Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Exploring The Greatest Blues Guitarists of All Time [Episode 232]

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Exploring The Greatest Blues Guitarists of All Time [Episode 232] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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Speaker 1: Who We're totally booked rock and Roll, I mean gotta
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Speaker 1: leave you. You're reading Little Hands says it's time to
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Speaker 1: rock and roll wreck Roll, I totally booked.
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Speaker 2: Welcome back to book don Rock the podcast for those
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Speaker 2: about to read and rock online. Bookked on rock dot com,
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Speaker 2: where every episode is there in both audio and video,
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Speaker 2: exclusive videos segments. Got a blog there. Also find out
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Speaker 2: what the latest rockbook releases are and a booked on
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Speaker 2: rock store Now t shirts, stickers, hoodies, smugs all in
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Speaker 2: the store. You can find that at Booked on rock
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Speaker 2: dot Com. Our guest is Pete Prown. He's the author
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Speaker 2: of the Ultimate Book of Blues Guitar Legends, the players
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Speaker 2: and guitars that shape the music. It features over one
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Speaker 2: hundred and fifty of the genre's greatest players and performers
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Speaker 2: from the pre war era to present, from blues pioneers
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Speaker 2: like Robert Johnson, Sunhouse, Blind, Lemon Jefferson, and Memphis Mini,
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Speaker 2: to today's hottest guitar slingers like Derek Trucks, Joe Bonamasa,
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Speaker 2: Gary Clark Junior, and Samantha Fish. Prown presents his subjects
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Speaker 2: blues defining eras and subgenres, including early acoustic and Country blues,
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Speaker 2: Chicago Blues, the British Invasion, Blues Rock, and more. Examine
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Speaker 2: specific noteworthy guitars each player made famous, as well as effects, pedals, amplifiers,
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Speaker 2: and career overviews that include the player's first person revelations
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Speaker 2: and insights, and put together a playlist to go with
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Speaker 2: this episode. Can find that in this episode's show notes. Pete,
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Speaker 2: Welcome to the podcast.
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Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Eric, appreciate it.
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Speaker 2: This book, I think is a home run for fans
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Speaker 2: of classic rock because, as you write in the introduction,
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Speaker 2: it puts an emphasis on the electric blues, which is
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Speaker 2: so integral to some of the greatest guitarists in rock history,
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Speaker 2: like Clapton, like Hendrix, Paige, Dwayne Almans, so many others.
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Speaker 2: Can you talk about why it was important for you
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Speaker 2: to focus on the electric blues.
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Speaker 1: I think it's a couple of reasons. Acoustic blues is
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Speaker 1: a huge subject. I mean, the book could have been
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Speaker 1: twice as long easily, and really it's almost like a
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Speaker 1: different creature in a sense. What I try to do
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Speaker 1: is by devoting like the first quarter of the book
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Speaker 1: to mostly acoustic blues, is to make that the gateway
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Speaker 1: to get people to listen to that music because it's incredible.
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Speaker 1: I mean journey into acoustic, early acoustic blues in the
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Speaker 1: nineteen twenties and thirties. It's amazing music. It will change
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Speaker 1: your life. But most people know the electric, they know
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Speaker 1: the blues rock, they know the classic rock. So I'm
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Speaker 1: trying to get people to explore the history of that
2:42
Speaker 1: blues guitar.
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Speaker 2: Let's go back to the beginning, When and where the
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Speaker 2: blues begin? You write quote. Most scholars agree that early
2:49
Speaker 2: sounds of the blues emerge around the eighteen nineties, long
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Speaker 2: before records in radio could document the historic moment. Can
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Speaker 2: you talk about what has been documented and how far
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Speaker 2: back can we go?
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Speaker 1: H Well, the earliest music called a blues was before records.
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Speaker 1: The records came about nineteen twenty in the door during
3:10
Speaker 1: World War One, so that's nineteen fourteen to nineteen eighteen
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Speaker 1: the teens. The earliest records before that was sheet music,
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Speaker 1: so that's what people would be getting. And around nineteen
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Speaker 1: twelve there was actually sheet music called something something blues,
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Speaker 1: Saint Louis blues. To our ears, it wouldn't sound like blues.
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Speaker 1: It sounded like rag time. The sound that we call blues,
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Speaker 1: that one four or five blues progression that finally made
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Speaker 1: it to record about nineteen twenty. So it was really
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Speaker 1: just like the war came. The records came right after
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Speaker 1: the war, seventy eight records. Radio was growing, people started
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Speaker 1: hearing all this different kind of music. That's when the blues,
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Speaker 1: for our purposes begins. But before that, I mean, we
4:01
Speaker 1: don't know that. We'll never know when the blues actually started.
4:06
Speaker 2: When can we pinpoint the start of the electric blues?
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Speaker 2: And who do we credit for the plugged in era
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Speaker 2: of the blues starting?
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Speaker 1: Well, I mean, as often the case, music follows innovations
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Speaker 1: and technology. So in the nineteen thirties is when we've
4:22
Speaker 1: got the first electrified guitars. The first ones were lapp
4:25
Speaker 1: steals because everybody was into Hawaiian guitar back then. But
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Speaker 1: then people made electric regular guitarists six string guitars and
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Speaker 1: tenor guitars. So once people plugged in, the guitar players
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Speaker 1: would say, oh wait a minute, I can now be
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Speaker 1: as loud as the horn section. So then you had
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Speaker 1: jazz and blues guitarists plugging in like this guy. If
4:47
Speaker 1: you're reading the book you'll read about George Barnes. He's
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Speaker 1: very obscure. He started playing as a teenager in the
4:54
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, but he played jazz and blues. I mean
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Speaker 1: he played as on later years. He play it on
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Speaker 1: Beach Boys records. I mean, I mean, this is a
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Speaker 1: really he's one of those figures that you just don't
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Speaker 1: know about. But the big bang of electric blues would
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Speaker 1: be te Bo and Walker. So T Bone Walker, you know,
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Speaker 1: his career sort of was taking off, taking shape during
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Speaker 1: World War Two. This is the nineteen forties. Finally, so
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Speaker 1: people are getting electric guitars, that they're getting amplifiers. T
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Speaker 1: Bone Walker finally plugs in a guitar and plays a
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Speaker 1: style of urban blues that becomes that hit Stormy Monday Blues,
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Speaker 1: which is the standard that was on the Allman Brothers record.
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Speaker 1: That's where most people know it from. But I mean,
5:42
Speaker 1: that is the big boom. That album was a huge
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Speaker 1: hit and just everybody heard it.
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Speaker 2: And there are names in this book that many may
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Speaker 2: not be aware of. They're over one hundred and fifty
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Speaker 2: guitarists covered in this book, and I want to get
5:55
Speaker 2: to just some of them as we move through the arrows,
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Speaker 2: and it's so important to start with Sonhouse. Yeah, you're right.
