Deep Blues Chapter 3

I was most struck by two things from the third installment of Palmer's "Deep Blues."

The first was that the concept of creating a unique image as an artist was a foreign concept, with only one exception during the time: Peetie Wheatsraw, the Devil's son in-law, the High Sheriff from Hell. Beyond just having an extremely cool name, he also sang about raunchy subjects and the devil. The song that the book mentions, the "Peetie Wheatstraw Stomp," also appears on the blues CD I checked out from the library.

The second topic that fascinated me involved the "borrowing" of styles from one artist to another. While we would consider this an impossibility today with modern copyright laws, it in fact happens on a large scale in the rap world. Not in just "sampling" or borrowing a beat from an older rock or even blue song (the artists or record companies pay for these rights), but in an illegal sense. A few nights ago I was reading an article by one of my favorite writers, Pete Scholtes, in the online version of Minneapolis/St. Paul's The City Pages. The article involved mixtapes, where local groups do a little bit of their own borrowing from national artists to promote their own work. A link for the story: http://citypages.com/databank/27/1339/article14586.asp

Maybe all of the second paragraph was way off topic, but I just found it interesting, especially considering the fact that there were two coincidences in my life this week that related directly to the reading in Deep Blues.

Song Project

I'd like to do mine on Little Brother Montgomery's "The First Time I Met You."

Possible Performance Idea

Nothing real set in stone, but I'd like to do a series of short interviews and put together a little clip of responses. I'm currently kicking around two different ideas.

The first would be to play a thirty-second clip of something old from the first listening list and get people's reactions.

The second would be to see what people know about the origins of blues or blues artists. How do different people define the genre?

Of course I would need some way to splice the clips together, though I do have my own digital voice recorder for use.

In class I would explain the process, what I thought was going to happen, what did happen, and finally, play the clip.

Response to "Deep Blues" Prologue-Chapter 1

Usually it's pretty hard to accurately "describe" music. However, in Robert Palmers prologue and first chapter of "Deep Blues" however, I feel convinced that blues music got its origin just as Palmer described.

I was particularily impressed by his descriptions early on of the south, including this short excerpt from page two.

"...where two thin ribbons of asphalt met on the flat plane of the Delta land under skies bleached white by the sun."

Sure, he's describing a barren crossroads and it really has nothing to do with the actual blues music, but it really sets the scene for the early part of the book. Both the idea of something coming out of nothing and of the crossroads seemed to play an important role.

Further on in the reading, on page 17 Palmer describes why one would want to read about or listen to Delta blues.

"The music has never needed interpreters of popularizers; it's always been strong enough to stand on its own."

Currently, in an age where promoting dollars and distribution deals often shape popularity and financial success (now the only real definition of success), blues music at the time seemed to be about more, or maybe the musicians were just talented enough to make it work by itself.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading the first fifty or so pages of "Deep Blues," and hope that the book continues along the same path.

Governor Blanco Response

The university did a great thing by getting a speaker with the credentials of Governor Blanco. While seeing an important political speaker can provide insight into the workings of the American political system, Governor Blanco’s speech was fairly predictable and could’ve been delivered by anyone with a working knowledge of the Katrina crisis. By starting out her speech by giving a generic “you can be whatever you want to be” introduction, she set the mood for a bland speech, the direction it ultimately took. Someone with such knowledge and beliefs from a time of crisis should’ve shared her personal response, instead of simply recounting, and then denying, what everyone in the audience had seen in the media. It also seemed as though Blanco was simply trying to defend herself from being seen as somebody who failed to properly respond to the disaster (the media portrayal) by going through an item by item list of how the federal government failed in every way. It’s very possible that Governor Blanco has accomplished some great things as Governor of Louisiana, but it certainly wasn’t apparent to me after hearing her speak.