From the WSJ Opinion Archives
LEISURE & ARTS
Singin' the Blues
Facsimiles replace the original masters.
Congress has declared 2003 the "Year of the Blues." Perhaps it ought to ask the Federal Emergency Management Agency to get involved, because the blues are in trouble. To paraphrase a line from Robert Johnson's 1936 song "Cross Road Blues," the blues are sinkin' down.
This may not be the case in the juke joints of Clarksdale or Jackson, Miss., or at Kingston Mines in Chicago, where the blues is delivered with grit and fury. But when the blues tries to grab a mainstream crowd, it cleans up and cools down a genre that began as raw field songs and work hollers. Today's popular version reeks of facsimile, with theatricality replacing raw passion, and mimicry usurping originality. Rare is today's blues singer or guitarist who doesn't call to mind his biggest influences with familiar riffs first played with fire a half-century ago. Rarer still is the songwriter who can craft an inventive blues tune. It is as if imagination has been banned.
To be clear, as a musical form the blues cannot die. It is too vital to the fundamentals of jazz, rock and rhythm-and-blues. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and Prince, among others, drew upon the blues to create their sounds. A simple blues chord progression is as evocative as any musical motif, suggesting it connects with us at a primal level. Some of the lyrics crafted by the original masters are shockingly poignant. Try this, from "Cross Road Blues":
When the train, it left the stationYesterday's blues giants as varied as Bessie Smith, Lonnie Johnson, T-Bone Walker, Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker made the form their own, creating countless variations to give expression to their suffering, spirituality, and romantic triumphs and defeats. While there's always been more than a little "borrowing" among blues songwriters and musicians--in his 1995 book, "The History of the Blues," Francis Davis lists the likely sources for 11 Robert Johnson compositions--individual style was the trademark of the most notable performers. And the blues masters built on what came before: Muddy Waters took what he learned from Son House, went to Chicago, and hooked up with Little Walter, Jimmy Rogers and others to make the best electric blues. Can any of today's blues musicians say they've gone beyond what Waters did?
With two lights on behind
Well, the blue light was my blues
And the red light was my mind."
Part of the blame can be placed on a chunk of the mainstream audience. Largely white and middle-aged, many seem to believe the blues by Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, the Allman Brothers and others represent the standard by which the music should be measured. But these artists would agree that their work is different from authentic Delta or Chicago blues, which rarely has the sanded edges of mainstream rock.
For a recent marathon concert at Radio City Music Hall in New York to benefit the Blues Music Foundation and kick off the "Year of the Blues," the promoters picked a cross-section of blues, rock and R&B talent, including B.B. King, Robert Cray, Mavis Staples, Raitt and others, to pay tribute to the past masters. But while blues veterans Larry Johnson, Odetta and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown turned in moving performances, ex-Creedence Clearwater Revival leader John Fogerty's pop reading of "Midnight Special" and an appearance by Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith drew some of the biggest cheers, as if the audience felt their performances represented a tribute to the blues, not to themselves.
Which isn't to say emerging talents didn't shine or old-timers didn't shoot themselves in the foot: Macy Gray did a house-rocking tribute to Big Mama Thornton on "Hound Dog"; and James Blood Ulmer offered a ghostly reading of "Sittin' on Top of the World." Ruth Brown, who sounded wonderful at age 75, lost her place in "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean," her 1953 hit, and Buddy Guy didn't do much with the spotlight on his reading of Waters's "I Can't Be Satisfied." But the rousing applause for Ms. Gray and Ms. Brown was about the same, and Mr. Guy, a Chicago legend, was better received than Mr. Ulmer, who seemed to dig deeper than the veteran.
The blues will hold the spotlight for much of the year: The Radio City show was taped for later broadcast, and in the fall PBS will show a new film on the blues by Martin Scorsese. But despite gifted young performers like Shemekia Copeland and Alvin Youngblood Hart, and Cassandra Wilson's appealing take on the form, the best of the blues is in the past. "We don't have our new Muddy Waters or Elmore James," guitarist Warren Haynes told me recently, and he's right. Until a mainstream audience demands real creativity and passion, the past is where it's going to stay.