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Speaker 2: Quote Today, far more people remember his disciple, Robert Johnson
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Speaker 2: than House himself, but the latter's impact on Delta Blues
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Speaker 2: will never be diminished. I only found out about Sun
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Speaker 2: House maybe a handful of years ago in a Robert
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Speaker 2: Johnson documentary on Netflix. Think it was Who is Son House?
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Speaker 2: Can you talk about his importance to the blues.
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Speaker 1: Well, he's one of countless traveling bluesmen in the South.
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Speaker 1: So this is the Jim Crow South. It's very repressive
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Speaker 1: if you're an African American. It was a harsh place
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Speaker 1: to live. You were very poor. Musicians would make money
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Speaker 1: by just walking from town to town and playing on
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Speaker 1: a street corner at a barbershop, at a juke joint
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Speaker 1: for coins, pennies, maybe a dollar or two. And Son
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Speaker 1: was one of the many. But he would have been
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Speaker 1: met Robert Johnson at some point and taught him some chords,
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Speaker 1: just like just like a mentor meeting a young guitar
7:00
Speaker 1: and offering some tips. Maybe there was a lesson. I
7:03
Speaker 1: don't know what the transaction was, but he was a
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Speaker 1: mentor to Robert Johnson. But these guys just they were
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Speaker 1: just traveling around the South and doing anything to make
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Speaker 1: a living making music. But it was a really difficult life,
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Speaker 1: and Sunhouse is one of the important ones. But really
7:22
Speaker 1: what's also important is that his career sort of fizzled
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Speaker 1: out by the thirties, but then he was rediscovered almost
7:28
Speaker 1: thirty years later in the nineteen sixties. So as an
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Speaker 1: old man, he was now brought back put in front
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Speaker 1: of these college kid audiences and festivals of the nineteen sixties,
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Speaker 1: and that's when people finally heard about Sunhouse.
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Speaker 2: Which is what happened with some more of these artists.
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Speaker 2: Years later they're appreciated, like John Lee Hooker or Muddy Waters.
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Speaker 2: We'll get to those guys too. But the urban legend
7:52
Speaker 2: of Robert Johnson, he sold his soul to the devil
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Speaker 2: and all of a sudden he plays guitar. It was Sunhouse, right,
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Speaker 2: wasn't he. Robt Johnson went away for a while and
8:02
Speaker 2: was with Somenhouse during that time.
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Speaker 1: Possible, It's it's really hard to document anything back then.
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Speaker 1: I read very detailed histories of Robert Johnson and they
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Speaker 1: all say, we don't have any documentation because he's just
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Speaker 1: traveling from place to place. There's no there's no receipts,
8:23
Speaker 1: there's no bills, there's no letters, there's there's nothing.
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Speaker 2: I mean, there's only one photo or two photos of
8:29
Speaker 2: them photos.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's a mystery and we'll we'll probably never
8:33
Speaker 1: know what really happened.
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Speaker 2: And that lends to the myth of Robert Johnson.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think the myth of Robert Johnson
8:40
Speaker 1: is like the myth of Eric Clapton. Because Clapton, you know,
8:43
Speaker 1: quit the Yardbirds and then came back with John Mayle
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Speaker 1: as this monster guitar player. I think Robert Johnson also
8:49
Speaker 1: took some time off to woodshed and got really good,
8:53
Speaker 1: and then that's what happened. I mean, it's a better
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Speaker 1: story to say you soldier sold to the.
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Speaker 2: Devil rights, Yeah, yeah, mixed for a better story. Robert
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Speaker 2: Johnson's story is amazing just on its own, without all
9:05
Speaker 2: of that, just the things that he did and the sounds,
9:07
Speaker 2: because it's true. Eric Clapton talked about how when you
9:11
Speaker 2: listen to him it almost sounds like there are two
9:13
Speaker 2: people playing guitar. The way the things that he was
9:16
Speaker 2: doing were way ahead of his time. And your book
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Speaker 2: gets to what you say is the heart of the matter,
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Speaker 2: which is the music he recorded while he's alive. You
9:23
Speaker 2: write quote, the music is self is spartan, but the
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Speaker 2: overall vocal and guitar delivery is complex and masterful. Can
9:29
Speaker 2: you explain on that. Maybe a few songs that stand
9:32
Speaker 2: out to you as a great example, great examples of
9:35
Speaker 2: his skills.
9:36
Speaker 1: I'll listen to like Sweet Home Chicago, that's one of
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Speaker 1: the classics. Are Crossroads because he's playing the fingerstyle guitar
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Speaker 1: with a slide. He's keeping the bass with his thumb,
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Speaker 1: he's playing some chords with his fingers, he's doing lead
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Speaker 1: licks with the slide, and he's singing and most importantly,
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Speaker 1: his timing is perfect. He really like that he's a
10:02
Speaker 1: one man band doing all these different parts and they're
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Speaker 1: all working together to build this incredible piece of music.
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Speaker 1: So many musicians just don't have that great sense of time.
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Speaker 1: But I mean, he was just he felt the whole thing,
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Speaker 1: the chords, the bass, the vocals, the slide guitar. I mean,
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Speaker 1: how to put that all together. Of a man who
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Speaker 1: was very poor in the nineteen thirties and somehow put
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Speaker 1: this all together and gave us this gift.
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Speaker 2: He also could have been an engineer, at least if
10:35
Speaker 2: the stories are true about him looking for the right sound.
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Speaker 2: He's in a certain corner of the room is where
10:41
Speaker 2: he wanted to be to get the right the right echo,
10:44
Speaker 2: and et cetera, et cetera. Are those stories true, It makes.
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Speaker 1: Good sense because even today in a recording studio, you know,
10:55
Speaker 1: the engineer will be talking about the corners they have
10:59
Speaker 1: reflectors and and how standing waves can sit in a corner.
11:03
Speaker 1: So for him to be moving around to corners shows
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Speaker 1: that he really understood sound and music, Like he could
11:10
Speaker 1: understand that he's going to sound way better over here
11:13
Speaker 1: than over there. And he's processing this in an era
11:17
Speaker 1: of pretty limited technology. I mean, I mean how much.
11:22
Speaker 1: I mean he would have never had an experience with
11:24
Speaker 1: a recorder before, or not many. I mean there was
11:27
Speaker 1: these are field recorders they were using, so this is
11:30
Speaker 1: early stuff.
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Speaker 2: You can hear the hissing of the tape when you
11:34
Speaker 2: listen to those songs.
11:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there was no magazines, there was no internet,
11:38
Speaker 1: there was no nothing. You just you know, might have
11:41
Speaker 1: seen one. But he just naturally intuitively understood sound and music.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like he's the babe Ruth of blues.
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Speaker 2: He signed the original guy right ahead.
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Speaker 1: But Robert Johnson, like I said in the book, he's
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Speaker 1: also He's not the end, he's the beginning. He's the
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Speaker 1: gay way to go into acoustic blues and learn about
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Speaker 1: Sunhouse and Buckle White and Mississippi John Hurd and oh
12:08
Speaker 1: you know, you know Memphis Mini. I mean, there's so
12:11
Speaker 1: much music there.
