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...back in the days when you recorded performances instead of performing recordings - Willie Dixon, autobiography

Author Topic: Favorite Signature Licks  (Read 2587 times)

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Offline Kokomo O

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Re: Favorite Signature Licks
« Reply #15 on: July 12, 2016, 08:21:13 PM »
Muddy--Can't be Satisfied

Offline Rivers

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Re: Favorite Signature Licks
« Reply #16 on: July 13, 2016, 07:20:51 AM »
I like Furry Lewis's sliding up the bass string as the foundation for the main theme in Turn Your Money Green and Kassie Jones. It's very distinctive, I can't think of anyone else who did it. Jerry Ricks was of the opinion Furry was emulating a jug blower's 'swoop' (my term) with it and I agree.

In fact I'm drawn to a lot of bass-side lick players, you could pull several examples out of Memphis Minnie's work.

Offline Johnm

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Re: Favorite Signature Licks
« Reply #17 on: July 13, 2016, 08:08:42 AM »
Furry is a great choice, Rivers.  I might also go with signature licks from a couple of his EAEGBE tunes, "Jelly Roll" and "Mistreating Mama Blues".  I'm crazy about Booker White's signature lick from "Jitterbug Swing", too.
All best,
Johnm

Offline Longsands

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Re: Favorite Signature Licks
« Reply #18 on: July 13, 2016, 08:59:27 AM »
Jitterbug Swing was on my shortlist!  Tommy Johnson's Sliding Delta too.  There are so many...

Offline GhostRider

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Re: Favorite Signature Licks
« Reply #19 on: July 13, 2016, 11:32:47 AM »
Howdy:

One that sticks in my head is the lick in Robert Wilkins "Rolling Stone".

Alex

Offline David Kaatz

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Re: Favorite Signature Licks
« Reply #20 on: July 13, 2016, 04:31:11 PM »
Spoonful - by just about everybody who did it.

D

Offline Longsands

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Re: Favorite Signature Licks
« Reply #21 on: July 14, 2016, 05:51:24 AM »
To digress a little, this thread reminded me of something that Stephen Calt wrote in his Skip James book, regarding the origins of the instrumental response component of blues songs.  He attributes it to ?Roll Jordan?, a one-chord eighteenth-century Methodist hymn written by Charles Wesley (author of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing) and published as part of a Kentucky camp meeting hymnal that was circulated in Kentucky and Virginia in the wake of the Great Revival of 1801:
 
?The building block of the blues is a four-bar phrase divided into two unbalanced parts:  a ten-beat vocal phrase, followed by a six-beat instrumental phrase.  It is this unvarying phrase, repeated three times, that makes for a twelve-bar blues, and is the unique insignia of the form, removing it from the realm of spirituals or any other song form.
The four-bar phrases of Roll Jordan likewise consists of a ten-beat line, followed by a six-beat refrain (?Roll, Jordan?).  ?
The six-beat instrumental snippet that completes most blues lines has a refrain-like character.  Like a vocal refrain, it is normally repeated throughout the song, with no variation.  As with a vocal refrain, it is musically complete, but incapable of standing apart from the section it accompanies.
Two early blues recordings used a six-beat vocal refrain rather than an instrumental fill.  Blind Lemon Jefferson?s Bad Luck Blues (1927) began:
I wanna go home but I ain?t got sufficient clothes / Doggone my bad luck soul
The initial vocal line of Tommy Johnson?s crude one-chord Cool Drink of Water (1928) is divided into two sections:
I asked for water, an? she brought me gasoline / Lord, Lordie, Lord!
The phrase ?Doggone my bad luck soul? and chorus ?Lord, Lordie, Lord!? (sung in falsetto) are equivalent to the refrain ?Roll Jordan?.
In all probability, the earliest blues song resembled the format of Bad Luck Blues and Cool Drink of Water, sung either a cappella or set to rudimentary accompaniment on the banjo or fiddle, the favourite black instruments of the nineteenth century.  The unknown creator of the first blues probably based its phrasing on Roll Jordan, set to secular lyrics and a new melody.
?  a transformed version of Roll Jordan became familiar to nineteenth-century slaves as Roll Jordan, Roll.  Although this famous song bore little resemblance to its predecessor, the phrasing pattern of the original Roll Jordan was adopted by a slave spiritual published in 1887, Is Massa Goin? to Sell Us Tommorrow?  Other spirituals approximated its phrasing pattern by pairing a nine-beat vocal with a seven-beat refrain.  Inchin? Along (published in 1872), He?s The Lily Of The Valley (published in 1872), Let My People Go! (published in 1872), an Bye an? Bye (published in 1902).  This pattern, which was found in a white hymn (Antioch) published in 1854, would sometimes supplant the ?ten/six? phrase in twentieth century blues song.
?  At some point another musician substituted an instrumental fill for a six-beat refrain, and created a recognizable blues.  ? it is the part-vocal, part-instrumental character of blues that constitutes its real claim to distinction:  no other song form has a built-in instrumental phrase. 
? Individual songs bearing the blues phrasing pattern were familiar a century ago.  Careless Love, a maudlin eight-bar ballad that WC Handy heard in 1892 and that became a staple of black entertainers, used a ?ten/six? blues pattern for its first, second and concluding phrases.  Another hoboing song of the same vintage, East St Louis (the same song James knew as Slidin? Delta), consisted of two four-bar phrases, the second of which was a familiar blues phrase.?

