A new blues that I can't explain

Woke up this morning, I feel 'round for my shoes
You know 'bout that babe, had them old walkin' blues.
Woke up this morning, I feel 'round for my shoes,
You know 'bout that babe, Lord, I had them old walkin' blues.

Leavin' this morning, I had to go ride the blinds.
I've been mistreated, don't mind dying.
This morning, I had to go ride the blinds,
I've been mistreated, Lord, I don't mind dying.

People tell me walkin' blues ain't bad;
Worst old feeling I most ever had.
People tell me the old walkin' blues ain't bad.
Well it's the worst old feeling, Lord, I most ever had.

--

My favourite blues ever.

I've come to the startling realisation that jazz is the blues and the blues is jazz and there isn't any difference. Ornette coleman plays the same blues that Robert Johnson did. Of course it's an infuriating matter to tell anyone what you mean by 'the blues' - at some fundamental level it exists only as an abstract idea or just a sheer feeling. But I'll have a go.

The blues is a descriptor for the African-American experience of life - it originated as a kind of working song, for shouting in the cotton-fields where a lot of african-americans worked as slaves, then later as sharecroppers.

So, on one level when we say 'blues' we're talking about a genre of music, the so-called 'country blues' which was a direct outgrowth of these working songs. On the other hand, the sheer number of other things which have been attributed to 'the blues' is mind-bogglingly upsetting. The Original Dixieland Jass Band plays 'St. Louis Blues'. Robert Johnson sings the blues. John Mayer says he's got a 'new blues I can't explain'. Charlie Parker tells B.B. King - 'I'm a blues player, B, we're all blues players.' But their music is worlds apart.

So where does that leave the blues? Nowhere, it seems. I don't have answers, if you were hoping. Sometimes you get an inkling though, of what it all means - what I have now, is that the blues means honesty. It means uncontrived emotion. What charlie parker and B.B. King and ornette coleman are playing sounds impossibly different, but at the centre of it is humanity, an uncluttered humanity; an african-american humanity.

Uncluttered is an interesting experience. What i've come to perceive is that some novice players tend to play better than people with very advanced technique. Case in point : I play the blues better on electric bass than on guitar. Highly disturbing, considering how much time I practice on the six-stringed annoyance. The explanation, as I see it, is simple enough : some technically proficient players tend to impose ideas on their playing. It doesn't work, it causes improvisation to sound contrived, unnatural, un-bluesy. What works is an un-judgemental state of listening, where what has been played and what IS being played filters through the collective of experiences present in our subconscious, and is used to come up with something else. No amount of intellectual posturing can account for the complexity and the emotion present in our experiences. THAT's the blues.

adam