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Speaker 2: Yes, those are the Babe Ruths, right, yes, and Robert's
12:16
Speaker 2: the Mickey Mantle. Yeah, there you go. T bone Walker,
12:20
Speaker 2: his story is interesting. You write quote for an artist
12:22
Speaker 2: as historically significant as T bone Walker, it's surprising how
12:26
Speaker 2: few modern guitarists remember his impact. So talk about his
12:29
Speaker 2: impact on the blues. You did mention it already, but
12:31
Speaker 2: maybe expand on that a little bit more.
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Speaker 1: Well, he was, I mean, he literally was the big
12:36
Speaker 1: bang of electric blues music. I mean, he's not the first.
12:40
Speaker 1: There's never a first. As a historian, you sort of
12:43
Speaker 1: just don't even go to the first because it doesn't
12:45
Speaker 1: really exist. But he's the guy who had the hit
12:48
Speaker 1: record at a time when radio was bursting, records were
12:52
Speaker 1: all over the place, and everybody who was into music
12:55
Speaker 1: electric music back then heard this incredible sound, and he
12:59
Speaker 1: was a star for ten fifteen years, and then his
13:03
Speaker 1: career waned in the sixties, and then you know, then
13:07
Speaker 1: came the Claptains and the Becks and the Hendrixes, and
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Speaker 1: then nobody really remembers t bone Walker anymore. If you
13:14
Speaker 1: just say Stormy Monday, they'll say, oh, yeah, that Alman
13:17
Speaker 1: Brothers saw him. But he was really that guy who
13:20
Speaker 1: lit the fuse.
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Speaker 2: By the way, these blues artists have the greatest names ever,
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Speaker 2: t bone Walker, Muddy Waters. I mean, yeah, the coolest names.
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Speaker 1: I did go into that a little bit in the book, right, Yeah,
13:31
Speaker 1: they just nicknames.
13:32
Speaker 2: Right, let's get into Muddy Waters, one of the essential
13:35
Speaker 2: architects of the Chicago sound. It was a truck driver
13:39
Speaker 2: by day and musician by night. You say he represents
13:42
Speaker 2: a straight line between acoustic delta and post war electric styles.
13:45
Speaker 2: He's among the first to play bottleneck on the electric guitar,
13:48
Speaker 2: which is a fascinating topic. You devote a chapter to
13:52
Speaker 2: the bottleneck guitar. You talk about how it can be
13:55
Speaker 2: daunting at first when trying to understand it, When did
13:58
Speaker 2: this style originate, and can talk about the different variations
14:00
Speaker 2: that there are.
14:02
Speaker 1: Well, again, we don't know when it first came out.
14:06
Speaker 1: I mean, like I said earlier, the Hawaiian guitar was
14:10
Speaker 1: very popular during World War One. Wine guitar is basically
14:14
Speaker 1: an acoustic guitar or lap steel sitting on your lap,
14:17
Speaker 1: flat on your lap and you would have a slide
14:20
Speaker 1: in one hand and you'd be picking with the other
14:21
Speaker 1: hand and playing slide guitar. So everybody would have heard
14:25
Speaker 1: of That was a really big guitar fad. So it's
14:29
Speaker 1: hard to know if that then jumped to the blues
14:31
Speaker 1: and Muddy picked it up that way, But there's a
14:35
Speaker 1: there's a one of the blues men I talked about
14:37
Speaker 1: there was talking about how he got his start playing
14:41
Speaker 1: slide using a beef bone. You know, you could use anything.
14:44
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a bottle neck. Bottleneck guitar is
14:47
Speaker 1: literally like a wine bottle and they cut off the top,
14:50
Speaker 1: the skinny part and that's their slide. Or a piece
14:53
Speaker 1: of pipe, or a beef bone.
14:57
Speaker 2: Or a medicine bottle, right, Duyne, All and right? Greg
15:00
Speaker 2: didn't Greg, Yeah, Dwayne was sick. Greg went out and
15:04
Speaker 2: got on some of the medication or whatever, and the
15:06
Speaker 2: bottle he.
15:07
Speaker 1: Used, or a solid piece of metal a bar, you know,
15:11
Speaker 1: but I mean it evolved, but once it got to
15:14
Speaker 1: the blues, then the guitar player could use it to
15:18
Speaker 1: convey the human voice in guitar form, because a slide
15:24
Speaker 1: is going to have those melismas. Milisma is the note
15:27
Speaker 1: that goes up and down like a gospel singer, and
15:31
Speaker 1: they could do that on the guitar now with a
15:32
Speaker 1: slide because it was perfectly smooth, but they run it
15:35
Speaker 1: up and down the strings. So it's just a natural
15:38
Speaker 1: fit for blues music.
15:40
Speaker 2: This is subjective, but many say of the current era guys,
15:43
Speaker 2: Derek Trucks might be the best the slide guitar, but
15:46
Speaker 2: there are a lot of good ones.
15:47
Speaker 1: There's a lot of good ones. I mean, I tend
15:49
Speaker 1: to think of Derek as or Jimmy Hendrix today.
15:52
Speaker 2: He is he is.
15:54
Speaker 1: He's not just a great, He's taken it to the
15:57
Speaker 1: level of a mozart of slide guitar are It's just
16:00
Speaker 1: not really even fathomable what he does. But then you
16:05
Speaker 1: have a zillion right great slide players today.
16:08
Speaker 2: He has a similar personality to Hendricks. I think two
16:13
Speaker 2: very humble, yes, quiet, quiet, right, but he goes out
16:17
Speaker 2: there and plays and you're just blown away by he was.
16:20
Speaker 2: I think Greg Allman saw him when he was like
16:23
Speaker 2: sixteen or something.
16:24
Speaker 1: Oh, there's a video of Derek when he's twelve years
16:30
Speaker 1: old seeing that one. That's a good one. Yeah, he's
16:33
Speaker 1: playing with a band of adults, and it's pretty.
16:38
Speaker 2: Book on podcast. We'll be back after this.
16:41
Speaker 1: When when impatience patients absence makes the heart grow fonder.
16:50
Speaker 2: Let's go to voices now. Holland Wolf maybe the greatest
16:53
Speaker 2: voice in blues history. An interesting common in the book
16:56
Speaker 2: I want to ask you about. You say, quote, you
16:58
Speaker 2: may not equate the shock rock of Alice Cooper and
17:01
Speaker 2: Ozzy Osbourne to the eerie blues of Howland Wolf, but
17:04
Speaker 2: that connection is direct and palpable. Ozzie just got into
17:07
Speaker 2: the rock and roll of fame. Finally, can expand on
17:11
Speaker 2: that statement.
17:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean who created you know, this kind of
17:16
Speaker 1: menacing evil music, you know, dark evil. It came out
17:20
Speaker 1: of the blues and Howland Wolf. You know, as a
17:23
Speaker 1: as a performer, he was like, Okay, my act, my
17:27
Speaker 1: show is going to be that I'm gonna be a
17:28
Speaker 1: kind of a scary guy and I've got this incredible voice.
