- Posts tagged influence
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I'm so glad, I'm so glad...to be a music fan: Skip James, The Cream and "Passing it On"
I've never been hit by lighting, but today, out of nowhere, I felt a jolt of 'lectricty run all down my arm.
Sometimes you think you know something. Sometimes you think you've got a handle on things. Sometimes you think you've got it all worked out. You think you do...and then something happens...something that makes you start the fuck over.
I was walking to The Tube this morning to go to work. I had my iPod shuffling through one of my fave playlist that I made: Blues with a Feelin'. It's a bow-down list of front-row tunes from my fave musics: blues, country (Waylon & Willie country, not today's bullshit country) and good ol' southern Stax and Shoals R&B and soul...and a few other bits and pieces thrown in for good measure.
The something that happened today was something that never happened before. Today teacher and pupil went toe to toe courtesy of the all mighty shuffle. One of the bits and pieces in this playlist is "I'm so glad", by Cream. I am not a big Cream fan, but I like this song...mostly because its a Skip James tune. Skip James did the original version as far back as 1931. Cream released their version in 1966.
I listened to the Cream version. I like the "rolling" feel of the track. The guitar travels along as Jack Bruce bellows out a thick, leathery vocal. At about 1:25 in the song, the EC Express leaves the station and roars on down the tracks. Not bad...not great.
At this point I walked through the turnstile and made my way to the Piccadilly line to catch my train to work. On my way down the escalator, Skip James came on to play his (the) version of "I'm So Glad".
I guess I wasn't paying attention, because I didn't realise that the same song was playing; however, it wasn't the same. This version was in black and white. There were hisses and pops and snaps and crackles...but it had that familiar rolling guitar riff in it. "Oh, shit...that's Skip James". I clicked nine o'clock on the iPod's wheel and started 'er over. I had heard this before, but hearing James' original juxtaposed with Cream's version was what caused the jolt. I'm no purist, but I couldn't get over how thin and frail the Cream version sounded next to James.
Cream, Clapton in particular, tried so hard on their version. They could never have matched the believability of James' original and I'm sure they knew it. It must have been so frustrating to have been the caliber of musician as those guys were and to know that they were never going to be as good as Skip James...or anyone else of that ilk and era. The thought of knowing that after hearing James and Johnson and Honeyboy and House, everything you did, no matter how grandiose and inflammatory you may play it, you were never going to be able to touch the truth in that old black man's burden.
The important thing is that they listened. They listened to what James did and how he did it and they did their best to deliver the goods. They were influenced.
As a music fan, you know that influence is the lifeblood of "passing it on". It is how a song from a black and white 1931 finds it way from the juke joints of Mississippi to London's Royal Albert Hall in the technicolor 1960's. If you break the joy of being a music fan into three parts, a third of it is listening to music, a third of it is learning about music and a third of it is about sharing the music and those learnings with other music fans. This is what Cream did, the Stones did, the Grateful Dead did, what early Fleetwood Mac did, what Gram Parsons did...what Bob Dylan is still doing on each of his last four brilliant studio albums.
Shit, this is why I am a fan. I can't play a lick, but I can sure appreciate one. I love the listening, the learning and the lending of my knowledge accumulated through a passion for music. After today, I decided that this weekend I am going to go back and listen to a few paired up classic then and now's and see how the wannabe's learned from the old timer's.
I'll be sure to share what I find out...
p.s. if you have any suggestions of song pairings, serve 'e, up in the comments. Cheers.
Stolen Melodies, Copped Riffs and Royalty Robberies: What do T-Bone Walker, Chuck Berry & Keith Richards Have in Common? (The RIff)
My wife is nowhere near the music fan that I am. She does not know (or care to know) a fraction of what I do about the songs and the story behind them are concerned. She does, though, have quite an ear for music.
She regularly surprises me when she will say, "hey, this sounds exactly like such-and-such". She asked me one time, "don't these people get mad when someone else plays their song and claims it as their own"?
Oh, boy. That is a can of worms I'm not sure I want to open up?! On second thought, why the hell not...