It?s an interesting theory?
David

Offline Johnm

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Re: Favorite Signature Licks
« Reply #22 on: July 14, 2016, 09:21:42 AM »
Hi Longsands,
The explanation you cite presumes a metric consistency in the phrasing of 12-bar blues that didn't bear out in the practice of Country Blues players, who were, in fact, all over the map in terms of their phrasing, quite often phrasing different verses of the same song in different ways.  Moreover, there is not just the one phrasing archetype for 12-bar blues, the AAB phrasing that was cited.  There is also the Chorus Blues archetype, like Jim Jackson's "Kansas City Blues", which apportions space for the vocal and instrumental responses in a very different way.  Two threads here that deal with these issues are "Blues Forms and Vocal Phrasing", at:  http://weeniecampbell.com/yabbse/index.php?topic=924.0 , and "Vocal Phrasing--The Long and the Short of It", at:  http://weeniecampbell.com/yabbse/index.php?topic=951.0 .

As for signature licks, to my way of thinking, a signature lick most often responds to each vocal phrase in a (roughly) 12-bar blues, usually being played and repeated in the third and fourth, seventh and eighth and eleventh and twelfth bars.  Exceptions abound though; some signature licks are perseverated on, like Jimmy Lee Williams' one in "Have You Ever Seen Peaches?", in which he plays the lick for as long as he feels like it before going on to the next vocal phrase, but always adding two extra beats after the final iteration of the lick to accommodate the vocal pick-ups for the next phrase.

John Hurt's "Cow Hooking Blues" has a great signature lick.

All best,
Johnm 
« Last Edit: September 01, 2016, 07:00:29 PM by Johnm »

Offline Longsands

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Re: Favorite Signature Licks
« Reply #23 on: July 14, 2016, 11:41:24 AM »
Hi John ? thanks for the response.  I take your point about the many, often gnarly variants on the blues form, and I agree about the signature lick being the instrumental response at the end of each vocal line.  I think Calt?s point about this built-in instrumental fill being a characteristic unique to blues holds true ? whether or not it traces back to one particular hymn seems like a leap of faith, but intriguing.  Apologies if this was the wrong place to bring this up ? I?ll have a dig through those threads you linked.
Cheers, David

Offline jaycee

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Re: Favorite Signature Licks
« Reply #24 on: July 15, 2016, 08:54:53 AM »
My very favourite signature lick is, Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie, Pile Driver Blues.
jaycee

Offline Johnm

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Re: Favorite Signature Licks
« Reply #25 on: July 25, 2016, 03:31:01 PM »
Hi all,
I thought of a couple more:
   *"Lucy Mae"--Frankie Lee Sims
   *"Brownsville Blues"--Memphis Willie B.
All best,
Johnm
« Last Edit: July 25, 2016, 05:50:48 PM by Johnm »

Offline oddenda

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Re: Favorite Signature Licks
« Reply #26 on: July 25, 2016, 09:20:55 PM »
Maybe out of this place, but Eugene "Hideaway" Bridges has some downward arpeggiated runs that show up. Bruce Bastin has made reference to the "Greenville runs" that show up in the playing of Willie Walker, Baby Tate, Gary Davis, Pink Anderson, a.o. But what do we know... we don't play. BUT WE CAN LISTEN!!!

pbl

Offline Rivers

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Re: Favorite Signature Licks
« Reply #27 on: July 28, 2016, 05:43:20 PM »
I guess some of the licks that became signature licks did so because they're so good you never get tired of hearing them, and the player likely knew it.

Broonzy is a classic case in point. There are identifiable signature licks in all of his standard tuning keys, played slightly differently helping each song have its own context and distinct sound. So we never tire of hearing Big Bill, or I don't anyway.

Bill is another example of a great bass lick player, usually finishing on the treble side, in many keys.

Offline Johnm

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Re: Favorite Signature Licks
« Reply #28 on: August 07, 2016, 01:57:57 PM »
Hi all,
I thought of another particular favorite--Yank Rachell's signature lick on "Matchbox Blues".
All best,
Johnm

 


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