Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Thu, 10 Sep 1992 09:49:14 EDT
From:         Rick <MMLRICK@UBVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: thoughts

On Thu, 10 Sep 1992 07:37:49 CDT Leonard Watkins said:
>(1) Who is Bob Marigold(?) a guitar player but i can't remember where i've
>heard him?

Sorry, can't help you out here with this flowery guy.
>
>(2) Reading a book by Julio Finn called Bluesman he really gets deep into
>the voodo religion, and goes into detail on the Robert Johnson deal, most
>of the early bluesmen (House,Shines,Lockwwod) believe it really happened
>the writes theory is that R.J. went into the Bayou swamps where voodoo
>rituals take place, and spent a couple of years with a Root Doctor and
>Robert himself created Legba the master of the crossroads. They say that
>not only R.J.'s playing was incredible, but he returned with incredible
>charisma that charmed both women and men. He alos said that R.J. was a
>genuis that would have ended up in an asylum in modern times.
>What are your thoughts about Roberts deal could it have happened. Eric
>Clapton spent a couple of years in seclusion and came out playing better
>do you think they both just practised a whole lot.

   Partly. No doubt a lot of woodshedding takes place during these retreats,
but self-enforced isolation can also be the source of mental and spiritual
replenishment, where the musician also searches for the meaning behind the
music he/she's trying to create, and what the point of it all is. Once you're
comfortable with playing music for yourself, you're ready to play with others
and perform in front of others. If you have doubts about what you're doing
musically, then its time to stop and go somewhere to reevaluate it all. I don't
mean to speak authoritatively that that's what Johnson, Clapton et al. were
doing, but that's my hunch. The mythology just amplifies it.
>
>(3) The writer also said that a white person could not be a bluesman/woman
>because they have never experienced the "real" blues of an oppressed
>race, that makes me believe that any modern day blues musician can not be
>a bluesman regardless of color because although conditions aren't perfect
>they are alot different that the slave days, which the writer says is the
>real blues, and you can't have them unless you expreienced them. Are there
>any white bluesmen/women IYHO.

  Although I would hardly disagree with the writer's view that slavery was the
source of the emotional content of what evolved into blues, his definition of
"bluesman" seems to be fairly narrow, from the way you describe it. (I haven't
read the book yet.) It implies that the blues have not evolved over the years,
or if they have, then the evolution is a spoiling of its original purity. It
sounds as if to be a "bluesman" one has to have been a slave oneself-- that
eliminates almost the entire range of blues artists of this century.
  I think anybody can play any style of music well, but only after serious
and extended study of the masters of those styles. Knowing how to play your
instrument well enough to jam on the 12-bar blues alone isn't enough-- that
just scrapes the most superficial surface of this music, and you're just
trivializing it. You really have to understand the nuances of phrasing and
rhythm, and listen intently to the old recordings before you can really
consider yourself a blues musician. You just need serious intent and disci-
pline, and that transcends race or gender.
  As always, Sonia's comments on this topic are worthy of all of us taking our
thinking caps off in admiration.

Hope you find Bob Marigold,
Rick
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