Opinion: Make the Blues Raunchy Again
What if I told you that Blues isn't what you think it is? Gibson-owning dentists and lawyers would have you believe that the Blues is this cigar-lounge, slow and melodic genre of music that's best experienced while sitting silently. This is just one style of Blues, and it's the one I'm sick of hearing.
What if I told you that right up until the 1950s and 1960s, Blues was the raunchiest, most sexual, most grinding music there was. Reggaeton doesn't hold a candle to the raunchy stuff your great grand-parents were doing behind the barn.
What Changed?
With the cultural phenomenon that was B.B. King, Blues changed forever. It "premiumized" and rebranded itself into what we all now think of the Blues. And while that is definitely deserving, there are musicians out there, myself included, who are completely over how high-browed it's become. So today I'm going to explore the pre-B.B. Blues and hope I can convince you to help me keep that long-forgotten style alive.
What The Blues Looks Like Today
The only Blues that 19 year old Adam saw in the Madrid scene was a collection of middle-aged men playing their Les Paul Customs over a very boring, very monotonous 12-bar track. They had all heard B.B. King's 'The Thrill is Gone' and thought that was all the Blues there was. And to be honest, things haven't changed much 11 years later.
Now don't get me wrong. I love B.B. King and the style he essentially invented. The concept of a "lead guitar" probably comes from him and him alone. But you can have too much of a good thing... And I do believe we've reached that point.
Who Inspired Me to Go Back
The Blues Bug bit me shortly after I discovered Stevie Ray Vaughan and later Jimi Hendrix, the guitarists that made Blues sound exciting and just downright cool. I became obsessed with their style and energy and for two years, listened to them almost exclusively, analyzing every note and learning & performing as many songs as I could. Much of my playing style today is from this moment in my journey.
Two years in, I started looking at other Blues icons, people like Albert King, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and so on. I loved this period of discovery, there was so much to explore and so much to fall in love with. I lived and breathed this style and I turned it into a personality, a brand, and a differentiating factor. This is the stuff I still to this day love playing the most.
But you know what I kept noticing when I went out to watch live music?
This still sounds absolutely nothing like what I hear people play in venues across the world, not just Madrid, but cities in the US, UK, UAE and Asia.
The Gear Mismatch
One of the bigger reasons for this difference in sound is the level of gear that these musicians had as opposed to what people can afford today. You hear any recording of R.L Burnside and you'll immediately realise he's been using junky old guitars and junky old amps his entire life. But this is exactly what gives it its rough, scratchy tone that I myself cannot get enough of.
Blues has become too clean, too produced and frankly, too safe.
Things Are Changing... Though Not Where it Matters
Films like 'Sinners' and modern artists like The Black Keys and Gary Clark Jr are definitely bringing back energetic, cool and riffy Blues songs to the radio and streaming platforms, but for as long as I've been a performing musician, I've not seen many other people write in those styles in local stages all over the world.
The Blues suffers from what I call Radio-morphia. My entirely made up definition of this is that it's a genre that sounds very different when heard on a recording as opposed to live. The Blues was never meant to be recorded, from its beginnings, it was simply performed, its simplicity is what lets it down in the recording, but it's actually what makes it shine live.
It's tough to make a recording of a lonely guitar and singer energetic, or even groovy, but take that guy and put him in the middle of a packed room, and people will dance to it. And that is exactly what I see when I play music by Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters or Sister Rosetta Tharp, people sometimes get nasty with their grinding, it's something to behold.
If you'd like to explore this style of Blues, I highly suggest you check out all of the artists I've mentioned in this article, and if you want to try something fun on your guitar:
- Grab your guitar right now
- Tune to Open G
- Put on R.L Burnside's "See My Jumper Hanging on the Line " and see what I mean.
