Topic: Its Blues Jim, but not as we know it...

[dj]

something that is a 12 bar but has been `hidden` or so covered you don`t at first know its a 12bar.

I guess "blues" is often in the ear of the listener.  I'll  if you were reading about Glenn Miller's "In The Mood" in Downbeat or Billboard back in 1939, I'll bet it would be described as a "blues", but today we just don't think of Glenn Miller as a guy who played blues, so we don't hear it that way.  But I'll bet if you played people Wingy Manone's 1930 version of "Tar Paper Stomp", which is just an earlier incarnation of the "In The Mood" melody, most people would hear it as a blues because we don't have those preconceptions of who Manone was and what kind of music he played.

In the same vein, "She's A Woman" by the Beatles is a straight 12 bar blues, but the Beatles didn't do blues, did they?  So most people don't hear it as such.  But if the same arrangement of the same song had been recorded by Buddy Guy at Chess in the fall of 1964, we'd hear it today and say "That's a blues".  Or James Brown's "I Feel Good" or "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag".  The verses are 12 bar blues, but James Brown doesn't fit into our mental category of "blues singers" (and was often quotes as saying he hated the blues), so we don't hear it unless we really pay attention to what's going on musically in the song. 

[CF]

That's what I was trying to say DJ, thanks. It's not a particularly informed distinction but it is one most people make, even Weenies. Like if someone started a thread here about the bluesiness of Glenn Miller's arrangements or George Jones, well they'd have to be posted in the OTHER MUSICAL INTERESTS board.
Hank W's 'Move It On Over' is a 12 bar . . . 'Honky Tonk Blues'

[pete1951]

I have a recording of `In the Mood` but its not in with my Blues records, nor would a copy of The Clash singing `Should I stay or Should I Go?`(if I had a copy) or Bucks Fizz `Making your Mind Up` (also don`t have that one, which was a euro/uk hit - There are a few gaps in my record/cd collection )
They are 12bars but Blues?
Don`t get too worked up over this ,just see if you can think of any odd uses of the 12 bar format
Pete T
I`m off to practice `Riders on the Storm` for this weeks jam (there`s a 12 bar with a couple of changes,) but still a 12 bar and not `Blues as We Know It`

[jim yates]

Jimmie Rodgers, The Yodeling Brakeman, while more often described as a traditional country singer than a blues singer, often sang 12 bar verses with a 4 bar yodel stuck on the end.  Non-yodelers covering his songs often just leave out the yodel, returning the song to a 12-bar blues or, as I do, play the yodel instrumentally.

Lord, I'm so lonesome, I wish that I was dead.
Oh yes I'm so lonesome that I wish that I was dead.
I ain't got no place to lay my weary head.
Yodel-lay-hee, yodee-odle-lay-hee, yodee-odle-lay-hee.

While Jimmie often used regular 12-bar changes, he sometimes modified them:
C  |F7  |C   |C7  |F7  |     |C   |A7  |D7  |G7  |C   |     |yodel|     |G7  |C    |G7   ||

[Rivers]

From recent times I would nominate Tracy Chapman's Give Me One Reason. I had always liked the song but had not really parsed it as a blues until I heard Junior Wells do an acousticy cover of it on Come On In This House.

Junior's cover version is on the juke and well worth a listen if anyone's never heard it, and the whole album is excellent.

[Mr.OMuck]

To add a probably irrelevant but incendiary note here let me say that certain musical forms require a particular knowledge of the Gestalt of the form in order to play them convincingly and have them BE the real thing. Hearing Classical musicians break into a Jazz tune is usually excruciating, as is hearing Jazz musicians trying to accompany or play Folk or Blues. I don't know what invisible laws of separation are at work in making these arrangements unsucessful, but they seem to exist. Likewise whether or not a certain structural form is employed in a piece seems ultimately irrelevant to whether or not it is a "real" Blues tune. As so many Blues greats have opined: "Blues is a feeling". It seems significant that Big Bill Broonzy indicated, shortly before his death that he didn't want to be remembered as a Jazz player, as many Europeans still insist, but as a Blues singer.

[Shovel]

In the Mood kind of sounds to me like Blind Blake with a twist.  Blues-ragtime hybrid with the beat stretched out a little.

[pete1951]

Well, my friend made a 30min radio show which went out on BBC radio 4 (UK ) this summer. No `classical` music 12bar forms were found but thanks to everyone who had a think about it.
PT
My own view is that Blues has to have more than a 12bar structure to be  blues, but I can see why `In the Mood` (by G.M. not Muddy Waters) is called blues by some