I miss music like this

[David S.]

Varg Freeborn just posted this in his FB feed. I dig it

[BehindBlueI's]

@Caballoflaco

I was listening to some Leon Bridges earlier today while working out. I like several pieces by him. Sturgill Simpson...some I like...some I really don't. He's got a wide range of styles.

His latest is pure bluegrass, which can be...divisive. I like pretty much his whole catalog. I would not have thought I'd care for a hillbilly-Japanese fusion album...but it's one of my favorites. Sturgill does skip around, though, there is no linear progression from A to B. Each album is a coherent sound, but any given album can be quite different from the others.

Shaky Graves is another who's sound is quite different depending on the song, but in a more linear fashion. I enjoy his earlier work more. Here's kind of a fun music video, though:

[NickA]

His latest is pure bluegrass, which can be...divisive. I like pretty much his whole catalog. I would not have thought I'd care for a hillbilly-Japanese fusion album...but it's one of my favorites. Sturgill does skip around, though, there is no linear progression from A to B. Each album is a coherent sound, but any given album can be quite different from the others.

That’s what I like about Sturgill, his dedication to not making the same album over and over.
I shared this video with a buddy who plays the saxophone. He was blown away by the horns and I had to tell him that’s pretty much the only album he used them on 😎
(I love this for the absolute abandon they play with. According to Sturgill he knew this would probably be the only time they got to play SNL so he told the band to leave it all on the stage)
https://youtu.be/qsrsrOB0zNQ

[blues]

Well, when I like Sturgill's sound I like it. When I don't, I don't. Not much middle ground.

This woman, every time I listen to her voice I'm mesmerized...I hear her somewhat regularly on a few of my Spotify daily lists. (Founding member of the Be Good Tanyas.)

[Lex Luthier]

Taj Mahal with Ry Cooder and Buddy Miller, Statesboro Blues, 2015 Americana Music Awards



There are some masters cuttin' heads here, if you listen.

[P30]

Took me a while to understand Blues music. But now, I think I'm getting it. My impression:

Blues is the processing of not so good (or ambivalent) inputs, which makes a better internal state and gives better outputs.*
So it's about recovering or uplifting the spirit, the heart or/and the soul.

Am I on the right track?

I've looked it up: "being blue" means "being sad", doesn't it? But if I translate "being blue" word-by-word into German, I get "blau sein" (where "blau" = blue). The second meaning of this is "being drunk". In English, how much does "being blue" imply about being drunk?

Howlin' Wolf - Down In The Bottom (stumbled upon this during my Blues research, I like it)
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Have You Ever Seen The Rain

____
* Sorry, the computer scientist in me came through. But I suppose, as a (logical) definition it pretty much nails it, doesn't it? Of course, listening to Blues music defines it even better.

[revchuck38]

@P30 - You're on the right track.

"Being blue" does equal being sad, but it's usually expressed as "to have the blues", and it's often heard in dialect as "I got the blues" as opposed to "I've got/I have the blues". I haven't heard it used to talk about "being drunk", it might be an older or regional usage, or maybe a non-American English (British/Canadian/Australian) term.

George Bernard Shaw, a British (though Irish by birth) writer of the early 20th Century, is said to have noted that "The United States and England are two great countries separated by a common language."

[blues]

@P30

Blues music is true American music born in the Mississippi Delta and the Carolina Piedmont, though there were pockets elsewhere...and moved up to Tennessee, Arkansas and Chicago. Blues and Jazz are generally my two favorite musical forms, though I have pretty wide and eclectic tastes.

See if you can get access via your music provider to the recordings on the Chess label which are widely available. There are many great smaller labels but the Chess label will get you access to many great artists...

"The blues ain't nothin' but a hole in your soul"

And in the spirit of the holidays, here's one by one of my favorite blues artists from back in the day:

[P30]

Thank you for your answers, Revchuck and Blues.

Blues, I can't play the video you just linked. YouTube only tells me "Video nicht verfügbar" (video not available). But with a little trick I found out, it's "Santa Claus", right? This is another version of the video that I could find:

[delphidoc]