17:32
Speaker 1: And he wrote these songs and deliver this this voice.
17:36
Speaker 1: So say you are a young Ozzie or a Clapton
17:39
Speaker 1: or Jimmy Page and you put on this old record
17:42
Speaker 1: and you heard this voice, it would scare the heck
17:45
Speaker 1: out of you. And you know a few years later
17:48
Speaker 1: that that sound wove its way into these louder and
17:52
Speaker 1: louder guitar amps and louder bands. So it really came
17:56
Speaker 1: right out of the blues. I also jazz Obricht, from
18:02
Speaker 1: who he was the one of the editors of A
18:03
Speaker 1: Guitar Player magazine, had a lot to do with helping
18:06
Speaker 1: me with the book and giving me advice and good quotes.
18:09
Speaker 1: But he's the one who pointed out that Muddy Waters
18:13
Speaker 1: band in the nineteen fifties was a really loud band.
18:19
Speaker 1: So we don't really think of loud until, like you know,
18:23
Speaker 1: Hendrickson Cream and Zeppelin, but you know, people like Howland
18:28
Speaker 1: Wolf and Muddy Waters, they were experimenting with really loud
18:31
Speaker 1: music and screaming vocals fifteen years earlier.
18:35
Speaker 2: Interesting. Pete Brown is our guests. He's the author of
18:39
Speaker 2: the ultimate book of Blues Guitar Legends, the players and
18:42
Speaker 2: guitars that shape the music. Muddy Waters Fantasy saying the
18:45
Speaker 2: blues had a baby and they named it rock and roll.
18:48
Speaker 2: At some point in the fifties is when we see
18:50
Speaker 2: the intersection of blues and rock and roll.
18:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think of rock music as being sort
18:58
Speaker 1: of this confluence of blues, country, and then pop and
19:03
Speaker 1: you know, just the regular mainstream stuff. So it's right
19:05
Speaker 1: there at the beginning. And you had someone like Bo
19:08
Speaker 1: Diddley who was a blues guitar player. I mean he
19:10
Speaker 1: played on Chess records, and he was up from the
19:14
Speaker 1: blues world. So it's it's one of the foundations. You
19:18
Speaker 1: didn't really hear it as as clearly because there's a
19:23
Speaker 1: lot of country music in early rock and roll. Even
19:25
Speaker 1: Chuck Berry Maybelene that's like a country tone, but the
19:29
Speaker 1: chords are blues. We had another song called Wee Wee Hours,
19:33
Speaker 1: which was like a real blues So it's just part
19:36
Speaker 1: of the foundation of the house we call rock and roll.
19:39
Speaker 2: Elvis right, yeah, oh sure.
19:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I mean he took you know, hound Dog,
19:47
Speaker 1: Big Mama Thorne's Houndog, and he did it his way
19:50
Speaker 1: and changed the blues into rock and roll and changed history.
19:55
Speaker 2: Yeah. In the book, he asked was sister Rosetta Thorpe
19:58
Speaker 2: a blues guitarist or gospel, jazz, boogie woogie and rock
20:02
Speaker 2: and roll. The answer is all of the above.
20:04
Speaker 1: She does, and she really could do it all. And
20:08
Speaker 1: she was probably known in her time more as a
20:10
Speaker 1: gospel singer because that back then she would have been
20:13
Speaker 1: a gospel singer today that we could hear so many
20:17
Speaker 1: things and just so few women electric guitar players. Back then.
20:21
Speaker 1: There were some, and they were important, but not like
20:25
Speaker 1: I mean, she was wailing on the guitar and that
20:27
Speaker 1: was that's just just unprecedented.
20:31
Speaker 2: I'm wearing my grateful ed shirt here. What do you
20:33
Speaker 2: think of Jerry as a blues guitarist?
20:36
Speaker 1: I do think of him as a blues player.
20:37
Speaker 2: She dabbled in it from time. Red Rooster was the
20:40
Speaker 2: song they played often, which is a blues song.
20:42
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, Jerry to me is like you know,
20:46
Speaker 1: he was like a sponge. He just soaked up every
20:48
Speaker 1: kind of American music and put it into the Grateful
20:51
Speaker 1: Dead and his own stuff. And so I'm always hearing
20:55
Speaker 1: like a little blues here, little jazz there, little jug
20:58
Speaker 1: band over there, his country, his vocal. I mean, he's
21:01
Speaker 1: just like that I mean, and there are those people
21:04
Speaker 1: in who are just musical chameleons.
21:07
Speaker 2: You're right, Yeah, a sponge for sure.
21:09
Speaker 1: In the book I talked about Clarence Gatemouth Brown, who
21:12
Speaker 1: was one of the early electric guitar players. But he
21:15
Speaker 1: played guitar, fiddle, mandolin, drums, he played blues, he played country,
21:21
Speaker 1: he played R and B. I mean, just like Jerry,
21:24
Speaker 1: just a sponge, just incredible.
21:27
Speaker 2: Let's get to my favorite blues artist, which is John
21:29
Speaker 2: Lee Hooker. Okay, and I remember working at the mall
21:35
Speaker 2: years ago, and next door was one of the record
21:38
Speaker 2: stores there, and in the bargain bin they have all
21:40
Speaker 2: those cassettes for two three dollars, and there was John
21:43
Speaker 2: Lee Hooker. And I had been interning at a radio station,
21:46
Speaker 2: a rock station in New Having, Connecticut that had a
21:48
Speaker 2: blue show, and I remember one of the DJs there
21:51
Speaker 2: gave me a compilation of blue songs. One of them
21:53
Speaker 2: was No Shoes by John Ley Hooker. Now this is
21:56
Speaker 2: a song, not one of his more famous ones. I
21:59
Speaker 2: guess blew me Away, right, blew me away. The voice
22:03
Speaker 2: the way he played, like you said, it's like hypnotic.
22:08
Speaker 2: I can't recall the word that you used to describe.
22:10
Speaker 2: But yeah, you lead the chapter by saying quote. They say,
22:14
Speaker 2: success isn't as an entertainer is all about timing, and
22:18
Speaker 2: John Lee Hooker's couldn't have been any better. So talk
22:20
Speaker 2: about the timing.
22:22
Speaker 1: Because he was part of that very first wave of
22:25
Speaker 1: blued guitar players. So his records that came out in
22:29
Speaker 1: the late nineteen forties, like Crawling Kingsnake, these are really
22:35
Speaker 1: really important early electric blues. But then, of course his
22:39
Speaker 1: career sort of meandered in the fifties. But then when
22:42
Speaker 1: that whole folk boom came in the nineteen sixties, there
22:46
Speaker 1: was John Lee Hooker. He was only about forty years old.
22:48
Speaker 1: At forty five years old, so relatively young man, and
22:53
Speaker 1: his career just took off and for the rest of
22:55
Speaker 1: his life he was celebrated as one of the not
22:58
Speaker 1: only a great contemporary blues artist, but he had roots
23:03
Speaker 1: back to Mississippi, and that's so important for that kind
23:06
Speaker 1: of droning menacing hill country blues. Even though he wasn't
23:11
Speaker 1: from the hill country, he had that rhythm, you know,
23:14
Speaker 1: that is a part of that style.
