*Blues Musician Rant Alert*
I'm just listening to some blues on the radio and it made me think of something that I've been quietly shouting (can you do that?) about for a while. It's this idea of clean blues vs. dirty blues.
This is a really interesting subject and seems to divide blues players quite a lot.
In essence, clean blues started with T-Bone Walker and BB King and continues with Robert Cray, (modern) Eric Clapton and Joe Bonamassa. A sound based on clean lines, clean notes, clean production etc. I don't necessarily mean clean tone as in 'not distorted', I mean clean as in 'never wrong'.
On the other hand we have dirty blues, that's the kind of dirty noise that Elmore James and Jimmy Reed used to play and is now carried on by the likes of the N.M.A., The Black Keys, Gary Clark Jr. and (in his own way) Tom Waits. Nasty tones, wrong notes, tub-thump drums and a whole lot of sleaze.
I appreciate that both can coexist and I like a lot of both but there seems to be a reluctance to cross-breed with each other. I'd love to hear a Bonamassa album recorded with Jack White or The Black Keys back up Clapton. Can you imagine what a joyous noise that would be?
What I guess I'm trying to say is that all us blues types can get stuck in the most terrible ruts and we must try to think about what makes our music so good. It aint Jazz, it aint Funk, it aint Soul and it aint Rock. It's the blues and the blues is all of those things and so we should bring it all to the party. Play everything with a wink in your eye, lust in your heart and fire in your fingers. In the end it's all about love and love can be dirty and love can be clean but at it's best it's a mixture of both.
x
(All comments RT's, shares etc. are to be encouraged. I'm very interested to hear peoples point of view on this)
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