{"id":6727,"date":"2011-04-11T09:24:22","date_gmt":"2011-04-11T13:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=6727"},"modified":"2011-04-11T09:24:22","modified_gmt":"2011-04-11T13:24:22","slug":"placing-a-cap-on-da-blooz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/placing-a-cap-on-da-blooz\/","title":{"rendered":"Placing a Cap on <em>Da Blooz<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VvpXSPtZfeE?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Each Sunday while preparing dinner I greatly enjoy listening to <strong>Nick Spitzer<\/strong>&#8216;s <em><a href=\"http:\/\/americanroutes.publicradio.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">American Routes<\/a><\/em> show on NPR. He plays American roots music, much of which I would not listen to without Spitzer as my guide. I don&#8217;t know what it is about the guy, but he&#8217;s one of those DJs who just sounds so nice, knowledgeable, and inviting that I even find myself enjoying the occasional zydeco song. As if to prove how much of a non-American roots enthusiast I am, rarely does a week go by that he doesn&#8217;t throw in one <strong>Rolling Stones<\/strong> cover of a blues or <strong>Chuck Berry<\/strong> chestnut so I can think to myself, <em>Man, young Mick Jagger was the best blues singer ever!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>With Spitzer&#8217;s focus being on American roots music and the term &#8220;American roots music&#8221; usually excluding the &#8220;roots&#8221; music from my northeast city boy perspective, I&#8217;m bound to be faced with a challenging episode now and then. Yesterday&#8217;s episode, <em>Living With the Blues<\/em>, was probably the most challenging one to date. Here&#8217;s the description:<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This week on\u00a0<em>American Routes<\/em>, we&#8217;re roaming the highways, byways and crossroads of the Magnolia State, looking for all kinds of blues. We sit down with noted blues scholar\u00a0<strong>Bill Ferris<\/strong> to talk about his lifelong obsession with the music of his home state, and visit with Delta piano blues chanteuse\u00a0<strong>Eden Brent<\/strong> to learn about her music mentor Boogaloo Ames. We set out north for Holly Springs and some\u00a0<strong>Hill Country family jams<\/strong>. Then we head towards home to hang out at\u00a0<strong>Teddy&#8217;s Juke Joint<\/strong>, and catch up with the master of the gut-bucket blues,\u00a0<strong>Little Freddie King<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t make it through the <a href=\"http:\/\/americanroutes.publicradio.org\/archives\/show\/684\/from-home-page\" target=\"_blank\">entire episode<\/a>; I had to bail when he got to Little Freddie King, near the end of the first hour. The &#8220;Delta piano blues chanteuse&#8221; really wore on my nerves, and before her I was already bugged by <strong>Clifton Chenier<\/strong> doing a pointless zydeco version of the great &#8220;Walking to New Orleans,&#8221; but retitled &#8220;Walking to Louisianna.&#8221; What&#8217;s his beef with New Orleans? What point did it serve to have to cram in the state name? If he wanted to walk to some place other than New Orleans, couldn&#8217;t he have substituted another Louisianna town name, somewhere specific? Ugh! It couldn&#8217;t have been any more generic and kiss ass than that cover. What&#8217;s next from Chenier (if he&#8217;s still alive), a zydeco version of Elton John&#8217;s &#8220;<em>Pennsylvania<\/em> Freedom&#8221;?<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dCPn6sE8niM?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>I forget what exactly bugged me about the blues chanteuse, but her music, too, was so generic. For how long must blues musicians sing about their babies having done them wrong, being broke, etc? We get it, it&#8217;s <em>da blooz<\/em>, but isn&#8217;t it time someone gets sad about something else, or expresses those emotions in some novel ways? Where&#8217;s the Bob Dylan of the blues, the Beatles of the blues? Hell, where&#8217;s the Wire of the blues? The structural limitations within which so many blues musicians work is tight enough; must all modern-day blues practitioners also lack any sense of poetry and originality? I hear musicians wanting to &#8220;pay homage&#8221; to their blues heroes. That&#8217;s awesome, but show the spirits of deceased heroes that you&#8217;ve learned something from them other than how to play tabs of their work. The ghost of Muddy Waters wants to know he&#8217;s <em>inspired<\/em> you!<\/p>\n<p>I believe it&#8217;s time to place a cap on <em>da blooz<\/em>, retroactive to 1965, when the British and American rock bands had exposed enough music fans to the works of blues artists to kick off the reissues\/blues festival craze and get these cats at least a small portion of the earnings that were due to them in their prime. Unless commissioned by historical societies, no more blues should ever have been recorded. If you&#8217;re on the fence about my proposed cap on\u00a0<em>da blooz<\/em> consider this:\u00a0<strong>Buddy Guy<\/strong> would not have had time to release his first solo album.<\/p>\n<div id=\"polls-73\" class=\"wp-polls\">\n\t<form id=\"polls_form_73\" class=\"wp-polls-form\" action=\"\/blogs\/index.php\" method=\"post\">\n\t\t<p style=\"display: none;\"><input type=\"hidden\" id=\"poll_73_nonce\" name=\"wp-polls-nonce\" value=\"4e5566ba60\" \/><\/p>\n\t\t<p style=\"display: none;\"><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"poll_id\" value=\"73\" \/><\/p>\n\t\t<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Would you support a cap on The Blues?<\/strong><\/p><div id=\"polls-73-ans\" class=\"wp-polls-ans\"><ul class=\"wp-polls-ul\">\n\t\t<li><input type=\"radio\" id=\"poll-answer-319\" name=\"poll_73\" value=\"319\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-319\">Mmm, until we hash out this subject in a distinct thread I'll reserve my vote.<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"radio\" id=\"poll-answer-317\" name=\"poll_73\" value=\"317\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-317\">Yes.<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"radio\" id=\"poll-answer-318\" name=\"poll_73\" value=\"318\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-318\">No.<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<\/ul><p style=\"text-align: center;\"><input type=\"button\" name=\"vote\" value=\"   Vote   \" class=\"Buttons\" onclick=\"poll_vote(73);\" \/><\/p><p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"#ViewPollResults\" onclick=\"poll_result(73); return false;\" title=\"View Results Of This Poll\">View Results<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n\t<\/form>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"polls-73-loading\" class=\"wp-polls-loading\"><img src=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-polls\/images\/loading.gif\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Loading ...\" title=\"Loading ...\" class=\"wp-polls-image\" \/>&nbsp;Loading ...<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each Sunday while preparing dinner I greatly enjoy listening to Nick Spitzer&#8216;s American Routes show on NPR. He plays American roots music, much of which I would not listen to without Spitzer as my guide. I don&#8217;t know what it is about the guy, but he&#8217;s one of those DJs who just sounds so nice, <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/placing-a-cap-on-da-blooz\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[105],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6727"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}