Really the ‘Walking Blues’: Son House, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and the development of a traditional blues

Popular Music ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 57-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Cowley
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Rhythm And Blues ◽  
Folk Music Revival ◽  
Rolling Stones ◽  
The 1960S

On the surface, a study of the evolution of a particular regional Afro-American folk-music style does not appear to be directly connected with the development of popular music. Yet, in one way or another since the 1930s, Son House, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, aspects of whose music I discuss here, have all influenced both the development of black blues and, in a much wider context, American and European popular music in general. Johnson and then House became cult figures of the 1960s American folk-music ‘revival’; Waters's Chicago rhythm and blues, which he developed in the late 1940s, have sustained him with black and, subsequently, white audiences since that time, his early commercial recordings being absorbed and sometimes emulated by groups such as the Rolling Stones.

scholarly journals Visions of Diversity: Cultural Pluralism and the Nation in the Folk Music Revival Movement of the United States and Canada, 1958–65

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
GILLIAN A. M. MITCHELL
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Folk Revival ◽  
The North ◽  
Folk Music Revival ◽  
Revival Movement ◽  
Excellent Work ◽  
The 1960S

This article focusses on the concept of cultural pluralism in the North American folk music revival of the 1960s. Building on the excellent work of earlier folk revival scholars, the article looks in greater depth at the “vision of diversity” promoted by the folk revival in North America – at the ways in which this vision was constructed, at the reasons for its maintenance and at its ultimate decline and on the consequences of this for anglophone Canadian and American musicians and enthusiasts alike.

POPULAR MUSIC OF THE GREEK WORLD: A NOTE FROM THE ORGANISERS

2020 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 401-402
Author(s):  
Roderick Beaton ◽  
John Bennet ◽  
Eleni Kallimopoulou ◽  
Panagiotis Poulos ◽  
Chris Williams
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Rich Variety ◽  
British School ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Local Traditions ◽  
International Success ◽  
Greek World

In May 2019 the British School at Athens hosted an international conference on popular music of the Greek world. The conference aimed to explore and evaluate the diversity of Greek music apparent in the rich variety of local traditions and in the richness of urban popular music both established and emerging, and to examine its causes from broader musical, sociological and artistic perspectives. Rather than focus on particular forms, such as traditional folk music, rebetika, or the ‘new wave’ of the 1960s exemplified by the international success of composers such as Hadjidakis and Theodorakis, the conference set out to situate these traditions in a broader Greek context and also an explicitly international one, in this way building upon a growing trend (Bucuvalas 2019; Tragaki 2019).

scholarly journals Generic Norms, Irony, and Authenticity in the AABA Songs of the Rolling Stones, 1963–1971

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Carter
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Crucial Point ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Rolling Stones ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

AABA form was in decline in popular music in the 1960s, yet the Rolling Stones made extensive use of it at a crucial point in their career. In this article I examine the relationship between Jagger-Richards AABA songs released between 1963 and 1971 and established AABA norms. I use a corpus of 138 AABA songs (112 by other artists and 26 by Jagger-Richards) to compare the Stones’ approach to elements such as starting and ending bridge harmonies and verse melodic form with existing defaults. The analysis shows that the band’s approach to AABA in this time period bifurcates into two strategies, each associated with a tempo extreme: either (1) using the form ironically to critique wealth and privilege, or (2) employing it in a sincere way that invokes soul and gospel artists and thereby claims authenticity for the band.

Early Music and Popular Music

2020 ◽  
pp. 508-529
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Randell Upton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Music ◽  
The Past ◽  
Beach Boys ◽  
Rolling Stones ◽  
The 1960S

In the 1960s, recordings and performances of preclassical music brought new sounds to musical performers, creators, and audiences. Through play with new sounds and with ideas about the past, medievalist popular music helped to shape the range of meanings associated with “the medieval” for scholars as well as audiences. At first, early music sounds, especially that of the harpsichord, were used for their novelty, becoming fashionable and hip by the mid-1960s, first in London (as seen in recordings by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Zombies, and Procol Harum; this trend fed into 1970s prog rock) and then, following the British Invasion, in the United States (particularly the Left Banke in New York and the Beach Boys and the Doors in Los Angeles). Some folk-rock performers used early music sounds to signal the past, drawing on tropes of nostalgia and medievalist fantasy (e.g., Simon and Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair/Canticle” [1966] and the Beatles’ “Penny Lane” [1967]).

scholarly journals On the Other Side of the Genre Boundary

Traditiones ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 21-41
Author(s):  
Ljubica Milosavljević
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
The Other ◽  
Music Genres ◽  
Strategic Goals ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Professional Context

The fieldwork conducted in Belgrade during the summer and autumn of 2017 was oriented towards jazz musicians, and their strategies of action, in gist, implied playing other popular music genres through compromise – function work. Such business tactics are a consequence of jazz musicians’ ever-insecure position, but strategic goals have changed over time with the nature of that insecurity. Going beyond the genre boundary first became a means of securing the profession itself after WWII due to (foreign-)political and ideological influences, whereas from the 1960s to date, it has been the economic guaranty of the survival of many jazz musicians. Playing folk music is one of the observed strategies analysed through a broader sociopolitical, socioeconomic and professional context.

Absolutely Modern

2015 ◽  
Vol 132 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Timothy Hampton
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
The Self ◽  
Arthur Rimbaud ◽  
Poetic Diction ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Visionary Poetics

Bob Dylan’s turn from “folk music” to “electric music” in the 1960s involves the development of a new visionary poetics. Through a consideration of his affinity with the French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, this essay traces Dylan’s recasting of himself as a visionary and studies the pressures placed by this process on lyric form, on poetic diction, and on the representation of the self in popular music.

In Pursuit of Authenticity: The New Lost City Ramblers and the Postwar Folk Music Revival

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-305
Author(s):  
RAY ALLEN
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lost City ◽  
Cultural Workers ◽  
The Past ◽  
Folk Music Revival ◽  
Musical Systems ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Folk Tradition ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractThis article explores the discourse of authenticity, which has become central to our understanding of twentieth-century folk music revivals in the United States. The process of musical revival, that is, the self-conscious restoration of musical systems deemed in danger of decline or extinction, has been closely tied to perceptions of exactly what constitutes authentic, or genuine, folk tradition. The term tradition, like authenticity, is a slippery concept based on a self-conscious interpretation and selective editing of the past. The complex mechanism of cultural editing that undergirds the authentication process is fleshed out by focusing on the efforts of one band, the New Lost City Ramblers. During the 1960s the Ramblers introduced northern audiences to what they judged to be authentic southern string-band and bluegrass styles at a time when the urban revival was dominated by popular and artsy interpreters of folk music. The Ramblers' struggles to render accurately southern rural instrumental and singing styles, while maintaining their own distinctive sound, offer insight into the challenges authenticity posed for mid-century folk musicians and their urban audiences, and continues to pose for scholars and cultural workers today.

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