English Blues

[Bluesboy998]

My friend from England and I have a very healthy discussion about English blues I tell him there is no such thing!What are your thoughts.

 

[twbuff]

Does Eric Clapton count as English? If so, I suggest there is such a thing as English Blues!

 

[Bluesboy998]

Yes your right Eric Clapton is English and he plays Blues but I don't understand what is English blues,English guitarist most are my favorites play there interpretation of American blues.

 

[Huggy Love]

Hmmmm..... OK just to throw some to the other side.... I say no.

Yes Clapton, Page & Beck are deeply rooted in the blues but I don't think there was a big enough amount of blues recorded by these guys (& others) to warrant a label for a genre like "English blues". Within a few years most of these players went towards hard rock & created heavy metal, so that also narrows things down to just a couple years of output. There's is no question that some of these players have earned the respect of blues fans and musicians worldwide, and yes they played (& especially sang) the blues a bit different than we do, but I've heard blues people say "Yea, he can play the blues" though I've never heard any bluesman say "Let's listen to some English blues".

 

[Bluesboy998]

Yes Huggy well said my friend will be here in two weeks and he knows how to push my buttons,He will get me started and I just wanted some other opinions,I don't want this thread to become a heated debate some of my favorite guitarist are English.And if it wasn't for English groups I for one wouldn't have known about John Lee Hooker/Hubert Sumlin the Kings Etc.

 

[sergiodeblanc]

Well if there's no such thing as english blues, and everything is just blues, then there is no such thing as delta blues, chicago blues, and rhythm and blues, etc..

Sometimes I'm not into labeling music, but sometimes it's really helpful. For instance if somebody told me last weekend that I was going to have to sit through three hours of white blues at a bro-fest held in a brewery parking lot I would've declined.

I think english blues is a thing.

 

[AP515]

I understand the point - The Blues started in the Delta and quickly grew up in Chicago (among other places). Those places didn't include England. But in order to legitimately say there is such a thing as "English Blues" there must only be a selection of songs and players that originated in England (and Scotland, and Ireland, etc.). Peter Green, Gary Moore, and Clapton are probably enough, but there are others. "Still got the blues" is as bluesy as you're gonna get and it's 100% "English Blues". That's enough for me. Want somebody current? Davy Knowles... His version of "What in the world" (the song by a serious Irish Blues guy - Rory Gallagher) is fantastic.

 

[C&M Music - Lafayette]

I love "still got the blues"and i think very highly of Gary Moore. Unfortunately, the song is a basic 12 bar blues based on the delta blues scale. Additionally, Albert King and Albert Collins contributed to this composition with Gary Moore. Most unfortunately, Moore was successfully sued for copyright infringement by a norweigian band claiming the solo was taken from one of their songs. I know it is a bummer to hear. It sure was for me. Great song by Gary at the end of the day and definitely a straight connection to the heart of the delta and Chicago blues.

 

[László]

I think english blues is a thing.

I do, too.

 

[Bluesboy998]

B.B. King said I still got the blues was the perfect blues song it had everything R.I.P Gary

 

[Brad737]

I love "still got the blues"and i think very highly of Gary Moore. Unfortunately, the song is a basic 12 bar blues based on the delta blues scale. Additionally, Albert King and Albert Collins contributed to this composition with Gary Moore. Most unfortunately, Moore was successfully sued for copyright infringement by a norweigian band claiming the solo was taken from one of their songs. I know it is a bummer to hear. It sure was for me. Great song by Gary at the end of the day and definitely a straight connection to the heart of the delta and Chicago blues.

Actually, it's based on "Hello" by Lionel Ritchie.

In all seriousness, I LOVE Gary Moore. I never understood why he was never more popular in the U.S.

 

[Bluesboy998]

+1

 

[watelessness]

I've never met a sad Englishman so, no, no such thing as English Blues.

 

[Mikegarveyblues]

British blues!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_blues

Gary Moore was one of my favourites, but of course there are many. Clapton is an obvious one but you can also include the great David Gilmour who took bluesy playing and placed it into the context of psychedelic rock. Slash is a great Brit / American player who is essentially a blues player when you strip it all down. Peter Green of the original Fleetwood Mac, Mick Taylor.

We took traditional blues and took it in new directions. British Blues exists as does (Insert country name here) blues.

And what is American blues an interpretation of? You can trace it back further than the dawn of the 20th century.

It's all good... Just soak it up rather than worry where it may be from and whether it's genuine or not. Blues is about emotion... You can be a Brit blues musician and be authentic.

 

[Bluesboy998]

Your right Mike it's all good.

 

[Mikegarveyblues]

I think it also depends what we're distilling here...

Blues is more than just a 12 bar played on a guitar or piano. The Brit blues artists may use lyrics that have a certain Britishness about them, be it accent or the content - although that would likely be even more regionalised (English, Scottish, Welsh or Norther irish) or even be distinctly working or middle class, etc.

 

[Bluesboy998]

Yes Mike my friend is from Liverpool and he will spend two weeks here,I'll see him about 6 times and like clockwork on the day he goes home he will start pushing my buttons.Love him to death and I'll show him the posts he will get a kick out of this.

 

[jfine]

Absolutely, there's such a thing as British blues. Like most white guitar players of a certain age, it took guys from across the pond to hip me to this great music that was in my own back yard (so to speak), as the only black artists I heard on mainstream Top-40 radio in the early '60's were more soul- and doo-wop-oriented (Chuck Berry and Little Richard notwithstanding, but by the early '60's they weren't getting as much airplay on white radio). I loved (and still do) that stuff too, but the first blues that I actually recognized as such was by the Rolling Stones, probably "Spider And The Fly". The English guys weren't shy about telling us where they got this stuff from, and pretty soon I was finding out about Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, B B King, John Lee Hooker--all the real stuff. Even the black radio stations weren't playing blues in the '60's, so the Brits were giving us white kids a real education regarding our roots that we didn't know about. It took a white guy from Chicago, Mike Bloomfield, to show me that blues guitar could be a way for me to shine without having to be the lead singer, and when I heard Clapton (Cream first, then the Bluesbreakers LP--I really got it backwards!) I had a direction to follow. The British guys had a little different approach than the older American blues guys--more aggressive, at least on record, and a little more eclectic than the guys who influenced them. The B B King influence is certainly apparent in Eric Clapton's blues playing, as well as Albert King and Otis Rush, but he took it to a different place. I'm glad we got underground rock FM radio (originated in my hometown, San Francisco) in '67--they played a lot of blues, as well as local Bay Area rock, Indian music, and even a bit of jazz; a real freewheeling approach. I miss that stuff!
British blues eventually got mixed into what became heavy metal, but they definitely took a unique approach to what had been pretty much an American style of music with African roots. Now it's just universal--everybody gets the blues! From the cantor in the synagogue when I was growing up, to Ravi Shankar bending notes on the sitar, it's all a way to express emotion, and we all do that in one way or another. I've heard Indian sitar players do stuff that's reminiscent of blues guitar, sometimes like bluegrass dobro, but I don't think the Indian guys were listening to B B King and Bill Monroe! It's got to be that human thing...

 

[Bluesboy998]

Well said jfine

 

[Mixstar]

I've never met a sad Englishman so, no, no such thing as English Blues

Very nice of you to say so, but there are some saddo's

All this and nobody has mentioned Paul Kossoff, another one cut short early, he's still my favorite guitarist. It was Koss who taught Angus how vibrato really works.

Shouldn't this really be called "British Blues"?