Topic: Miller's Breakdown

[blueshome]

Now I?ve sa down with a guitar, what the Professor said. What a nice piece to play, everything under the fingers...

Based on the Arthur Crudup song of the same title.

[Johnm]

Hi all,
It appears that everyone who intended to respond to the Lovey Williams puzzler on "Coal Black Mare" has done so, so I will post the answers.  Here goes:

For Lovey Williams' "Coal Black Mare":
   * His playing position/tuning was G position in standard tuning, as Prof Scratchy, Old Man Ned and blueshome had it.
   * Lovey Williams fretted the fill he played from :25--:27 as follows:  The fill begins on beat two of the measure, and begins with a triplet going from the open second string to the first fret of the second string and then the third fret of the second string.  On beat three, Lovey Williams played another triplet, starting at the first fret of the second string, pulling off to the open second string and resolving to the open third string.  On beat 4+, he goes from the bent third fret of the third string, resolving to the open third string.  He holds down the third fret of the sixth string and strikes it intermittently while playing the fill.
   * For the first four bars of his verse, from :40--:52, Lovey Williams keeps returning to a bent sixth fret of the first string, but is otherwise just playing the first four strings open.  The movement between the bent sixth fret of the first string and the open first string is especially striking sounding, really special, and not a sound I've heard other players working out of G position in standard tuning use.

Lovey Williams' playing shows an interesting combination of influences, I think.  Certainly, Arthur Crudup is in there, in the choice of the song, and the melody that Lovey Williams sang.  I'm also hearing some Tommy McClennan influence in Lovey's sound in G; the first fill discussed in the puzzler is very close to a fill that Tommy McClennan used a lot when playing in G position, as on "New Highway 51 Blues".  And looking further back, there seems to be a bit of Ishmon Bracey's sound when playing in G position in standard tuning.  Lovey Williams' IV7 and V7 chords of choice, just moving a C7 shape up and down the neck are different than those used by Bracey and Tommy McClennan, though.  He's really his own man.  I sure like both his playing and singing.

Thanks to those who participated in the puzzler, and I'll look for another to post soon.

All best,
Johnm

[Johnm]

Hi all,
I have a new puzzler for those of you who are interested.  It is "Pony Blues", as recorded by Johnny Young.  I tend to think of Johnny as a Chicago player, but he was born in Mississippi, like a lot of musicians who ended up in Chicago, and this acoustic rendition sure has a lot of Mississippi in it, I think.  What a young voice, too--so bright and clear.  Here is Johnny's version of "Pony Blues":



INTRO SOLO

Hitch up my pony, saddle up my black mare
Hitch up my pony, saddle up my black mare
I'm gonna find my rider, baby, in the world somewhere

Some of you women, oughta be 'shamed of yourself
Some of you women, oughta be 'shamed of yourself
Cook cornbread for your husband, biscuits for your man

Hitch up my pony, round up my black mare
Hitch up my pony, saddle up my black mare
I'm gon' find my rider, baby, in the world somewhere

Got a little hole, front teeth crowned with gold
Got a black mama with her front teeth crowned with gold
And got a horse in Texas, runs my horse on the road

SOLO

The questions on Johnny Young's "Pony Blues" are:
   * What playing position/tuning did Johnny Young use to play the song?
   * Where did Johnny fret what he played over his opening I chord, from :01--:07?  (Don't decide too quickly.)
   * Where did Johnny fret the fill he played immediately following the last vocal phrase of the first verse, around :51?
   * What is it about Johnny's rendition that might make the characterization of it as "country" be apt?

Please use only your ears and guitars to arrive at your answers and please don't post any answers before 8:00 AM your time on Friday, January 19.  Thanks for your participation and I hope you enjoy Johnny Young's "Pony Blues".
All best,
Johnm

[Johnm]

Hi all,
Any takers for the puzzlers on Johnny Young's "Pony Blues"?  Come one, come all--answer one question or all of them!
All best,
Johnm

[El Grego]

hi, I just joined this group a few minutes ago and just discovered this part of the website last week (I have looked up many lyrics on the weeniepedia). So, I'm being brave giving this a try.I venture that the Johnny young Pony blues is in E standard tuning and the opening is bar the 2nd 3rd and 4th string at the 9th fret, ring finger on the 5th string 11th fret. Hammering the pinkie on the 4th string 12th fret.
It seems to me the fill is just off of the open E cord. Is there anything other that being accoustic that makes it country blues? I don't know.

[Rivers]

Is there anything other that being accoustic that makes it country blues? I don't know.

Welcome, El Grego. I've often thought that about Patton's version, i.e. there are many 'electric guitar' moves within the arrangement which was confusing to me until long after I first plugged in.The electric guitar had not been invented when Patton recorded it. Patton had invented Pony Blues years before.

