Topic: What'd I Say - Quote Drive 2008

[frankie]

Simmie Dooley, blind musician, has been sentenced to serve two months in the State penitentiary having been found guilty of a charge of assault and battery. Dooley's chief instrument is a guitar

Was the guitar also the weapon used in the assault?  It is his chief instrument, after all.

[Parlor Picker]

I seem to remember hearing that Son House apparently said one of the most useful things about a National guitar was that it was great for rendering an adversary unconscious!

[uncle bud]

Simmie Dooley, blind musician, has been sentenced to serve two months in the State penitentiary having been found guilty of a charge of assault and battery. Dooley's chief instrument is a guitar

Was the guitar also the weapon used in the assault?  It is his chief instrument, after all.

I'm just impressed he made 10 bucks on the way to the hoosegow...

[Johnm]

My goodness, what's with 60 days in the state penitentiary?  Didn't they have a local jail in Columbia?  That is some weird sentencing.
All best,
Johnm

[Stuart]

I'm just impressed he made 10 bucks on the way to the hoosegow...

What would that be in today's $$?? How about in Canadian $$??

I'm surprised that the scholars over at the PWBG didn't do the conversion.

[lindy]

?More bass.?

--Response from Jerry Wexler, producer of hits by Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and Bob Dylan, among others, when asked what he would like to have written on his tombstone.

[Coyote Slim]

"The blues come from behind a mule."  -- Bukka White  (told to Hawkeye Herman -- he mentioned it recently on the Blindmans Blues Forum)

[Mr.OMuck]

"Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm schizophrenic, and so am I."
Oscar Levant

[Mr.OMuck]

"The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons."
Imamu Amiri Baraka

[Mr.OMuck]

They said, You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are. The man replied, Things as they are changed upon a blue guitar.
Wallace Stevens

[uncle bud]

"The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons."
Imamu Amiri Baraka

Damn that Jelly Roll Morton for taking piano lessons. Fats Waller, shame on you for learning from James P Johnson (not to mention - I can barely bring myself to say it - studying at Juilliard. I mean, really!!). Miles Davis, son of Dr. Miles Davis, Illinois dentist, who sent you to Juilliard, I'm tossing my copy of Kind of Blue (and Birth of the Cool, and Milestones, and Miles Smiles, and even Somethin' Else - sorry Cannonball, blame Miles...) 'cause I found out you're middle class on Wikipedia...

Imamu Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) - Zzzzzzzzzzzz........

[Mr.OMuck]

Well Uncle Bud..I guess he would argue that the musicians you mentioned ARE part of or immersed in "the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life" (love the phrase stark blue continuum!).
I think its more an indictment of the academisation of  the music rather than a blanket repudiation of any middle class practitioners, no? At least that's how I interpreted it. In my un-humble opinion the effects of academe on the arts is questionable at best and often demonstrably negative as in the visual arts. The rise of university art departments funded by returning soldiers on the GI bill after WWII created a system antithetical to the production of serious work. The emergence of these departments and the subsequent appearance and domination of Pop art is no coincidence. There has never been an artist of the first rank with an MFA. None of the titans of the preceding generation had degrees.
And don't get me started on Julliard! I look out my window and see Julliard's grotesquely ugly high rise every goddamned day (irrelevant, I know but for an institution that's supposed to uphold some kind of aesthetic standard?...know what I mean?). One of my closest friends now deceased, taught there for forty years and felt that for the most part it creates soulless technicians, incapable of responding to the profundities of great music (with the exception of an occasional Midori).
I have friends who studied there as well and the picture is much the same. Careerism and ferocious competition were the primary considerations. There were a small handful of inspiring teachers you could work with privately.
It was the private lessons either with Julliard faculty members or non faculty members that were most important to people.
And its all coming to a theater near us soon folks! Its only a matter of time (and a short time I'm afraid) when
we'll be seeing college courses like "Blind Willie Johnson 101" bottle neck guitar techniques, or "Pre-Johnsonian
guitar techniques of the Mississippi River Delta Area"
Technically perfect nine year old girls will mount the stage at Blues festivals and blow us all away, and then...it'll all be over..it will become...an academic subject,,,glecccchhhh.

[uncle bud]

Well I'm not launching a full-on defense of Juilliard or the academy in general, or university music programs. But classical music needs to be studied somewhere, and a university seems like the best option we've got. Much of what I've heard about Juilliard sounds fairly grim in fact, but there are other programs out there that are more about the music than the climb to the top. The long history, diversity and complexity of jazz seems to lend itself to at least some academic study by some musicians as well. All music needs soul in the end, and I don't know if that's something one can ultimately teach. But having a good foundation will at least help you take a shot.

(I'm reminded by this topic of one of my favourite quotes about writing, from Flannery O'Connor. "Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.")

My point about the Baracka quote is that it seems politically motivated and not based in the realities of musical performance and creation. The playing of Jelly Roll Morton or Fats Waller is in part a demonstration of music lessons, sustained practise and study -- in a significant way -- in addition to their own personal genius, what they bring to the music from their culture, how their culture shapes their approach to music, how commerce shapes it etc. Culture alone does not guarantee musical genius. From my very limited knowledge of the area, it seems to me that lots of the early 20s jazz performances were songs composed for the sheet music, music hall and musical theatre industry, written down by people who had studied music, composition etc., churned out for the stage and for people to play music in their parlors. They were trying to make money and would probably look at us as if we were insane if we tried to engage them in a discussion about the cultural purity of the music.

Blind Willie Johnson techniques at university? Nah.    But I did do ear training classes to Ray Charles music in CEGEP (sort of pre-university community college). Some of the best learnin' I got.

[Mr.OMuck]

Good points uncle Bud. Its just one o' them Susquehanna Hat Co. trigger things for me, dontcha know, hence all the irrelevant digressions. AND.............

[uncle bud]

LOL... speaking of genius...