Alan Simon Post #1

Alan Simon Post 1 - The first class on the Blues dispelled many myths concerning the many fascinating early interpreters of the blues, when they recorded and how they influenced one another. Having listened to a lot of blues as a teenager and getting my hands on as many Folkways, Chess, Blues Classics and Columbia LP's as possible, I thought I had a decent background. (Attending concerts by B.B. King and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee). As usual, as the layers of an onion peel off, and we go deeper into any subject, there are new and fresh insights to be discovered. Our discussion of whether a blues needs to be 12 bars, move to the IV chord, have three phrases-three lines of text, and the melodic content, i.e. using the blues scale and bending notes, was fascinating. It makes sense that the last three aspects are much more important than the 12 bars. Alan and John Lomax should be given posthumous awards (I think the son is still alive) for their unprecedented work in the field, recording so much important blues, and folk music.) In addition, the wonderful Library of Congress recordings by Lomax of Jelly Roll Morton are such an invaluable document. Although I own the complete interviews, I have only listened to a few of the CD's, but I look forward to hearing the rest. As important as the Delta was- (the whole bottom of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas), New Orleans was the center of Jazz AND Blues, and perhaps Morton’s historical place in popularizing Jazz AND Blues should be recognized more often.

I enjoyed hearing some of the tunes that Robert Johnson recorded as covers when I thought they were his originals. In folk music and the blues, the lyrics and the melody are passed on from one artist to the next with slight alterations being made by the one who is “copying” the song. It was a revelation hearing Kokomo Arnold sing and play “Kokomo Blues” with the lyric “Baby Don’t You Want To Go” from 1934, used in the same manner in Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago”. Arnold’s “Milk Cow Blues” revealed a guitar and vocal style that obviously influenced Robert Johnson. The latter’s “Milk Cows Calf Blues” was a direct replica of Arnold’s but at a slower tempo. Johnson, like any other musician didn’t come out of a vacuum. Everyone has their influences before formulating their own style and approach. This is true of blues, jazz, or any type of music including classical, where a composer begins by emulating a style of composition that intrigues him, only to eventually incorporate that style into the vocabulary of his own work. Even J.S. Bach took some of the concertos of Antonio Vivaldi, and reduced the score to a solo keyboard arrangement, most likely played on the harpsichord or clavichord. Of course the visual arts and literature and poetry also evolve in this same fashion, although every now and then a true original comes along—even then, an artists path is determined by an example that drew his attention at an early age.

The same sense of surprise occurred when Dr. Porter in his Coltrane seminar last spring, revealed the source of “Impressions” as Morton Gould’s “Pavanne” from his second American Symphonette of 1938 for the “A” sections. The “B” section is from Maurice Ravel’s “Pavane pour une Infante Defunte.” (Porter, L.; John Coltrane-His Life and Music. Pg.218)