Jimi Hendrix, Red House. Blues. MCA, 11060, 1994.
Here perhaps more than anywhere else on the playlist there is an obvious shift being made from one sort of music to another—although that is just what the playlist itself is about: the shifting of both form and function even within what is traditionally thought of as an exact roots tradition. This is Jimi Hendrix, taking on the 12-bar roots of rock like nobody else had done before, melding the steady, straightforward bass progression with the psychedelic guitar soloing of an aggressive new era. In this song, he takes both what means something to him (colorful, oblique, narrative-oriented lyrics and slashing solo guitar) and what is expected from his audience (psychedelia on six strings), adding both to an old, still tradition. This song is indisputably, undoubtedly the blues—how else can one become so enraptured, as you will, than by those lusting pentatonic diatribes of an individual guitar?—yet is also something daringly fresh, laden with the new experiments of new performers owing themselves to new audiences.
Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Pride and Joy. Greatest Hits. Epic, 66217, 1995.
This next song is chosen over other and perhaps comparable songs, similarly, for its changing of culture and specifically the culture of the blues. What is meant by this is that “Pride and Joy” is the first song on this playlist both written and performed by someone who is not black. And, in this sense, while the song is incredibly entertaining and an example of the virtuosity then being entered into the blues repertoire, its most consequential attribute is the fact that Stevie Ray Vaughan and others of his mold took on what was until then an art form for black artists. While with some of these performers the art consists more in imitation than in creation (especially vocally), Stevie Ray Vaughan made an original his own. He spoke to the blues world the essential truth that the blues is not fixed—musically or racially—and exists rather in the taking of prescribed form and basic feeling and then inserting yourself, no matter who you are.
Taj Mahal, Corrina. In Progress & In Motion 1965-1998. Legacy, 64919, 1998.
Taj Mahal embodies the reality that blues music and mentality are things living. His generation is neither the generation of blues originators nor that of what are considered to be blues masters, and yet still there is for him an expressive form called the blues—that fits his needs as well. “Corrina” is not his song in content, but rather his in the fact of performance. Not only can you palpably feel the contents his soul pouring into this piece—the vocal and harmonica are mesmerizingly wrapped around the beat—but his simple choice of an old song shows that lasting performance of the blues is something personal. Some might argue that Taj Mahal does not fit with the identity of creatively confronting the blues genre, that his music is mostly an exact homage to roots. But “Corrina” is proof enough that creative mastery (or rather, the improving-on of an original form) can completely please an audience, and can also mean something special and new in and of itself.
The Derek Trucks Band, Crow Jane. Songlines. Phantom, 744719, 2007.
Derek Trucks began as an expert guitarist with the Allman Brothers and others of the movement to imitate, appropriate, and repackage blues into an expression of white racial meaning. But in taking his original expertise of an instrument, similar to the mimicky expertise of Stevie Ray Vaughn, for example, and making something palatable and popular—complete with an offbeat rhythm, falsetto, and the sort of melody which is just as immediately catchy as stubbornly bluesy—he is engaging in the experimenting which has always been what makes the best blues work. This song takes from the blues tradition, building itself particularly around slide guitar, and adds the outside influences of pop and jazz-rock. What could be more authentic than an artist, of whatever race, playing on record the music he loves? The fact of production and profit makes the art no less real than that made at an outpost in the Delta, despite the fact that the music originated in the Delta and its imagery aids in creating mood.
Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf. Hoochie Coochie Man Live in Montreal. Just a Memory, 001265002, 2002.
At the same time that new artists were making their contribution to the blues life, old artists were also reasserting themselves artistically and commercially. This is an example: listen to the brash guitar solo; those moody piano runs; that slow, propulsive blues beat—and you will both be captivated and know that blues is about the combining of old (the slow, sexual mood) and the new (the guitar). Blues is, thus, something which is bendable and adaptable even among and over the lives of individual performers. Muddy Waters is, here, putting his own take on the way the genre has progressed (toward guitar solos and the live flavor of folk music revivals) and also involving himself fully in commercial performance. Montreal provided an audience, and so he went to Montreal, to play what was his but in new ways and all in the process of profiting.
