo will probably be all over the place by rock/pop standards -- not because those musicians can't keep strict time if they want to, but because that is one of the tools they have for interpreting the music.

The idea that playing "in time" means keeping to an unvarying tempo is one that is quite recent in musical history and arguably a bit of a straightjacket in terms of musical expression. Folk song collectors in the UK and in the US almost invariably remark on the very free timing of the singers they collected from, and admit that notating folk-song performances in a time signature isn't really representative. Percy Grainger tried to notate them as sung, and his folk song transcriptions are mind-bendingly hard to understand as a consequence.

So just because Robert Johnson didn't "play in time" by modern standards doesn't necessarily mean he was less good than modern musicians who do. It's just that musical conventions have changed since his day.

I read an interesting article once about the idea of authenticity and the blues. It said that by the time Robert Johnson's recordings became popular, black musical culture had long since moved away from the 'country blues' towards much more sophisticated styles. It was only in the minds of white musicians that this became stereotyped as the 'authentic' blues sound, and some artists such as Leadbelly were pretty much forced to continue performing in that style because white audiences wanted to hear 'blues' music that reinforced their ideas of black culture as being primitive and rural.

Mark1960

thegummy said:

Mark1960 said:

I Think it's just a matter of perspective. We have all been influenced by overproduced sanitised music played by fantastic musicians on top quality kit. Remember this was a poor young guy playing on a budget guitar, with strings like cables that were probably years old. The fact that he was able to get any recognisable sounds is pretty amazing really, I wonder what he would sound like with decent kit in a current recording studio. Plus these guys were inventing and pushing the boundries ever forward for this type of music, so hopefully next time you listen to old blues, try to appreciate it for what it was at the time it was done, not by todays standards.

I'm sure everyone appreciates it from an academic or historical perspective, it's just whether they enjoy listening to it or not.

You've chosen negative words "over produced" and "sanitised" but I'd say better sound quality because better technology is available and played in time, for example, because that's what most people like to hear.

Apologies - the terms were not meant to be negative sounding, although I can now see that they could be taken that way, it's just my view but "over produced" and "sanitised" do no mean the same thing as better sound quality. You can have great sound quality, but still retain the raw quality of a performance. What I was really try to say was that these guys were products of their environment, and should be judged as such. And I would also agree that some of it is a hard listen as well!

Stuckfast

Also -- as an aside -- assuming Johnson was recorded on one of the early electrical recorders that used gravity-powered lathes, those things were actually capable of stunning recording quality. The reason we don't have good quality copies of those recordings now is because the master discs were destroyed or recycled, and today's recordings are usually taken from shellac pressings which sound rubbish.

thegummy

Stuckfast said:

What sounds 'right' timing wise is very much a matter of perception. Listen to any classical performance and the tempo will probably be all over the place by rock/pop standards -- not because those musicians can't keep strict time if they want to, but because that is one of the tools they have for interpreting the music.

The idea that playing "in time" means keeping to an unvarying tempo is one that is quite recent in musical history and arguably a bit of a straightjacket in terms of musical expression. Folk song collectors in the UK and in the US almost invariably remark on the very free timing of the singers they collected from, and admit that notating folk-song performances in a time signature isn't really representative. Percy Grainger tried to notate them as sung, and his folk song transcriptions are mind-bendingly hard to understand as a consequence.

So just because Robert Johnson didn't "play in time" by modern standards doesn't necessarily mean he was less good than modern musicians who do. It's just that musical conventions have changed since his day.

I read an interesting article once about the idea of authenticity and the blues. It said that by the time Robert Johnson's recordings became popular, black musical culture had long since moved away from the 'country blues' towards much more sophisticated styles. It was only in the minds of white musicians that this became stereotyped as the 'authentic' blues sound, and some artists such as Leadbelly were pretty much forced to continue performing in that style because white audiences wanted to hear 'blues' music that reinforced their ideas of black culture as being primitive and rural.

It is down to subjective taste whether being in time (like an accurate metronome) is a good thing or not but it is itself objective and measurable (and digitally correctable these days lol).

I don't think anyone in this thread is commenting on Johnson's skill or thinks he was trying to play metronomically but lacked the ability - just that because it isn't, it's less enjoyable to listen to since a lot of people (I think it's safe to say most) prefer things to be in time.

Without going off on too much of a tangent, there's always been the idea that being slightly out of time is better and that's why human drummers sound better than perfectly quantised drum machines. But I read about a study that was conducted where a significant number of people had to compare and rate various different drum beats and the results of the study found that basically the closer to metronomic the timing was, the higher the beat was rated including the highest ratings going to the perfectly quantised beats.

Stuckfast

That may well be true, but the question is whether it's some sort of innate human preference, or whether it's a learned feature of late 20th/early 21st century Western culture. My money is on the latter. In other words, you and I may hear music in strict tempo as 'more enjoyable', but that's a response that has been shaped by our immersion in a culture where there is a lot of such music around.

rlw

This thread really puzzles me.  Notwithstanding all the others who were around at the time and are hugely significant, notwithstanding that RJ was aiming to make money and not art, notwithstanding that he nicked a vast amount of his material, he remains the most important of all the early blues players.  RJ and BB King really define the blues from the 1930s to the present day.  Whether you can listen to it or not, whether you like it or not, you can’t change that RJ is probably the root of blues as we now know it.
IMHO

AlexC

rlw said:

