Topic: YouTube.com - Interesting Country Blues related video clips

[Rivers]

Sliding Delta? Great to watch, love it when the kid hands him his hat.

[Blues Vintage]

Sliding Delta? Great to watch, love it when the kid hands him his hat.

After seeing the footage I realized I've never seen John Hurt without his hat.

[frankie]

Sliding Delta? Great to watch, love it when the kid hands him his hat.

Candyman, baby!

I love watching the little girl playing air guitar on the chair...  that's what I would do!!!

[Blues Vintage]

Who are the bluesmen in the photo? Bill Gaither on the right standing for sure.
Tampa Red in the middle standing? Possibly Jack Dupree sitting on the left?

[Bunker Hill]

Who are the bluesmen in the photo? Bill Gaither on the right standing for sure.
Tampa Red in the middle standing? Possibly Jack Dupree sitting on the left?

Photo come from Big Bill Blues (Cassell 1955)

L to R Jazz Gillum, Bill Gaither, (Sitting) Jack Dupree, Broonzy. Dog belonged to Tampa which "drank whisky just like we did and helped us sing"

[frankie]

Dog belonged to Tampa which "drank whisky just like we did and helped us sing"

Dogs and blues are a natural combination.

[Blues Vintage]

Dog belonged to Tampa which "drank whisky just like we did and helped us sing"

Dogs and blues are a natural combination.

Not sure what you mean Frank...

[frankie]

Certainly nothing to be taken seriously, Harry - just a bit of nonsense...  and I do love dogs... and blues..  and if blues were a person, blues would probably love dogs, too.

[oddenda]

It's interesting how much the voices of Gary Davis, Pearly Brown, and Willie Johnson sound alike. It must be from the street busking that they did for most of their performing careers.

pbl

[frankie]

It's interesting how much the voices of Gary Davis, Pearly Brown, and Willie Johnson sound alike. It must be from the street busking that they did for most of their performing careers.

I think the way they shaped their voices had more to do with the fact that they were singing preachers than any direct result of street singing. Lemon was a street singer, by all accounts, and sounded nothing like these three.  Preaching seems to have its own vocal aesthetic..  Al Young could probably speak to it with more intelligence and experience than I can, and there's some discussion of it in his book "Woke Me Up This Morning - Black Gospel Singers and the Gospel Life." 

[alyoung]

I think it entirely likely that street singing at least helped shape their voices. Davis, Brown and Johnson all sang in a lower register and used sheer power to blast through. That can have a long-term effect on the vocal cords. Lemon Jefferson was a high tenor, so his street technique was probably to cut through the street noise, rather than blast through it. But ... the suggestion of preaching being a factor is a good one. Preaching is very much a stylized delivery and when preachers are going into the "drive" (the full-out peroration that ends a sermon) they all use a very heavy voice, sometimes with exaggerated breathing, and speak in three or four-beat phrases. I have a recording of Gary Davis preaching and that's the voice he uses -- and it is his street singing voice. (He's not a great preacher, but his passion and sincerity are unmistakable; this is not a man who sings "holy blues"). When I was researching "Woke Me Up This Morning" (University Press of Mississippi; available thru Amazon -- buy two in case someone steals one) I was lucky in that I found three preachers willing to talk in detail about the mechanics of preaching a sermon. It was fascinating ... betcha didn't know preachers often get a note from the band to set their pitch, and the keys are different for the two main "straining preacher" denominations -- B flat or E flat for Baptists, F and G for Church of God in Christ. Buy the book and find out more....

[dj]

betcha didn't know preachers often get a note from the band to set their pitch, and the keys are different for the two main "straining preacher" denominations -- B flat or E flat for Baptists, F and G for Church of God in Christ. Buy the book and find out more....

I did not know and I find that absolutely fascinating.  Thanks Al!

Now off to look for the book....

[frankie]

Perhaps not entirely relevant to weenie, u but in the first 2 minutes of this 1972 documentary "Chicago Blues," you get Johnnie Lewis singing Poor Boy in a decidedly country style... and at about 6 minutes in, you get a field holler sung by Willie Dixon...  how cool is THAT?

[frankie]

I'm pretty sure that the guy with the National is Blind Arvella Gray, but I wish I knew the name of the woman shown playing guitar at about 4:44...  wish we could hear her better, too.  Seems a shame she wasn't given a little air time.

[uncle bud]

Georgia Sea Island Singers and Alan Lomax from 1962 TV show, Accent. Plus bonus ads for Polaroid and footage of Stravinsky conducting and Balanchine choreographing. You'll need to skip ahead to the one-minute mark to start. The "start at" feature doesn't seem to be working in our plug-in/youtube mod.

http://youtu.be/5neSitIO7zQ?t=1m17s