this made my sunday. from Joe Schloss: The fact that people are dancing to Lightnin Hopkins music here has many interesting implications. One is that it supports an argument that Elijah Wald and others often make: In its own time, the Blues was primarly seen by the African American community as a form of popular music. Many (though certainly not all) of its folk/roots/deep associations were actually romantic myths that were retroactively imposed on it by middle-class white fans in the 1960s. Another is that you have to really respect anyone who is even capable of dancing to Hopkinss music in the first place, as he is widely known as someone with a, shall we say, fluid approach to form and meter, often resulting in 12-and-3/4-Bar blues, 14-and-3/8-Bar-Blues and so forth. I once heard John Sebastian say that one time when he was playing with Hopkins, he became increasingly frustrated by this and finally stopped playing and said, You know, a sixteen-bar blues usually has sixteen bars in it, to which Lightnin Hopkins calmly replied, Who told you that?
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 19:23:24 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015