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Post by Admin on Feb 4, 2013 17:10:37 GMT -5
Do you believe gospel music was derived in part from blues or do you feel as I do that the Blues got a lot of its melodies from Gospel?
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Post by muddylives on Feb 5, 2013 16:05:29 GMT -5
The short answer is probably "both" or "neither." African American religious and secular music developed side by side, and continually influenced each other.
We don't really have good documentation on what was happening before the 1920s. So the real chicken and egg issue will probably never be resolved. We do know that a good number of the early blues artists also played gospel. We do know that blues had a strong influence on the development of modern gospel in the 1930s. When Mahalia Jackson and others began singing religious music in an unambiguously bluesy manner in the 1930s, there were scandals. Conversely, when blues and R&B singers started singing secular music in a sanctified fashion in the 50s and 60s, there were more scandals.
Son House always claimed that the Southern camp town revival meetings were important in the development of blues. He is probably right.
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Post by Admin on Apr 20, 2014 14:43:58 GMT -5
Bukka White:
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bleu
New Artist
Posts: 4
Musican: Guitarist/Vocals
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Post by bleu on Jun 23, 2014 4:49:39 GMT -5
If I may be allowed to chime in on this topic a bit, especially since both as a professional singer/musician & as a radio broadcaster who has hosted both Blues & Gospel shows, I'm asked this question almost all the time.........In my opinion, the answer to this question depends on whom you ask, because there is a major difference due to race & unfortunately just to bring up this difference up in a conversation is 'courting danger' due to the senseless volatile racial climate in this country. Now to be clear, this difference does NOT denote that Black gospel/blues is better that White gospel/blues or vice versa. I'm just emphasizing there is a major difference.
Being a church musician & also a blues musician, I can say that both BLACK gospel & BLACK blues is based on reaching an inner state in oneself called "The Holy Ghost" or Holy Spirit". This is why when talking about these 2 genres on my broadcasts, I always say they are really one & the same. The real difference is that in one setting, instead of the singer saying "Oooh Baby", he/she says "Ooooh Lord". He/she reaches the same state in themselves by means of the same riffs, phrasing, etc...
Here is an instance described in a scenario...........In the early development of turn of the century Black blues & gospel (1900's-1930's & definitely earlier undocumented instances), the gospel singer/guitarist would wake up, eat breakfast, then go to church to play (which was usually a large tent or meeting shack), then go home, eat lunch, take a nap, wake up & eat dinner, then head to sometimes the SAME tent or shack for the 'barrel house get-down', which served liquor, soul food & in the back, loose women. What I just described can been seen played out in detail in many Black films which showcase this era. Films like "Lady Sings The Blues" comes to mind.......This is the development of certainly early turn of the century southern blues (so eloquently described many times by the great blues scholar Duke Ellington) AND the development of 'get-down Black Pentecostal/Baptist gospel that became so prevalent in the 1930's-early 60's Black communities, which interestingly also in the mid '60's became the template for Motown & Stax recording artists, since not only did most of their talent come from the Black church, but in the Black community at that time, the male gospel quartets with their flashy suits, conked hair & Cadillacs were the superstars of those communities, not the Jazz, Blues or Doo Wop performers.
One interesting side note to this is Etta James once explaining how the mostly female blues & gospel singers who were either forced to work in cotton fields or took jobs there, developed a 'raspy' style of singing due to the fine fibers of cotton slipping into their throats daily. She says that later, other singers imitated this style of singing to gain popularity.
What's also interesting is that towards the late '60's, this "Holy Ghost" feeling in the music also became the foundation of a movement among Jazz musicians, most notably in the 'Black Arts Movement' to use popular Black music (especially Jazz & later Rock) as a means of reaching higher states of consciousness. Unofficial 'leaders' of this new movement were Sun Ra, Rashaan Kirk, Pharoah Saunders, Alice Coltrane to name a few.....but this is a who 'nother conversation.
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Post by JamesP on Apr 8, 2015 8:22:14 GMT -5
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Post by JamesP on Mar 4, 2018 11:46:12 GMT -5
I grew up with old time Gospel Harmony.
Jimmy Fortune was a member of the Statler Brothers and I love his vocals here
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