Does a great blues player need to sing

[Alrainbow]

driving up from the south I played Stevie ray von for some. 4 hours on tidal. Albums that I own but just don't play.
That guy is a great blues singer and player. Is it a prerequisite to do both ? Clapton comes to mind.
But there is just magic with Stevie as he sings and then goes into riffing his guitar. Of course for me he must be played loud. Playing him now on chads sacd rips from a collection I waited months to get released. It's I think pure pcm no calming notes here. But his kind of playing needs the pcm snap.

[JCOConnell]

driving up from the south I played Stevie ray von for some. 4 hours on tidal. Albums that I own but just don't play.
That guy is a great blues singer and player. Is it a prerequisite to do both ? Clapton comes to mind.
But there is just magic with Stevie as he sings and then goes into riffing his guitar. Of course for me he must be played loud. Playing him now on chads sacd rips from a collection I waited months to get released. It's I think pure pcm no calming notes here. But his kind of playing needs the pcm snap.

SRV always sounded great on Columbia vinyl

[Bill Hart]

When I think great blues, I start with the early people- Blind Willie Johnson, Skip James, Sister Tharpe, Howlin' Wolf, early Muddy, Memphis Minnie, Big Mama Thornton, Elmore James, early Buddy Guy. I think of Clapton as post-blues revival, and SRV as a layer after that. As to singing, if they can sing, sure. It's the spirit that moves me-- you can hear pyrotechnics and it isn't really emotionally pulling me in.

[Alrainbow]

There is black southern woman that played very well and sang as as well. I cannot think of her name. I seen her do her act outdoors on you tube
I'll try to find her. It's an old black and white video

[Alrainbow]

https://youtu.be/SR2gR6SZC2M
here she is. It seems the movie Cotten club does acuretly show blacks back then as the amazing talents they were. Entertainment like this shows how they could be an entertainer but sit with white people. Sanatra did this for Sammy Davis Jr. Crazy times to conceive of really
enjoy her stage presence

[JCOConnell]

The converse of your subject title would be does a great blues singer need to play?

[mkuller]

As a blues aficionado, I think they need to do both and the best do, like Muddy, B. B. ,Buddy and John Lee. The blues is not only a form of music, it's also an attitude and you have to sing about it to communicate the feelings. Some who can play well, don't sing so well and it's hard to listen to them.

Stevie Ray Vaughn was an amazing guitar player - he played some blues but I think of him more as a rock artist. Was Hendrix a blues player? "Red House" is one of my favorites by him.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xf2...house-hd_music

If a blues singer doesn't play guitar, he needs to play harmonica, like Little Walter or Sonny Boy Williamson. A female blues singer doesn't need to play anything, like Koko Taylor or Aretha.

I listen to the Comcast Blues music channel in the evenings while I read and hear all of the old blues singers Bill mentions above along with a lot of newer ones. Currently my new favorites are Little Ed and the Imperials and Chris Thomas King.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bM2IYxh3gw

[Bill Hart]

Hendrix in the West- I think my keeper copy is a UK Polydor (running from memory here). The longer version is killer. I was told by someone I trust that Hendrix would play a little blues and if the audience was into it, he dug in and played his ass off. If they weren't digging the blues, he'd do his thing and get off stage.
SRV is god here in Austin, along with Willie.
I got the Paramount Box as a gift a few years ago, and never sprang for the second box, which has a lot of the Charlie Patton tracks.
You know, don't you, that Paramount was basically a furniture company that sold those large furniture style phonograph player cabinets, and they commissioned all these (now) famous blue records as fodder (software just seems so wrong!) for the playing machines. The company went down at the beginning of the Depression.
It's a time warp, listening to the old tracks. Noisy, bandwidth limited, not very good sonics-- electrical recording had only been around a few years at this point. But, there is something visceral to this stuff- I can ignore the scratchy, tinny sound pretty easily because some of the performances are so riveting.
There is a video clip of Skip James at Newport (I think it was '65, so his second appearance there after those blues revivalists (which included a member of Canned Heat) tracked him down and brought him North). He's playing in a little room with a bar to the right- this hulking figure is leaning against the bar, and as he turns toward the camera, you realize it is Howlin' Wolf.
Skip (along with a lot of the really early guys, like Son House) really didn't have the same chops in the '60s as they did in the late '20s, but there is a Vanguard record of Skip recorded in the mid-'60s that actually sounds decent.
These guys also represented the era of black rural performers who grew up with the work songs, and the lamentations, the sacred and the profane. No doubt those who came later were in some ways more knowledgeable about the music--some were serious scholars and historians (whether amateur or by profession), and had a broader view of the genre and culture than some poor guy stuck in a small town (I'm not talking about the guys who went to Chicago and were a little more polished). The last of the generation, I don't know who is left; Buddy Guy is definitely worth the trouble to go hear - he was a young up and comer during the era when Chess ruled.
I interviewed Bob Koester a couple years ago- formed Delmark, the label that the Hoodoo Man Blues record was made for; Bob knew all these guys, at least the ones still alive after WWII.
The blues scholars are a very interesting bunch. They have been very generous to me in providing information. One guy is "the" guy on Elmore James- that's what he works on and writes about. He told me he went to LA at one point to the musician's union office to look up the time cards for sessions in the early '60s, before Elmore James died. Elmore, at that point, was working "off the books"- no union card, so he was backdoored into other sessions by the same producer who booked the studio time, and typically used the same session guys. I was trying to clarify some confusion over two Elmore tracks with virtually the same title that sounded very different. The one was a track I loved from the moment I heard it on a CBS compilation released in around 1969. (I would have been 14 years old then). I know a little more now, but I'm a piker. There is a huge amount of stuff that the Brits used during the rise of psych/rock. I do give Clapton credit- he apparently gave Skip James $10,000 for the right to use "I'm So Glad" on a Cream album. Skip was not in good shape health wise. (I think he had dick cancer, I kid you not). But, in the photos you see of him when he was brought out of obscurity, he seems pretty happy. Dick Waterman did a lot of photos of these folks during the early -mid '60s when the blues revival was hot and heavy in the States. The book is out of print, but well worth the price for a copy.

