Topic: Singer/songwriter ?

[Mr.OMuck]

This may be silly and or irrelevant ( actually I can promise you it is both) but I hate the term singer songwriter even more than I hated it's predecessor "folksinger". BUT it is a fact that many of the Blues Musicians I respond to most like Sleepy John Estes or Bukka White were consciously crafting words to tell stories not just stringing together stock Blues lines as an accompaniment to the music, although there's nothing wrong with that and it has it's own kind of power. So in a way I suppose they can't accurately be excluded from that loathsome category. I guess that raises the issue of whether or not there is any value in seeing them as singer/songwriters. The fact is that we, or the general public,don't usually think about how Big Bill  compares as a lyricist to Paul Simon, Bobby the Dylan, or Joni Mitchell. It's a little curious no? Is it the racial divide, the category, trap, the difference in the complexity of the music, the intended audience or what? Could this mean that Saturday morning college radio shows featuring multiple sincere quavering voiced women and over ernest young men singer songwriters would now have to be interspersed with Furry Lewis &
Jelly Roll Morton? The mind Boggles!

[bnemerov]

Mr. OM,
You have a genius for raising complicated issues. Congratulations.

Looking for opinions? (You know what they're like.)
Mine would be that race is at the foundation.

To give a modern example: Kevin Moore is identified as a "blues" or "pop" artist; soulful John Hiatt, a S/S. (To further cloud things, the "Americana" rubric includes S/S--and a lot of other folks--these days, but it's usually used by marketing people to deflect the shoe-gazing earnestness of the S/S stereotype.)

Of course mostly the ID is made by others. How the individuals ID themselves? Quien sabe.
best,
Bruce

[lindy]

This is a rare occasion where I was ahead of my time, at least in the context of your mini-rant.

In the early 80?s I had a Saturday morning folk music show of the kind you mention, except it was for the local NPR affiliate. One time I did a show that I promoted as ?two hours of singer-songwriter material.? I included country blues and English folksong material, as well as old-timey and bluegrass.

The local Folky Fascists were all over me like a bad suit, calling in to complain that Blind Willie Johnson was not a singer-songwriter, and neither was Ewan MacColl (I played ?Shoals of Herring,? which Ewan wrote, but many people heard it and were convinced that it was from some 18th-century collection of songs from the British Isles). I was younger then, and kind of enjoyed pushing their buttons, please don?t tell anyone.

These days I?m convinced that one of the main goals of American education is to teach us how to make and use categories. I am a product of that system, so I?ze got the habit. Today I would not put Blind Willie Johnson into a category labeled ?singer-songwriter,? but only because I now have a strong category in my mind labeled ?country blues.? I cannot give you a precise definition of country blues, but I don?t care. And I?ll be happy to agree that Blind Willie?s song about the Titanic fits the parameters of singer-songwriter to a T.

Terminology and categories will continue to confound us and cause bar fights. The one that puzzles me most these days is ?roots music,? a vague term that seems to cover a lot of territory. I won?t ask you to define it if you don?t ask me to define country blues, is that a deal?

[eric]

Curmudgeon alert:

I think the whole idea of classifying music into different genres is flawed.  I've been in the field all summer with, as it happens, a truck equipped with satellite radio.  They have a station devoted to "singer/songwriters" and for the most part they sound the same and match your description.   Occasionally someone will turn up with something interesting.  Jason Mraz, for example, is kind of original.  If you go to their blues station, you will get a steady diet of Clapton, BB King and Stevie Ray Vaughan with the rare country blues thrown in the mix, although they did interview the authors of the recent Son House and Big Bill biographies.  So my long winded point is that when you say blues, or jazz or whatever, it means different things to different people.  I once played Willie Brown's M&O Blues and another musician, apparently unaware of of anything preceding Clapton, did his level best to convince me I wasn't playing "blues."

I truly hate the word "folk" to describe music.  Among many other things I dislike about it is it kind of devalues the creativity of the individual musician.

Also, get off my lawn...    

[dj]

I don't think it's racial -  Joan Armatrading is a singer/songwriter.  It's a stylistic thing.  Elements of the style include earnestness, taking a stand on social issues, and (semi-) autobiographical material.  But I think earlier posters have it right: blues singers/songwriters arent "singer/songwriters" because they already fit into a different category.  And one of the unwritten rules of the music business is that you can't ever be in more than one category at a time/   

[davet]

I was wondering whether singer/songwriter was the catchall for those who did not fit into any other category. The home for the unclassified.

[Norfolk Slim]

I don't see it as race based either.  I think its vastly less cynical than that.  C&W guys are C&W guys, not singer songwriters, despite writing lengthy songs about love and loss.

The industry categorises voraciously because it works from a marketing standpoint.  Has done for a very long time.  We can, to an extent, rise above their categorisations but they won't go away.  I don't think theres anything sinister about it, it just happens to work.

Singer songwriter, to me, is simply a category in which they tend to put a particular brand of musician, usually one who plays fairly stripped down stuff, with (often faux) personal / emotional lyrics, and a slightly meandering introspective style.  Most importantly, its stuff thats not blues, country, jazz, rock, folk et al...