23:17
Speaker 2: In the nineties too, that was when he had that
23:21
Speaker 2: album that he put out with I think various guitarists, Yeah,
23:24
Speaker 2: Carlos Santano, everybody. Yeah, was on the single and he
23:28
Speaker 2: had his resurgence.
23:29
Speaker 1: The Healer, The Healer.
23:31
Speaker 2: Yes. Chapter seven takes us into the British blues era.
23:35
Speaker 2: A two part question here for you, how important is
23:38
Speaker 2: Big Bill Brunsey to the genre? And even more so,
23:40
Speaker 2: how important is the meeting of Keith Richards and Micjagger
23:44
Speaker 2: important to the British blues era.
23:46
Speaker 1: Well, Bill Brunsey, he's just kind of a curious story
23:50
Speaker 1: because in America he's not very well known, but he
23:54
Speaker 1: was one of the earliest American bluesmen to go travel
23:57
Speaker 1: and perform in the UK. He developed the huge following there,
24:02
Speaker 1: so over in Great Britain he was a huge star.
24:07
Speaker 1: Not that many people know him in Chicago, even though
24:09
Speaker 1: he's an early Chicago bluesman. And then he died relatively young.
24:13
Speaker 1: He died in the fifties, so then you know his career.
24:17
Speaker 1: You know, it was short, it was influential, but it
24:21
Speaker 1: was both mostly on those young white British guitar players
24:25
Speaker 1: who were coming up and learning rock but then discovering.
24:28
Speaker 2: Blues, which leads us to Keith and Mick right there
24:31
Speaker 2: on a train together.
24:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, they in each other. Mick has some albums. He
24:36
Speaker 1: has a Muddy Waters album, he has a Chuck Berry album,
24:39
Speaker 1: and Keith notices it and they start talking about it,
24:43
Speaker 1: and you know, in a sense that early Rolling Stone
24:46
Speaker 1: Sounds is sort of like this meeting of Chuck Berry
24:49
Speaker 1: music and Muddy Waters music. It has a little bit
24:52
Speaker 1: of that both sort of just it's got some jangle
24:56
Speaker 1: and some blues. But that's where that Stone sound began.
25:00
Speaker 2: And you do spend some time on the duel of
25:04
Speaker 2: Keith Richards and Brian Jones, but also Keith Richards and
25:08
Speaker 2: Mick Taylor. Yeah, two interesting combinations. What if you had
25:14
Speaker 2: a choice, if you had to choose one of the two,
25:16
Speaker 2: would you have a preference?
25:18
Speaker 1: I mean, I love Mick Taylor, I mean because he's
25:21
Speaker 1: part of that that Claptain, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, British
25:26
Speaker 1: guitar tradition. I mean, the thing about Brian Jones is
25:30
Speaker 1: that he's important because he's sort of pre Eric Clapton,
25:33
Speaker 1: so he had never he was not that kind of
25:36
Speaker 1: guitar player. He could experiment and play blues and he
25:40
Speaker 1: played slide, which is probably his most important contribution. And
25:44
Speaker 1: he named the Stones, but I mean it's they're just
25:48
Speaker 1: apples and orange right right.
25:50
Speaker 2: Credit to Mick two on the on the Harmonica that
25:52
Speaker 2: Keith Richards said that in his book, He's like, he's
25:54
Speaker 2: probably the best I've ever heard. Yeah, And they put
25:58
Speaker 2: out that All Blues Out six years ago, which was solid.
26:03
Speaker 1: Yeah.
26:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a huge Stones fan. Stuck Clapton. Your chapter
26:07
Speaker 2: on near Clapton fascinating. He thought Cream would be a
26:10
Speaker 2: flat out blues trio, but Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce
26:15
Speaker 2: not so they're a little bit of everything. Can you
26:17
Speaker 2: talk about how Clapton was somehow able to still, however,
26:20
Speaker 2: infuse the blues into a mix of jazz and British
26:23
Speaker 2: pop and pull it off, you know, because that's not
26:26
Speaker 2: easy to do. And then some of the groundbreaking things
26:28
Speaker 2: he does with the reverb and the wildwa pedal.
26:31
Speaker 1: I mean, he is just I mean, I just reviewed
26:33
Speaker 1: his new album, so this his career has been going
26:36
Speaker 1: for sixty years. His instincts are amazing. He just knows
26:41
Speaker 1: sort of when to ride the moment. And he was like, Okay,
26:44
Speaker 1: I'm with these two incredible musicians, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker,
26:48
Speaker 1: They're playing all around me, all over me. I'm not
26:51
Speaker 1: gonna be my buddy guy like blues man. But you
26:53
Speaker 1: know what, this is the moment the fans are reacting.
26:57
Speaker 1: We got a little bit of a following, and he
26:59
Speaker 1: knows I'm gonna write this for a while and I'm
27:01
Speaker 1: gonna make myself fit in. And that is just when
27:05
Speaker 1: that cross pollination of like Baker and Bruce's jazz and
27:09
Speaker 1: Eric's blues into this era of psychedelic rock happen. It's
27:14
Speaker 1: just there's nothing. You can't predict it. You can't catch
27:17
Speaker 1: that lightning in a bottle. It just happened at that
27:20
Speaker 1: one moment. And Clapton was you know that again, that intuition.
27:24
Speaker 1: He's like, this is where I need to be right now.
27:27
Speaker 2: You mentioned jazz Obreckton. I'm a huge van Halen fan,
27:30
Speaker 2: and Eddie his guy was clapped in cream Era and
27:33
Speaker 2: Vaniel that was this guy.
27:35
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, I mean and I can hear it. I
27:39
Speaker 1: can really hear it in van Halen's playing. It's not
27:41
Speaker 1: a direct thing. You're not gonna hear any Clapton licks,
27:43
Speaker 1: but just the way he's speaking with authority through the
27:47
Speaker 1: guitar that's Clapton. Clapton has this authority when he plays
27:51
Speaker 1: you stop and listen. And Van Halen's like, I'm gonna
27:54
Speaker 1: play in my style, but when I play, you're gonna listen.
27:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, when it's loved. The guitar solo on there is
28:00
Speaker 2: probably the most clapped in esque. Yeah solo from Eddie
28:03
Speaker 2: and Alex's new book is out and he was telling
28:06
Speaker 2: a story of how they went to see Derek and
28:07
Speaker 2: the Dominoes and Eddie's got the binoculars trying to study
28:10
Speaker 2: what Eric Clapp is doing. But he said he was
28:12
Speaker 2: a little disappointed because he was by that time already
28:15
Speaker 2: playing differently than than he was playing with Cream.
28:18
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, he was probably on substances because that
28:21
Speaker 1: would have built pas Derek and the Domino's tour. There
28:24
Speaker 1: was only like one tour of the United States, so
28:27
Speaker 1: it probably would have been a little less than he
28:30
Speaker 1: had hoped booked.