The history of recorded music is full of various stories about stolen melodies, copped riffs and royalty robberies. Some of the stories are legendary:
John Fogerty was sued (unsuccessfully) by his old CCR label, Fantasy Records, for sounding too much like himself! Fantasy said that "Old Man Down the Road" sounded too much like "Run Through the Jungle" and that Fogerty was plagiarising himself. What a joke. Fogerty had to go to court to defend his style. Hear for yourselves:
In an even more maddening example, Neil Young was sued by Geffen Records for not sound like himself enough. How can anyone say this about Ol' Neil?! They way the man shifts musical directions, you'd think the moon is controlling him as it does the tides (I love Neil for this reason). When Neil put out "Everybody's Rockin", Geffen sued him for making "uncharacteristic and uncommercial records". Ok, ok, maybe "Ol' '80's Cantankerous Neil" wasn't trying to break new ground with this one, but to be sued by his label...? Here is a little ditty from that album:
And then there is this story about the Aussie band, Men at Work, that is making the headline news. You all remember their 80's hit, "Land Down Under", right? How could you not remember that jaunty, lilting, flute melody in it? Larrikin Music Publishing managing director, Norm Lurie, remembers it to...from his childhood. Larrikin is now suing Men At Work for back & future royalties on the song. They claim the flute part comes from the refrain of an old Aussie children's song, the "Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree".
Check out this link to see/hear the similarities between the two. When done watching, please proceed to vomit in your lap. This lawsuit is a joke, too. Post Script: I lived in in Sydney for five years...Vegamite sandwiches are good.
Crazy stories, hunh? Can you imagine if the guy that wrote "Happy Birthday" had it copyrighted!?! We'd all be in court!
There are many, many, MANY other examples like this. Sadly, most of them are about money. What I want to do is celebrate influence. A few months ago I wrote a post about artists wearing their influences on their sleeves.This may be a quasi-Part II to that one. In that post I quoted two people:
Neil Young: "It's all one song". (read here for the story behind that quote)
Hunter S. Thompson: "I've been plagiarising all my life. Its called learning".
And that is exactly what it is, isn't it...learning. You like/listen to someone. They have an impact on you. You are influenced by them. You take on some of the characteristics in your own playing. You develop your own sound from this. Is this stealing or is this influence?
Case in point: where would we be without T-Bone Walker, Chuck Berry and Keith Richards? My guess is the insane asylum from having to listen to Pat Boone for a decade longer than we should have.
Let's have some good ol' music fun with influence using these three R&R behemoths.
T-Bone Walker was an early pioneer (in the truest sense of the word) with the electric guitar sound. Once he plugged it in, he made that fiddle squeal and sing out like no one had ever heard before. Surely that would influence young hot-shot guitarists; and it did. Hendrix stated that T-Bone was a big influence. Even more importantly, Chuck Berry sites T-Bone as one of his two biggest influences (Louis Jordan being the other). We all know Chuck's sound, right? Yes, but was it really Chuck's in the first place? Listen to this T-Bone cut, "T-Bone Boogie", that predates any Chuck recordings:
"WOW", right? Chuck has bitched and moaned for years about how he got robbed by people stealing his sound. Most famously, he sued the Beach Boys for stealing the riff from "Sweet Little Sixteen" and won (check out this cool site called, "Sounds Just Like" for a Berry/Beach Boys comparison). Yeah, Chuck, I guess you were influenced by T-Bone. Have a listen to one of Berry's Great 28, "Bye, Bye Johnny". Sound a little like, "T-Bone Boogie"? Hell, yes.
Now we all know that there are a lot of "Chuck's children out there playin' his licks" (thanks for that lyric, Bob Seeger), none more famously than Keith Richards. Keith is an unabashed Chuck disciple. Keith has said that all he wanted to do when he started out playing was, "to sound like Chuck Berry". Chuck's riffs are found all throughout Keef's playing with the Stones and with his solo band, the X-Pensive Winos. Here is a track off his first solo album, "Talk is Cheap". Listen for those Chuck riffs like they "were ringing a bell". Also, Johnny Johnson, Chuck's long-time pianist is on this track pounding out on the 88's.
There are way too many Chuck/Keef stories to talk about here. You should watch the most excellent movie, "Hail, Hail Rock & Roll" to get a feel for the relationship Master and Pupil had. Here is a clip of the two Gunslingers "learning" how to play "Carol".
There you have it: influence in all it's rock and roll glory. It is cool to listen to those three songs in succession to see how that guitar riff has evolved. Can you think of any other great cascading riff lineage?