Maybe electric blues owes more to country blues than is usually accepted. In that respect I'd have to say Johnny Young's version is more country blues than Patton's, which was very far ahead of its time, imo

Sorry to veer slightly off topic, back to Johnny Young's version, which I would like to study actually.

[Prof Scratchy]

I?m with El Grego on the key and tuning. Sounds like he plays the first inversion of E7, lifting his ring finger from the fourth fret of the first string to the open first string, then third fret second string, then open first string again followed by fourth fret first string. That?s probably too obvious to be correct though, and at the end of his phrase he seems to slide down from the seventh fret of the fifth string to the open fifth before hitting the A7 chord! So maybe El Grego has it right. For the fill I think he plays open first string, open 2nd string, third fret 2nd string, open 2nd string, 321 on the 3rd string, finishing on fret 2 of 4th string. What makes it sound country? Beyond it being acoustic, fingerpicked and a bit rough and ready, I?m not sure.


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[blueshome]

I?m mostly with the Prof but I think he?s bending the 1st string at the 3rd fret.

It?s country because he hardly goes near the V chord.

[Old Man Ned]

I'm getting E standard tuning for this too.  His opening I chord I'm hearing a g# and an e on the open 1st string so I was also thinking this was a D shape played around the 4th fret and I tried not to decide this too quickly, hence the delay in my post :-)

In agreement with Prof for the fill being played. Can't come up with anything that makes the characterisation of the tune 'country blues'.

[El Grego]

Hey, one obvious thing that I overlooked that makes the song fit into "country blues" is the imagery of the lyrics, about pony's and mares and cooking cornbread and bisquits-

[Johnm]

Hi all,
Any other takers for the puzzlers on Johnny Young's "Pony Blues"?  Come one, come all!
All best,
Johnm

[Gumbo]

Greetings one and all, long time no see etc!

I ended up with a D shape capo'd up 2 frets and then dropped the low E to D to get the bass run
probably wrong since i can't find the Q2 fill but it is fun to play with

I ended up using D shapes on the 2nd 3rd and 4th strings for the IV and the implied V chords
and country because he changes when he wants to change, as Lightning said.

[waxwing]

I would say the thing that makes this more country blues is that you can still readily tell what key it is played in. What I mean is the influence of jazz chords. Robert Lockwood told me (at his last SF Blues Festival) that his biggest contribution was to bring jazz to the blues (what I asked him to avoid mention of RJ). Latter, while participating in an OLLIE class, in which I played examples of the roots of West Coast Blues (i.e. Delta and Texas styles), the current president of the Bay Area Blues Assoc (whose name escapes me) then demonstrated West Coast Blues and spoke about the strong influence of jazz chords on the guitar, playing a lot of closed chords up the neck. This is what I really like about playing old country blues, playing mostly bottom of the neck chords, using the licks that the key presents to you, gives each key a different quality and character. Later blues all sounds like it's in the key of jazz and loses that quality, to me.

Wax

[Johnm]

Hi all,
I think the Johnny Young puzzlers on his version of "Pony Blues" have probably generated all the responses they are likely to get, so I'll post the answers. 

For Johnny Young's "Pony Blues":
   * The playing position/tuning was E position in standard tuning
   * Johnny Young played over his opening I chord in his intro, from :00--:07 as follows:  He used an E7 position based on an A7 position moved up the neck, to 9-7-9 on the fourth, third and second strings, while all the while playing the open first string along with these fretted strings.  Use of this partially open position gives his sound an interesting timbre, and one of the neat things about the little three-fingered position he is utilizing on the fourth through second strings is that he is able to inflect the position, sliding in from below during the phrase, and then sliding it down at the end of the phrase, as Prof Scratchy noted, sounding the downward slide on the fourth and third strings.  Johnny Young does not use this position under his verses, but re-uses it for his solo, from 2:23--2:29.  I hope folks will try this position out--it is not terribly hard to finger and it sounds like a million bucks!  You'll be able to hear how Johnny Young slid it into place and inflected it.  I should mention, too, that Jesse Thomas, in his later recordings, was very fond of such partially open voicings and used them a lot in his playing, often leaving the first string open while he fretted the third and second strings way up the neck.
   *  Johnny Young fretted the fill that follows the last line of his first verse, at :51, as follows:  on 1 +, he struck the open sixth string twice with his thumb.  On 2 +, he brushed the open first string twice.  On 3 +, he went from a bent third fret of the second string to the open second string, and on beat 4, he played a triplet, going from the second fret of the third string to the open third string, resolving to the second fret of the fourth string.
   * As for what might be considered to make one characterize Johnny Young's rendition as "country", a lot of good points were made in the answers from participants.  The "rough and ready" quality the Prof cited, the bare acknowledgement of a V chord that Phil cited, the country imagery that El Grego mentioned, the "changing when he wanted to change" that Gumbo noted and Wax's observation of Johnny Young's whole approach, taking what the position gave him and basing what he played off that rather than using moveable closed positions, are all qualities that can rightly, I think, be construed as "country", a term which I realized after my initial posting is really very non-specific and open to interpretation.
I think what I heard as being "country" about Johnny Young's rendition was closest to what Gumbo mentioned.  To me, what was most "country" about Johnny Young's rendition was the way that he chose not to adhere to a consistent form, in terms of bar lengths, and instead devoted varying lengths to his instrumental responses to his vocal phrases, as he saw fit, over the course of his rendition, sometimes really "thriving on a riff" and perseverating on an instrumental response that he was particularly enjoying.  Just to illustrate that quality, I'll map out his passes through the form below.