[dj]

I just thought of another requirement for being a singer/songwriter, which goes a long way towards explaining why someone like Sleepy John Estes doesn't fit: you have to write and sing songs that are based on some aspect of the Anglo-American folk tradition without actually being in/from the tradition on which you're basing your work.    

[JohnLeePimp]

I just thought of another requirement for being a singer/songwriter, which goes a long way towards explaining why someone like Sleepy John Estes doesn't fit: you have to write and sing songs that are based on some aspect of the Anglo-American folk tradition without actually being in/from the tradition on which you're basing your work.    

...it's true

dead blues guys weren't pretentious enough to befit the songwriter label

[Stuart]

Interesting topic. When did the term "singer-songwriter" get its start and begin to find its way into the common vocabulary?

And why not "songwriter-singer?"  

I remember first hearing it being used back in the 60's to refer to people who previously had their songs recorded by others (Joni Mitchell, Kris Kristofferson, come to mind), but then emerged as people who gained popularity performing their own compositions. Perhaps the associations between the term when it gained currency and the specific people it referred to at the time helped define its range of application.

Taxonomy--you gotta love it--and hate it!

[dj]

weren't pretentious enough to befit the songwriter label

I don't think pretentious is the right word...  Certainly John Prine and Loudon Wainright III weren't pretentious.  And Vermont singer/songwriter legend Richard Ruane hasn't got a pretentious bone in his body.  But Stewart hit the nail on the head.  The name got applied in the late 1960s to a bunch of people who had first become known as songwriters, then started performing their own songs.  The label essentially means "people who perform in a style that we used in 1969 to refer to a small group of people who had just started performing".  It's not a good term, not really descriptive, but we just get stuck with terms like that.   

[Stumblin]

Terminology and categories will continue to confound us and cause bar fights. The one that puzzles me most these days is ?roots music,? a vague term that seems to cover a lot of territory. I won?t ask you to define it if you don?t ask me to define country blues, is that a deal?

You got yourself a deal 

This are Blues singers "singer-songwriters?" thing has bothered me too over the years. Although I am not wholly keen on the term (at both most and least it just about adequately describes somebody who has written and sung a song) I'm inclined to say yes. Sometimes no, but right now, yes.
I don't know.
Or do I?
I don't know.

[Gumbo]

I blame the marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation ....

[Adam Franklin]

One thing I find difficult in a world of categories, is how to categorise myself.

Blues has a terrible name in the UK, 'Roots music' probably came about as a way of selling this music without mentioning the 'B' word. It does cover a multitude of genres but does do the trick with some venues.

How do other people describe themselves?

Duke Ellington said there were only two sorts of music, good music and bad music. My stock answer to "What sort of music do you like?", is, "music I like".


Looking forward, Adam.

[Parlor Picker]

I was going to jump in with the Duke Ellington quote, but that crafty Adam Franklin beat me to it...

[pete1951]

It maybe that,because blues is normally written around an existing template (12, 16 ,8bars ) many don`t think of blues singers as `songwriters` more as lyricist. The same could be thought about C&W. We know this is an over simplification, but when you put a label on something its going to happen.
Pete T
I have, as yet not gone to a local `Singer/Songwriter` evening .Maybe I should go and sing some of my original blues?

[Adam Franklin]

I was going to jump in with the Duke Ellington quote, but that crafty Adam Franklin beat me to it...

Sorry Parlour....(hehehehheh)

Of course, so as not to appear bombastic, it should really be; "Music you like and music you don't like". One mans meat and all that.

A.

[Mr.OMuck]

I think the phenomena of the name emerged as a result of Zim Dylerman's transition from a person who occasionally sang folk songs to one who exclusively sang original material and the wild success of that stratagem (or whatever it was). It was hard to find a "Folksinger" after about 1965-66.

[Stuart]

Maybe there's another way to look at this. Perhaps the designation was created to call attention to and to give credit for compositional talent. There are a lot of great singers and musicians who perform other people's compositions (and sometimes only other people's compositions), which is a special talent unto itself. But to point out that the song was written or composed by the performer gives credit where credit is due.

It's easy to rant against the negative aspects and associations of the business of music and marketing of artists, the limits and shortcomings of genre classification, etc., but possibly there's another side to the story.

[lindy]

It's easy to rant against the negative aspects and associations of the business of music and marketing of artists, the limits and shortcomings of genre classification, etc., but possibly there's another side to the story.

It looks like pbs took on this weighty question in one of its "American Masters" segments:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/troubadours-carole-king-james-taylor-the-rise-of-the-singer-songwriter/about-the-film/1772/

Anyone see it? The names on the preview page all smack of early 70s reaction to disco.

I like the word "troubadour," it evokes images of wandering minstrels telling stories, like the one who follows Sir Robin in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "He bravely ran away, away, he bravely ran away . . ."