28:32
Speaker 2: On podcast, We'll be back after this.
28:35
Speaker 1: Heavy. There's that word again, heavy? Why are think so heavy?
28:38
Speaker 1: In the future? Is there a probably ears gravitational.
28:40
Speaker 2: Pull Another well known guitarist, guy by the name of
28:45
Speaker 2: Jimmy Hendrix. I had another interesting figure there. There were
28:48
Speaker 2: those he never heard of me, But there were those
28:53
Speaker 2: and maybe some still today who will question whether he
28:55
Speaker 2: was a blues guitarist or not. His bassist Billy Cox
28:58
Speaker 2: had a great quote about that you included in your book.
29:02
Speaker 2: Can you talk about what Billy had to say and
29:05
Speaker 2: what's your opinion of Hendricks as a blues guitarist.
29:08
Speaker 1: Well, I would say Hendrix is a blues guitarist. He
29:12
Speaker 1: is a stone cold blues guitarist. I mean that is
29:15
Speaker 1: where he's coming from, blues, rhythm and blues, which is
29:20
Speaker 1: James Brown and motown and stacks and rock and roll.
29:25
Speaker 1: But I mean the blues isn't everything he does. I
29:28
Speaker 1: mean there's little pastiches of jazz flavors down again. But
29:33
Speaker 1: some people speculate that he would have become a jazz
29:36
Speaker 1: fusion guitarist later. I'm not so sure about that, because
29:39
Speaker 1: the blues is really what Hendrix is about, and that's
29:42
Speaker 1: what he listened to. That was his record collection.
29:45
Speaker 2: Here's the quote from Billy Cox to jazz Obrick. By
29:49
Speaker 2: the way, you can call Jimmy Hendricks whatever you like,
29:52
Speaker 2: but he was a blues master. You run that type
29:55
Speaker 2: of playing through a fuzz face and a loudamp and
29:57
Speaker 2: what do you have? You have something that somebody may
30:00
Speaker 2: interpret as something else, but it's really nothing but blues.
30:04
Speaker 2: Since he was so hot on guitar, people said, wait
30:06
Speaker 2: a minute, we've never heard blues played like this, But
30:08
Speaker 2: that's what it was. Just about everything Jimmy and I
30:10
Speaker 2: recorded was blues. Everything was right from the soil, right
30:13
Speaker 2: from the depth of mankind. Blues was part of our being. Yes,
30:19
Speaker 2: great quote.
30:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like Jimmy was also there taking the blues
30:24
Speaker 1: at the very dawn of funk, I mean, and Jimmy
30:29
Speaker 1: was funk before nobody knew what that word meant. Purple
30:32
Speaker 1: Hayes is funky and that's nineteen sixty seven. So you
30:36
Speaker 1: got blues, you got funk, you got psychedelia, all happening
30:40
Speaker 1: in this one song before anybody had even figured it out.
30:45
Speaker 1: Jimmy was already there.
30:47
Speaker 2: It's amazing in such a short time, and then he's gone.
30:51
Speaker 2: The big guitarists of the seventies like Jeff Back, Jimmy Page,
30:55
Speaker 2: Keith Richards, Alvin Lee of ten years after. Yeah, but
30:59
Speaker 2: it's Jimmy your credit with introducing the blues to many teens.
31:02
Speaker 2: Because Zepplin was so popular. Unlike Eric Clapton or Peter Green,
31:06
Speaker 2: Page was not solely a blues influence player. But when
31:09
Speaker 2: he played the blues, he played it well and you
31:12
Speaker 2: can hear it on those Zeppelin albums. Can you talk
31:14
Speaker 2: about some of the experimenting that he did on those
31:16
Speaker 2: Zeppelin albums, A good example being you Shook Me?
31:20
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean he, like Hendrix, he played the blues
31:23
Speaker 1: through a fuzzbox through a loud amp, so it kind
31:27
Speaker 1: of sounded like some louder psychedelic band or acid rock band.
31:32
Speaker 1: But really he was just taking the blues and adapting
31:35
Speaker 1: it to the sonics. The technology. We talked about that earlier,
31:38
Speaker 1: because now people could have Marshall stacks. You know, who knows.
31:44
Speaker 1: If t boene Walker could have had a Marshall stack
31:46
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty seven, the world might be different. But
31:50
Speaker 1: Jimmy Page had that technology in nineteen sixty nine, and
31:54
Speaker 1: that's why it sounded so amazing. I remember when I
31:57
Speaker 1: was fourteen years old or so, I mean, I had
32:00
Speaker 1: just gotten Led Zeppelin two from my brother, I stole
32:03
Speaker 1: it from him and listening to you know, Jimmy playing
32:09
Speaker 1: slide guitar, but I knew it was blues and it really,
32:13
Speaker 1: really it shook me to quote the song literally literally
32:18
Speaker 1: shook me like like, oh my god, this is this
32:20
Speaker 1: is what blues guitar sounds like. And Jimmy Page opened
32:23
Speaker 1: that door.
32:25
Speaker 2: I want to ask you about the we did mention
32:28
Speaker 2: Keith Richards with Mick Taylor, Keith Richards with Brian Jones.
32:30
Speaker 2: I want to get into that blues duo area, like
32:34
Speaker 2: doing Almond and Dicky Batts. You know that can't be
32:39
Speaker 2: so easy to pull off. Like Almond and Bets proved
32:43
Speaker 2: to be a super charge duo, represented a paradigm shift
32:46
Speaker 2: and blues informed guitar and ensemble playing. That's what you
32:50
Speaker 2: write the book. But how difficult is it to pull
32:52
Speaker 2: something like that off? Like I would think, this isn't
32:55
Speaker 2: something you don't just throw a few guitars together and yeah,
32:58
Speaker 2: everything's going to work out. They kind of have to
33:00
Speaker 2: share the same musical brain or they got to work
33:02
Speaker 2: playoff of each other and play a lot together.
33:04
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I mean you had two very talented
33:08
Speaker 1: guitar players. I mean both really good rhythm guitarists. We
33:12
Speaker 1: talk about guitar solos a lot. They're both great rhythm guitarists,
33:16
Speaker 1: so they can get that bass going. I mean, I'm
33:19
Speaker 1: talking about the rhythm track of a song, and just
33:23
Speaker 1: listening to those two guys go back and forth on
33:25
Speaker 1: rhythm guitar is the perfect platform for their solos. Dicky
33:30
Speaker 1: could play blues, rock, country, jazzy stuff, and Dwayne had
33:36
Speaker 1: played solo, he had played blues, and so they're just
33:40
Speaker 1: such gifted musicians and pioneers in their era that they
33:45
Speaker 1: just were able as great musicians who could play in
33:48
Speaker 1: an ensemble really well, playing in an incredible band. They
33:52
Speaker 1: changed history because of just that innate talent and you know,
33:57
Speaker 1: the love of the music.