INTRO SOLO
|    I7    |    I7    |    I7    |    I7    |
|   IV7   |   IV7   |    I7    |  I7 (6 beats) |
|   V7    |    I7    |    I7    |    I7    |

VERSE ONE
  Vocal----------------- Instrumental-------------------------
|   I (6 beats) |    I    |    I    |    I    |    I    |   I (6 beats) |
  Vocal-----------  Instrumental--------
|   IV7   |   IV7   |  I    |   I (6 beats) |
  Vocal------------  Instrumental---------
|    V7    |    I     |    I    |    I    |    I    |

VERSE TWO
  Vocal--------   Instrumental----
|    I    |    I    |    I7    |    I7    |
  Vocal-----------  Instrumental---------
|   IV7   |   IV7   |    I    |   I (6 beats)  |
  Vocal----------  Instrumental------------------------
|    V7   |    I    |   I    |    I    |    I    |    I    |    I    |

VERSE THREE
  Vocal  Instrumental-  Vocal  Instrumental-----------
|    I    |    I    |    I    |    I    |    I    |    I (6 beats)  |
  Vocal-----------   Instrumental------------
|   IV7   |   IV7   |   I7    |   I7 (6 beats)   |
  Vocal---------  Instrumental-------------------------
|   V7   |    I    |    I    |    I    |    I    |    I    |    I    |

VERSE FOUR
  Vocal--------   Instrumental--------
|    I    |    I    |   I    |    I    |    I    |
  Vocal-----------  Instrumental--------
|   IV7   |   IV7   |   I    |    I    |    I    |
  Vocal----------  Instrumental--
|    V7    |   I     |    I    |    I    |

SOLO
|    I7    |    I7    |    I7    |    I7    |
|   IV7   |   IV7   |    I      |    I     |    I    |    I    |
|    V7    |    I     |   I (6 beats) |   I      |   I    |

 A couple of points about Johnny Young's phrasing:
   *  He quite often, though not always, is long by two beats in the instrumental response bar that precedes a vocal entrance, thus allowing himself to complete the lick while still providing the two extra beats to accommodate the pick-ups to the next vocal phrase.  The playing of Furry Lewis, Robert Wilkins, Ed Bell, and a host of other country blues players abounds in this way of transitioning from instrumental fills to vocal phrases.
   * Like John Lee Hooker, Johnny Young sometimes has pauses or "dwells", in the midst of a vocal phrase.  He does that at the end of the first bar of the first verse, and in verse three he inserts two instrumental bars in the middle of the first vocal phrase.
   * There is a quote in the Quote Generator from the song-writer Doc Pomus to the effect that he and Mickey Baker, and other musicians in their circle could not respect Lightnin' Hopkins and John Lee Hooker because they broke time.  I suppose if you imagine that maintaining a consistent musical form of twelve bars, each of four beats, represents the pinnacle of human musical achievement, such an attitude might be understandable.  On the other hand, I would contend that such an attitude shows a misunderstanding of what Lightnin', John Lee Hooker, or Johnny Young, in this instance, were doing in their music.  By treating the call-and-response movement between voice and guitar as a simple guideline, subject to varying in length both the call and the response as the performer felt fit to do, in the moment, these players utilized an approach which always introduced an element of improvisation, keeping the performance in the present at all times, and avoiding the sort of "asleep at the wheel" playing that can result from simply recognizing and observing the conventions of blues phrasing.  And an important point:  phrase and form lengths may have varied over the course of the rendition but pulse did not--the heartbeat of the music remained the same throughout the song.

Thanks to all who participated in the puzzler, and I hope you all enjoyed Johnny Young's "Pony Blues" as much as I have, which is quite a lot!  If you have any thoughts about the issues discussed above, I hope you'll respond, and I will look for another puzzler to post soon.

All best,
Johnm       
   

[Old Man Ned]

That's a wonderful way to play the E7. Aren't the simpler things often the most effective. Thanks for the detailed response John, as ever, this is such a great learning place.
Much appreciated,
Old Man Ned