Topic: Singer/songwriter ?

[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.