33:58
Speaker 2: But having that much talented, I would think you got
33:59
Speaker 2: to learn to step back a little bit, let the
34:01
Speaker 2: other guy do his thing. There's got to be some
34:03
Speaker 2: interplay there.
34:04
Speaker 1: Otherwise that's listening to like they would have been listening
34:07
Speaker 1: to John Coltrane records. So they say, okay, in jazz,
34:10
Speaker 1: you play the head and then everybody takes their solo.
34:13
Speaker 1: Then you go back to the head and then you're done.
34:16
Speaker 1: So everybody knew their job and you definitely have to
34:19
Speaker 1: lay back. As you said.
34:22
Speaker 2: Podcast, we'll be back after this. There was a blues
34:30
Speaker 2: revival in the eighties, and for that we have to
34:32
Speaker 2: go to Stevie Ray vaughan. Can you talk about what
34:35
Speaker 2: made him so impactful? Why was he able to connect
34:38
Speaker 2: with so many fans who may not have been into
34:41
Speaker 2: the blues all that much prior.
34:42
Speaker 1: Well, again, I'm going to go back to John Lee
34:44
Speaker 1: Hooker and timing, and people in the entertainment business will
34:48
Speaker 1: often say it's really all about timing. So it's the
34:51
Speaker 1: early eighties. You've got new wave music, You've got drum
34:55
Speaker 1: machines and synthesizers, and Michael Jackson and David Bowie puts
35:00
Speaker 1: out this let's dance song and it's kind of an
35:03
Speaker 1: electronic dance song on the one hand, but then it's
35:06
Speaker 1: got this smoking blues guitar solo in the middle, and
35:08
Speaker 1: you're like, well, wait a minute, how does that work?
35:11
Speaker 1: And moreover, this guitar player is really hot, and that
35:17
Speaker 1: with his first album coming out with the press and
35:20
Speaker 1: the hype, the stones were part of the pushing Stevie
35:24
Speaker 1: Ray out. I mean, just like it was just like
35:27
Speaker 1: an explosion, I mean, and it was just the opposite
35:31
Speaker 1: of what was hot, and you know, everybody's doing this
35:34
Speaker 1: drum machine thing. And this synthesizers, and here's a guy
35:37
Speaker 1: coming out with the most earthy guitar sound you can imagine.
35:41
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people are like, thank goodness,
35:44
Speaker 1: they don't have to listen to drum machines all day.
35:46
Speaker 2: And FM rock radio was still big in the eighties,
35:48
Speaker 2: so he was getting a lot of play on FM
35:50
Speaker 2: rock radio. I know here in Connecticut used to hear
35:52
Speaker 2: him all the time. That's why I became a fan.
35:54
Speaker 2: W PLR, Yeah, you know that's that's the station. Yeah, okay,
36:01
Speaker 2: I'm from Orange, Oh, so you know w p l R. Yeah,
36:05
Speaker 2: I was. I was interning there and that's where Mike
36:09
Speaker 2: Lapatino had the Blue Show and he said, here, you
36:11
Speaker 2: want some of these CDs, go ahead take him. They
36:13
Speaker 2: were Caulation, I mean southern too, Connecticut, right between Hartford
36:17
Speaker 2: and New Haven. Okay, so worked at I ninety five.
36:22
Speaker 2: May be familiar with that rock station Infield County. Was
36:25
Speaker 2: there for many many years, Yeah, many many years. Stevie
36:29
Speaker 2: ray Vaughan. What fascinates me about his style? He played
36:34
Speaker 2: so many notes, but so clearly, like crystal clear, you
36:38
Speaker 2: can hear everything, everything his tone right, it was just amazing.
36:43
Speaker 2: Now his brother, pretty damn good guitars too. You do
36:47
Speaker 2: cover Jimmy Vaughan in the book.
36:48
Speaker 1: Right, but they have very different techniques, right, So, I
36:54
Speaker 1: mean Stevie Rayvaughan. Just look at if your photos, look
36:56
Speaker 1: at his hands. They're huge, They're huge hands, very strong.
37:01
Speaker 1: He's playing with heavier strings on a stratocaster that he
37:04
Speaker 1: tunes down a little bit a step or two, which
37:07
Speaker 1: is an old trick of playing like bending strings but
37:12
Speaker 1: still having a fat string, so your tone is bigger.
37:16
Speaker 1: But he's just a powerful muscular player. Jimmy uses the
37:21
Speaker 1: lightest strings imaginable and is a much lighter player, and
37:25
Speaker 1: he bends strings really easily, so they're very, very different.
37:30
Speaker 2: Along with Steve ra In the eighties we had Robert Craye,
37:32
Speaker 2: which I remember with my older brother, big fan of him,
37:35
Speaker 2: so I knew about him back when I was a teenager.
37:38
Speaker 2: In the eighties, Bonnie Rape we mentioned Jimmy Vaughn, Jeff Healy,
37:43
Speaker 2: George Thurgud also mentioned the book. George Thurgudd, I think
37:46
Speaker 2: should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
37:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so too.
37:49
Speaker 2: I mean Bad to the Bone alone just brought blues
37:52
Speaker 2: into the mainstream.
37:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, because he was you know, when I first was
37:57
Speaker 1: aware of him, he was like a barroom blues player,
37:59
Speaker 1: you know when played Toad's Place or you know wherever.
38:03
Speaker 1: But in Philly in the early nineties, there was an
38:07
Speaker 1: event at the Philadelphia Spectrum and he brought ten thousand
38:10
Speaker 1: people showed up and he just blew the roof off
38:13
Speaker 1: that place. The guy just you know, it's it's it's
38:17
Speaker 1: a powerful, simple delivery of the blues. So if you
38:22
Speaker 1: go back to a bluesman like Jimmy Reid, Jimmy Reid
38:25
Speaker 1: was a very popular blues guitarist in the fifties. His
38:29
Speaker 1: music is really simple, very simple, but that's that's how
38:34
Speaker 1: you communicate the music to a lot of people. And
38:37
Speaker 1: the Georgians like.
38:38
Speaker 2: That on a slide, very good at one of the songs.
38:41
Speaker 2: I always put together a playlist for these episodes. One
38:43
Speaker 2: of the songs I wanted to include among the good
38:45
Speaker 2: songs is the live Sky's Crying that live album, and
38:50
Speaker 2: that's where he's playing the slide on that track. Man,
38:52
Speaker 2: it's one of my favorite tracks.
38:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, what about.
38:56
Speaker 2: Billy Gibbons, there's an interesting one too. Huge in the
38:59
Speaker 2: seventh eighties, still able to keep that blue sound on Eliminator. Yeah,
39:06
Speaker 2: and even while they're transitioning into the synthesizes and that
39:10
Speaker 2: type of thing.
39:11
Speaker 1: I think I think a lot of people would agree that.
39:13
Speaker 1: I mean, Billy Gibbons is one of those super talents,
39:16
Speaker 1: but he is easy top in a lot of way.