This thread really puzzles me.  Notwithstanding all the others who were around at the time and are hugely significant, notwithstanding that RJ was aiming to make money and not art, notwithstanding that he nicked a vast amount of his material, he remains the most important of all the early blues players.  RJ and BB King really define the blues from the 1930s to the present day.  Whether you can listen to it or not, whether you like it or not, you can’t change that RJ is probably the root of blues as we now know it.
IMHO

Wise words, indeed. I think part of the ‘problem’ with listening to Johnson for the first time is we come to him because we’ve heard of him and his songs channeled through other musicians. I’m sure I’m not alone in hearing Cream’s Crossroads before the original. All of us are working backwards in that respect and it’s too easy (or lazy) to directly compare a contemporary take on something to a musician with a different set of cultural references and influences and equipment which was - again by today’s standards - crap.
I listen to a lot of 20s and 30s and 40s music and one of the main hurdles I had to get over was the audio quality. Of course, it doesn’t belittle the songs or musicianship, but it is jarring at first. I’m a film-maker primarily and have seen (was forced to, haha) watch a lot of silent cinema which is now a hundred years old. Technically it’s incomparable to modern film-making - but it’s the roots and film language then is essentially the same as it is now. Same with music.
I mean, there’s probably people out there who prefer Van Halen’s You Really Got Me to The Kinks’ original. Which is clearly misguided and insane, but their own personal choice.
RJ influenced and informed the influencers and it’s been passed down and passed down. No-one can deny that.

gibsongretschfan

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

Jesus fucking Christ almighty. 

thegummy

gibsongretschfan said:

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

Jesus fucking Christ almighty. 

See I'm the same with Jesus Christ almighty - some people think he's the most important person to ever have lived and the saviour of the human race but I just see him as an influential historical preacher

RandallFlagg

Mark1960 said:

I Think it's just a matter of perspective. We have all been influenced by overproduced sanitised music played by fantastic musicians on top quality kit. Remember this was a poor young guy playing on a budget guitar, with strings like cables that were probably years old. The fact that he was able to get any recognisable sounds is pretty amazing really, I wonder what he would sound like with decent kit in a current recording studio. Plus these guys were inventing and pushing the boundries ever forward for this type of music, so hopefully next time you listen to old blues, try to appreciate it for what it was at the time it was done, not by todays standards.

alright mate, will do

Lewy

rlw said:

This thread really puzzles me.  Notwithstanding all the others who were around at the time and are hugely significant, notwithstanding that RJ was aiming to make money and not art, notwithstanding that he nicked a vast amount of his material, he remains the most important of all the early blues players.  RJ and BB King really define the blues from the 1930s to the present day.  Whether you can listen to it or not, whether you like it or not, you can’t change that RJ is probably the root of blues as we now know it.
IMHO

I think you could argue that he might be the root of rock given his influence on Cream, Led Zep el al but I really don’t think you can say his influence on blues itself stands up to someone like Charley Patton for example, who was more prolific in his time and had way more influence on his immediate successors. 

rlw

Lewy said:

rlw said:

This thread really puzzles me.  Notwithstanding all the others who were around at the time and are hugely significant, notwithstanding that RJ was aiming to make money and not art, notwithstanding that he nicked a vast amount of his material, he remains the most important of all the early blues players.  RJ and BB King really define the blues from the 1930s to the present day.  Whether you can listen to it or not, whether you like it or not, you can’t change that RJ is probably the root of blues as we now know it.
IMHO

I think you could argue that he might be the root of rock given his influence on Cream, Led Zep el al but I really don’t think you can say his influence on blues itself stands up to someone like Charley Patton for example, who was more prolific in his time and had way more influence on his immediate successors. 

He influenced his successors but is not at all well known these days.   RJ has been covered by just about everyone.

MagicPigDetective

I've always found him hard to listen to and I've tried a few times. Last night though I watched a documentary, Cant You Hear The Wind Howl , on youtube from 1992 about him. It's great as it has interviews with several people who knew him, other blues players friends, a girlfriend and step son. And best of all, Johnny Shines, another bluesman who toured around with him. These interviews really bring the man to life and got me listening to his music in a new light and give it a context. The film also has Keb Mo covering some songs. Well, the documentary certainly worked for me, I've been listening to RJ with a new found appreciation. I mean for instance, the part in Come on in My Kitchen where he whispers 'Oh, can't you hear that wind howl?'   - spine tingling. I'll watch the Netflix film soon.

LastMantra

ToneControl said:

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

One time I was recording a vocal and couldn't quite hit the high powerful bit. So I slowed the whole thing down a touch, recorded the vocal, then put it all back to the original speed. I thought it was pretty nifty solution but people probably do stuff like that all the time. 
More about lowering the tone than changing the speed in my case. I have tried speeding things up but you can only do it a bit before it sounds like the chipmunks. 

Nikc

On the timing thing I totally get old school blues I tend to play what I feel as opposed to dictated time signature - and yes I usually play solo for that very reason

MagicPigDetective

The Netflix documentary is also good, is almost a continuation or update of the 92 film, this time with interviews with his grandsons, John Hammond is still around looking much older. Some interesting insights into the meaning of the songs. Being taught guitar in the cemetery, a tale almost as good as the crossroads one!

I totally get him now, finally. I've learnt to 'play' a couple of songs and understand the basic behind it. Preachin Blues is incredible. I can image Clapton, Page and co hearing this and being blown away by it, at a time when the music around them was pretty tame and sanitised. It's so raw, driving, groovy and funky, all made in one take by one man! I love that you can hear a few bangs and knocks in the background.