Topic: Country blues legends that you just don't like

[Blue in VT]

I just can't get into Leadbelly either...I can listen to a dozen leadbelly songs and not understand one word in any of them....just not for me.

Blue

[Rivers]

Lead Belly was a mystery to me until I actively decided to immerse myself in his stuff for a while. Actually it was Alvin Youngblood Hart who turned me on to him at Port T. I was transported watching Alvin channel Lead when singing Gallows Pole on his Stella 12 at an afternoon workshop. I recommend the Columbia Legacy complete early recordings and it helps to read up on what was going on with him at the various times he recorded.

For example the Lomaxes were very focussed on old folk songs and Lead was always happy to oblige, whether he knew the song or not. It explains some of the slightly weird repertoire choices. The old cliche "a force of nature" comes to mind, I can't imagine a world without Lead Belly.

[banjochris]

I used to not be a big fan of Leadbelly's until I heard his "Last Sessions" on Folkways, which has amazing sound quality and he's very relaxed, chatting between songs, etc., with no real pressure to perform anything except what he wants to. The 3 volumes of the Leadbelly Legacy series on CD are really excellent, too. I like most of his stuff now, but I'm still not wild about the tracks where he explains the whole song in that half-chant, half-song voice. I understand why that may have been necessary for the audiences of the time, but to me he sounds his least relaxed when he's doing that stuff.

The two artists I've never been able to work up much enthusiasm for are Sam Collins and Ramblin' Thomas. Collins' tuning problems can be grating, and to me they both share a lack of a strong rhythm in their music. One or two tracks at a time are OK, but I can't take much more than that.
Chris

[Blue in VT]

 

Thanks for the pointers perhaps I'm just listening to the wrong recordings of Leadbelly...I'll have to hunt up some of the ones you guys recommend.

Cheers,

Blue

[jostber]

And this record has the incredible 1940 recordings with Leadbelly and the Golden Gate Quartet:

Take This Hammer -
http://www.amazon.com/Take-This-Hammer-Leadbelly/dp/samples/B000092Q47/ref=dp_tracks_all_1/102-7708198-2811344?ie=UTF8&qid=1178196236&sr=8-1#disc_1

"Midnight Special" and "Easy Rider" from these sessions rocks my soul everytime I listen to them.


- Jostein

[uncle bud]

I'll second the "Last Sessions" as the collection that started my Leadbelly obsession. Before that, I had been turned off by some of the hard-to-penetrate ARC recordings and the like. Leadbelly recorded so much that you're bound to have a little bit of B-list material to slog through, but those Last Sessions are a safe bet IMO.

[jostber]

A collection I play a lot is "The Definitive Leadbelly" on Catfish:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Definitive-Leadbelly/dp/B0009VKRQC

Great sound, and selection of songs. Good value too.

[blueshome]

I am afraid Leadbelly does nothing for me at all. I just find his voice and delivery irritating. Maybe it goes back to some of those skiffle parodies I heard as a child by English groups.
Also I can't listen to the Rev.GD for very long, not so much the singing as the guitar tone, or lack of it. 

[mississippijohnhurt1928]

Ah yes and the following pre-war blues musicians also do absolutely NOTHING for me:

Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Mamie Smith, Alberta Hunter, Victoria Spivey, Ma Rainey, Lucille Bogan, Etc.

Hmm, my list makes me appear somewhat sexist...


But I just don't like their sound, it doesn't appeal to me at all.

(And I'm aware that they're closer to a minstrel act than the blues.)

[rpg51]

It may sound absolutely crazy to say this - but I quickly grow tired of Robert Johnson.  In fact, a lot of the real raw delta blues stuff doesn't get my juices flowing nearly as much as other styles - like Piedmont stuff.  I find it a lot easier to listen to the piedmont stuff. 

Now I'll keep my head down while the beer bottles start flying! 

[tenderfoot84]

robert johnson's repertoire isn't all raw delta blues though.

i kind of glazed over a number of his tracks when i first got into blues and just recently heard 'from four til late' playing on a random playlist thru my computer. i'd nver really listened to it closely before.

there's really a tonne of variety in the tunes he recorded.

[GhostRider]

Howdy:

The two established players who grate on me are Blind Boy Fuller and Blind Willie McTell.

BBF - I just can't get by that ashcan-sounding National guitar. I just don't like that resonator sound. I love the guitar parts, but played by someone else (and on a woodie).

BWMcT - That high, airy voice with that sloppy-played 12 string. Nope, not for me. Again some nice pieces but BWMcT in small doses only.

Now you may think I'm queer (watch it!), but that's my opinion.

alex

[Parlor Picker]

Alex - you crazy Canadian colonial type - how can you not like Blind Willie McTell???  He's probably my all-round favourite of the genre.  Great voice and varied guitar styles (slide and picked).

I like Fuller, but tend to agree that a wooden guitar would have sounded more appropriate - ditto a lot of Bo Carter's recordings.  The ones on the wooden-bodied instrument are more pleasing to my ears.  Marshcat, a self-confessed sufferer of Resophonia Astronomica will have one of his apoplectic fits when he reads that...

At the end of the day, it's good we all like different things.  Back in the 1960s when I was at college, my bus took me past a church that often had some clever comments on a notice board outside.  My favourite was: "No two men are alike and both are glad of it."

When I finish work today, it will have to be McTell's "Traveling Blues" to brighten my day.

[Chezztone]

And let's all keep in mind that you can learn to like something, even learn to love something, that you previously found distasteful. Foods as well as music! Some may have worked their ways from bluesy rock (e.g. Clapton, Stones) through rocky blues (Hooker, Waters) to Delta blues, to other kinds of country blues. And maybe those people tend to prefer Robert Johnson and Charley Patton now. While others may have worked their ways in from folk music and now prefer Hurt and McTell. And still others may have started as jazz fans and now are into Lonnie Johnson and Bessie Smith. There is a strong tendency to enjoy music that sounds sort of like what you're used to but not too much like it (or it's boring). So if you're always working to listen to things outside your comfort zone, you expand that zone, and find that you're now enjoying things that you couldn't handle a few years ago. So keep trying to listen to the stuff (as long as it's country blues, of course -- don't want to see anyone leaving the fold) you don't like! I promise I'll try again with the Sheiks, although Lord knows I've tried. Cheers, Chezz

[Prof Scratchy]

Chezz - you simply cannot not like 'Sales Tax'. Especially the wonderful line in the hastily produced intro sequence: "Why they're lotsa things sold the government knows anything about....."!!