39:19
Speaker 1: I mean, he's the voice, he's the look, he's the
39:21
Speaker 1: guitar player. He's a phenomenal guitar player. I'm going to
39:24
Speaker 1: go back to Robert Johnson and having a great sense
39:27
Speaker 1: of time. Billy has an incredible sense of time. So
39:30
Speaker 1: when he does that groove, that boogie, I mean he
39:33
Speaker 1: nails it, and he does the slide. I mean, that
39:36
Speaker 1: kind of guitar playing is going to be relevant always.
39:39
Speaker 1: It's never going to go out of style.
39:41
Speaker 2: One of the greatest long comes another generation of bluesman
39:44
Speaker 2: in the nineties, Kenny, Wayne Shepard and Johnny Lang and
39:48
Speaker 2: then it continued with Joe Bonamassa. We mentioned Derek Truck's,
39:51
Speaker 2: Gary Crok Junior, Warren Haynes, we haven't mentioned him yet.
39:55
Speaker 2: Fantastic guitarist. Absolutely many have been fortunate enough to see
39:59
Speaker 2: a lot. Can you talk about you talk about this
40:02
Speaker 2: in the book how the Internet, YouTube and streaming platforms
40:06
Speaker 2: has actually benefited the blues. There's a lot, there's a
40:08
Speaker 2: downside to that they always talk about. But the new
40:11
Speaker 2: generations are not only discovering the music, but they're learning
40:14
Speaker 2: from these sources too.
40:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean YouTube is I mean, it's guitar lessons
40:20
Speaker 1: day and night, twenty four hours a day. You want
40:23
Speaker 1: to learn any kind of blues, whether it's electric blues,
40:26
Speaker 1: Piedmont blues, you know, urban blues of the forties, anything,
40:32
Speaker 1: you can learn it and it's right there if you
40:35
Speaker 1: have Spotify or Pandora like I could be, you know,
40:38
Speaker 1: off somewhere and I just put on say Howland Wolf,
40:41
Speaker 1: and suddenly I'm listening to some of the greatest blues
40:43
Speaker 1: records of all time, no matter where I am. I mean,
40:47
Speaker 1: how is that? I mean, it's just the world is
40:49
Speaker 1: connected so effortlessly these days.
40:53
Speaker 2: I put together a playlist, like I said, I think
40:55
Speaker 2: it clocks in at twenty nine hours, adding, yeah, let's
41:01
Speaker 2: put this, let's let's put him in. Let's let's for her.
41:05
Speaker 2: I should say her too, Bonnie Rate another.
41:07
Speaker 1: Great, incredible guitar player.
41:09
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah, And I have to admit I'm ashamed
41:13
Speaker 2: to say this. This guy Christine kingfish Ingram, I didn't
41:16
Speaker 2: know about him until now I read your book. So okay,
41:19
Speaker 2: let me check off this guy. Wow. I mean he's
41:22
Speaker 2: I think he's only in his twenties. Yeah, and you
41:24
Speaker 2: call him one of the brightest lights in contemporary blues.
41:27
Speaker 1: He's from Clarksdale, Mississippi, the spiritual home of the blues, right,
41:32
Speaker 1: that's where he grew up, and he as a kid
41:35
Speaker 1: would go to the local blues museum because they have one,
41:39
Speaker 1: and he was like, all right, I like this, I
41:41
Speaker 1: like what I'm hearing, and I'm gonna play. And you know,
41:44
Speaker 1: he's phenomenon.
41:45
Speaker 2: So there's hope for the future. I don't think blues
41:47
Speaker 2: will ever go away. Where do you see the blues
41:49
Speaker 2: today and where do you see it going in the future.
41:52
Speaker 1: Well, it just keeps. I think it's always going to
41:55
Speaker 1: be here. You know. We we we tend to be
41:58
Speaker 1: in a period the past twenty years ago where we
42:01
Speaker 1: just we're still repeating a lot of what's happened. I
42:04
Speaker 1: think what happened between nineteen twenty and two thousand, that
42:09
Speaker 1: eighty years of blues guitar, it's so vast that it's
42:14
Speaker 1: hard to be a blues guitarist today and say I
42:16
Speaker 1: want to take it someplace else. I'm not sure there
42:20
Speaker 1: are that many people who can do that. I've heard
42:22
Speaker 1: there's some African blues guitar players who are doing very
42:25
Speaker 1: interesting stuff because they're mixing in African music. So that's
42:29
Speaker 1: a whole different thing. That's fantastic.
42:32
Speaker 2: I think Gary Clark Junior does that too, some of
42:34
Speaker 2: the he's incorporating some of the newer production elements.
42:39
Speaker 1: I mean there's blues and hip hop, which is cool.
42:43
Speaker 1: Who knows what AI is going to do to the blues.
42:45
Speaker 1: It could do me. I could just write a blues
42:48
Speaker 1: every day if you want.
42:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know one thing I didn't ask you about.
42:52
Speaker 2: But people should also be aware too that this book
42:54
Speaker 2: it does examine not just a guitarist, but effects pedals
42:59
Speaker 2: and amplify a lot of us. If to talk about that,
43:03
Speaker 2: what people can read regarding that aspect of the blues
43:06
Speaker 2: in the book, Well.
43:07
Speaker 1: The technology Again, the music often follows the technology. So
43:11
Speaker 1: in the twenties when blues was really blues guitar was
43:14
Speaker 1: taking off, the guitars had actually at that point just
43:17
Speaker 1: started to be made better. They had trust rods in
43:20
Speaker 1: the next so the next word bowing so much. They're
43:22
Speaker 1: better construction. So you know, every time there's an advancement
43:28
Speaker 1: in technology, all music follows, all art follows, but the
43:32
Speaker 1: blues follows that. So you know, it's just this is
43:37
Speaker 1: the language and but the technology is an important part
43:40
Speaker 1: of it. I mean when Leo Fender invented the telecaster
43:44
Speaker 1: and the stratocaster, I mean it didn't take that long
43:47
Speaker 1: for blues guitarist to grab those things and say, okay,
43:50
Speaker 1: these are the new tools for today and change the
43:54
Speaker 1: world with that.
43:56
Speaker 2: The read is fascinating, but it's laid out beautifully. It's
44:00
Speaker 2: really it's a phenomenal book. It's a must read for
44:02
Speaker 2: any blues fan. And I believe it is out now right, absolutely, yeah,
44:06
Speaker 2: So the ultimate book of blues guitar legends, the players
44:09
Speaker 2: and guitars that shape the music out now. You can
44:11
Speaker 2: find out where her books are sold and where can
44:14
Speaker 2: people find you online?
44:15
Speaker 1: Pete, they can find me on well, actually if they
44:19
Speaker 1: go to Pete prown dot com. It's my artwork. So
44:22
Speaker 1: Bell was to read vintage guitar magazine, Tone Quest Report.
44:28
Speaker 1: I look for my late's books excellent.
44:31
Speaker 2: Thank you Pete, thanks so much.
44:32
Speaker 1: For being here. Appreciate it. I had a great time. Thanks.
44:42
Speaker 1: That's it. It's in the books.