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Bonus Cut:
While we're at it, here is one last example: the Bo Diddley Beat. Bo's Beat was the new sliced-bread and may never be topped. Here is an early Bo classic and a song by the Allman Brothers from the same name:
Fleetwood Mac, Elmore James and The "GREAT" Rip-Off (bonus material: the Jeff Beck - prison sex connection & why Elvis is suspect)
Note: When referring to Fleetwood mac in this post, I am not talking about the Stevie Nicks/Lindsey Buckingham version. I am talking about the Peter Green stuff...the "Early Mac".
Recently I wrote a post about the not so fine line between influence and emulate. I also wrote one on Mick Fleetwood's celebrity podcast on iTunes (that is a joy to listen to). Low and behold, a convergence of thoughts has occurred!
After the Mick Fleetwood post, I went and picked up some early Feetwood Mac. I needed to go back and hear their sound of that time. In the podcast, Fleetwood spoke about the heavy influence of Delta Blues in the original incarnation of the Mac. Infact, as history and Mick tell us, a great many British bands of the '60's were influenced by these Delta inhabitants, musicians and creators of the folk and the lore.
I wasn't sure what to get and it was spontaneous thing, so I went for the full buffet of early Mac: a 2009 (re)release, "Black Magic Woman: The Best of Fleetwood Mac". Again, this is the Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer stuff...not the flowing scarves of everyone's favourite cocaine pixie.
I put it on and walked London for an hour or so.
These guys, to say the Very least, were completely affected by those old sounds they heard come across the Atlantic from the Mighty Mississippi. They wanted no misunderstandings about what their intensions were...to play just like their Delta heroes.
This got me to thinking about the influence and emulate discussion I posed a few days earlier. Like I said, "Influence is you with a twist. Emulate is you trying not to be you".
Early on, to all their talent and credit, I think the Early Mac were emulators. Listen to a song like, "Shake Your Money Maker". This is an Elmore James song. Now, I am no musician so what I say may not be technically correct. I do have a pretty good ear and feel for tunes. What my ear feels after listening to the Early Mac play this song is almost a complete duplication of Old Elmore James' version.
Fine. No issues with that. Early Mac may have been the best British blues band of them all. My point is that they aimed to emulate Elmore and his brand of blues. It wasn't just that song either. There are a half a dozen that have the Elmore feel. Now, as Early Mac evolved, they kept some of that blues culture in their music, but their sound developed into something more personal from the band. Yes, later on they went stone-cold different and had unprecedented success. That situation was a horse of a much different colour...and it wasn't blue(s).
Old Elmore, he was a bit different. He was hugely influenced by his predecessors and contemporaries. Still, he ended up with a very unique sound of his own for those times. A slash and slither, electrified slide that you knew was Elmore when you heard it. One of his direct influences was Robert Johnson. Elmore took Johnson's "Dust My Broom" and whipped it up into an all out electric, slide frenzy. This was Elmore being influenced by Johnson's playing, but giving it his own stamp...Elmore "with a twist".
Just for fun...let's talk Jeff Beck. What a natural fret-freak, eh? The Jeff Beck Group was a like a dinner guest you really wanted to have over, but knew would cause a ruckus and may put others off. This Beck incarnation played a (self admitted/anointed) heavy sound. This band included Rod Stewart on vocals and Ron Wood on bass (Wow...Woody is so underrated. Listen to his bass playing...stunning).
If we lean Beck to either side of this influence/emulate discussion, it is definitely the influence side. His first two albums, Beck-OLa and Truth are fantastic...especially the former. He plays songs we know, but he plays in a style all his own. Yes, he takes on a classic by Elvis Presley, "Jail House Rock", but he sets fire to it and burns the original to embers.
Shit, The King would never been able to shake his pelvis to this! By the way...what the hell is up with those "Jailhouse" lyrics?! Go Back and listen to them? Prison-mate love anyone? Here is a bit of the lyric:
Number forty-seven said to number three:
You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see.
I sure would be delighted with your company,
Come on and do the jailhouse rock with me.
Yikes!
For good measure, listen to Beck's version of "I Ain't Superstitious". Yep, more influence.
This is all just my opinion. I truly like all this music whether it is a rip-off or new take. I'm glad bands like Early Mac, The Stones and the Animals found the blues. They just might have rescued it from an ignorant (uncaring) America.
Two more parting thoughts from good friends:
Like Ol' Neil Young says: "It's all one song".
A bit of wisdom from The Good Doctor, Hunter Thompson: "I've been plagiarising all my life. Its called learning".
Thanks guys. Spot on.
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Here are the tunes I was talking about. Put your ear to them and tell me what you think...