[mkuller]

Dion, of all people did a blues tribute album to Skip James. I hear his other more recent blues efforts and his voice just can't carry it.

https://www.amazon.com/Son-Skip-Jame...ion+skip+james

[JCOConnell]

Janis Joplin

[Alrainbow]

JC I played her too it was a blues fest driving home that day. I usaelly don't play much blues it takes me places I did not like. I have to say being on the med for adhd has really made me feel different. Going back to Janis yes she is an exception. She had sole in her voice that shined by itself.
Mkuller I like your view and agree with it. Bill your post has so much info very nice to read , BB. Who I seen live twice had energy when he played
Stevie did too. But not all blues players showed this energy and I wonder was it needed , Bill comment please. Another thought on blues is the style used. Some rappers do blues and while it's not as simple as traditional blues I think the fabrics is there. Same for some Latin and country .
I wonder is it still blues then ? For me I like my blues with energy and a nice band behind them as well.
Thanks all for your time to post and look forward to more .

[Bill Hart]

JC I played her too it was a blues fest driving home that day. I usaelly don't play much blues it takes me places I did not like. I have to say being on the med for adhd has really made me feel different. Going back to Janis yes she is an exception. She had sole in her voice that shined by itself.
Mkuller I like your view and agree with it. Bill your post has so much info very nice to read , BB. Who I seen live twice had energy when he played
Stevie did too. But not all blues players showed this energy and I wonder was it needed , Bill comment please. Another thought on blues is the style used. Some rappers do blues and while it's not as simple as traditional blues I think the fabrics is there. Same for some Latin and country .
I wonder is it still blues then ? For me I like my blues with energy and a nice band behind them as well.
Thanks all for your time to post and look forward to more .

We are probably saying the same thing when you say "energy" and I talk about the blues as "emoting." Someone can be not the best singer or even the best player, but they are baring their soul though a combination of words and rhythm (could be as simple as foot thumping or slapping the body of a guitar, or a repeat refrain on the instrument set against their voice). There was a guy we heard a while ago in New York whose street name was "Satan"- an old dude, he may have lived on the streets for a while, but his "blues" has the ring of authenticity. A lot of it- particularly the rural blues- is pretty primitive, musically, going back to the work songs and the bastardized gospel--it was sacrilege to sing about the devil and temptation in any way but the approved by the church way-- Blind Willie Johnson, who wrote some of the early greats and was a street performer, was torn between the sacred music and the profane--
It's interesting that you tie rap and blues because in some ways, they are similar--not just the oppressed, riffing on their situation, but the improvisation and the simplicity of a lot of it (not the overproduced "neo-soul", but the hardcore rap). Unfortunately, I don't relate to the hostility or the racial stuff, but in some ways, that's what's on their mind or the minds of their audience, so that's the stuff they address. I'd rather hear someone unpolished that is coming from the gut than a slick showman who turns it on and off. That said, a lot of those greats were slick showmen- T Bone Walker led a big band, in his prime years, he was an acrobatic player, sliding, doing splits and had a big following of contemporary adults, he wasn't just some tired old blues guy famous for Stormy Monday. (Of course, by the time I got turned on to him he was a tired old blues guy). And he was a consummate player.
Some of the Chicago blues stuff is really well played- listen to the guitar parts of Hubert Sumlin on Howlin' Wolf's Killing Floor (there are a bunch of different songs that use variations of the title)- he goes from an almost cartoonish strumming to some wicked fills- its an immediately recognizable thing because it was so imitated and his version should also be familiar- you'll have heard it even if you didn't know what it was).
One more thing, and it's a treat: find the video of Otis Rush doing his "I Can't Quit You Baby" in dark glasses and a sweater in what appears to be a college auditorium (you know how dated it is because all the young men in the audience are wearing suits and ties). Good player, but man, that opening note that he holds--

[EdAInWestOC]

The human voice is one of the greatest blues instruments, so yes, it is required.

[don]

The human voice is one of the greatest blues instruments, so yes, it is required.

Louis and Ella come to mind as being the greatest blues instrument ever,

[mkuller]

I highly recommend Robert Johnson's "King of the Delta Blues Singers". When you listen to what he created with just his guitar and his voice you will believe he actually made a deal with the devil.

People try to distinguish between the Delta blues and Chicago blues but he was the one who first did "Sweet Home Chicago", as well as "Love in Vain" , "Dust My Broom" and so many others.

He died at age 27, the same as

• Janis Joplin. ...
• Jimi Hendrix. ...
• Amy Winehouse. ...
• Jim Morrison (The Doors) ...
• Kurt Cobain (Nirvana) ...
• Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (Grateful Dead ) .

[Alrainbow]

Louis and Ella come to mind as being the greatest blues instrument ever,

I have a dsd from analog productions of the two of them playing together

[Alrainbow]

I think jimmy and Kurt were the most talented on that list.