L

[Stuart]

Thanks for the link, Lindy. I remember seeing bits and pieces--I'll have to watch it on-line in its entirety when time permits.

I checked Wiki and it actually mentions some of our early CB heroes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singer-songwriter#History

[uncle bud]

I checked Wiki and it actually mentions some of our early CB heroes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singer-songwriter#History

It may mention it, but that don't make it right! I think the usage is revisionist (unless I'm proven wrong) when applied to Lemon, Son House, Robert Johnson etc. Probably a singer-songwriter-wiki-editor's attempt at street cred.   If the citations pointed to contemporaneous usage, fine, but Lightnin' Hopkins being called a singer-songwriter in Rolling Stone magazine or whatever doesn't count. They may have been singers, and they may have been songwriters, but they weren't singer-songwriters.

This thread is going to start attracting all sorts of sensitive googling navel-gazers, god help us.

[Stuart]

It may mention it, but that don't make it right!

Not in the sense that Mr. O had in mind when this topic began, that's for sure. The problem with expanding the range of the term to the point that it becomes all inclusive is that it almost becomes irrelevant for our purposes--and for other purposes as well. I don't think that it is revisionist, just projected back on and into different historical, social and cultural contexts. It's understandable, but not appropriate--or acceptable, IMHO. Anyway, I thought that I'd mention the Wiki entry just as a FYI.

[Bald Melon Jefferson]

I think O'Muck hit it on the head in that last post of his.
Certainly people had been writng and singing their own songs all along. But on the radio, prior to the onset of the Zimmerman Dynasty in popular music, you mostly had folk singers singin' traditional songs and acts pushing product...pop singers singing songs supplied by the publishing houses.  When Dylan went from writing for the publishing house to successfully performing and recording it himself we had to put it in a box and label it....'cause that's what we do. And it was a good marketing tool too.
That opened-up the options for and imaginations of a whole slew of writers with less that perfect chops and voices who all realized that they could go that route too. 

Or something like that.

Or not.

[misterjones]

I think the phenomena of the name emerged as a result of Zim Dylerman's transition from a person who occasionally sang folk songs to one who exclusively sang original material and the wild success of that stratagem (or whatever it was). It was hard to find a "Folksinger" after about 1965-66.

I recall there being many post-Dylan singer-songwriters (especially in the early 1970s) who to me sounded like folksingers.  I'd put Don McLean and Jim Croce and Gordon Lightfoot and Paul Simon and The Band and the like in that category.  They might not have stolen old folk melodies (and the occasional lyric) like the early Dylan, but I'm not sure that's a proper touchstone.  If the point is that there was a rapidly diminishing number of people who sang about bonnie lasses lang a-growin', I'd agree.

[blueshome]

Singer-songwriter - it's a very useful label - a warning to avoid the gig or tell you it's time to go to the bar. Just cos you wrote it yourself doesnt make it good music.

We might not be sure what the term means precisely but the present day practitioners know where they fit. Tired chord progressions, jaded cliches, mild angst.......... Oh, and "acoustic" guitars that plug in and an attempt to sound vocally different in the same way as a 1000 others of the genre.

I'm turning into even more of a grumpy old git but that doesn't make the rubbish that most of this stuff is any better. Yes I know there are exceptions, but they are few and far between.

[misterjones]

I asked my father (an art professor) many years ago what African art is.  He said art made in Africa.  I guess, then, a singer/songwriter is one who writes and sings his own songs.

In addition to a guitar slung over the shoulder, I suppose lots of denim and buckskin and hair and trite and superficial left wing sensibilities doesn't hurt either.

[Gumbo]

superficial left wing sensibilities never hurt anybody 

[Rivers]

IMO the tag Singer / Songwriter probably should be reserved as a rare mantle bestowed (by whom?, they howled) on true poetic, artistic, and homegrown talent who throws serious light on the human condition. This to be coupled with the understanding that, in the event of early demise, artistic block, or inability to learn any more chords, should be passed on with good grace to the next generation.

Unfortunately it has become just another trite genre tag, and I use it myself to partition iTunes for example. In fact, and this is probably quite funny, but I have evolved several subcategories of S/SW(!), being a true music nerd with experimental tendencies / serial record buying addiction, over a long period of time.

I'm not talking about your personal favorites or mine, who we would naturally think truly deserve to shoulder the mantle. That is entirely in the eye of the beholder. While it's current, if it speaks to you, who cares what it's called. When it's no longer current the historical perspective kicks in.

If pressed on the way I think about music (which is quite seldom), S/ SW has nothing whatsoever to do with old country blues. If the term didn't exist then how could anyone possibly find themselves with that label now? Well I suppose you could expect anything to happen to your legacy but that's revisionism, by my analysis.

Neither does the S/SW term relate to any of the zillions of original rock, jazz, or any other genre, artists singing & songwriting original material. S/SW is a recent invention of a genre, probably dreamed up by an anonymous A&R person with an ear for acoustic music that they couldn't file under any other genre.

So, to sum up. It's just another genre, like "blues", totally simplistic, ambiguous and meaningless on multiple levels.