Americana-Bluegrass

The Dead South, a gold rush vibing four-piece acoustic set from Saskatchewan, infuse the genre’s traditional trappings with an air of frontier recklessness, whiskey breakfasts and grizzled tin-pan showmanship. Their sound, build on a taut configuration of cello, mandolin, banjo and guitar, speeds like a train past polite definitions of acoustic music into the grittier, rowdier spaces of the bluegrass world. https://www.thedeadsouth.com/about

While most of the songs are classically “knee-slapping hoedown” bluegrass, other songs bear some similarities to alternative songs from the 90’s. The Dead South’s debut studio album Good Company was released in 2014. WIKI

Mandolin Orange was formed in 2009 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and consists of the group’s songwriter Andrew Marlin (vocals, mandolin, guitar, banjo) and Emily Frantz (vocals, violin, guitar). The music is described as Americana/Folk. In the last three years, the group has toured throughout the U.S and Europe, including appearances at Edmonton Folk Music Festival, Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Newhttport Folk Festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. WIKI

http://www.mandolinorange.com/

Old Crow Medicine Show started busking on street corners in 1998 New York state and up through Canada, winning audiences along the way with their boundless energy and spirit. They caught the attention of Doc Watson… thereafter the band was hired to entertain between shows at the Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, TN. The band has gone on over twenty years to being inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, and to win two Grammy Awards. https://crowmedicine.com/about/

Starting from old-time music in the Appalachian hills, the group found themselves “making a foray into electric instruments”. Variously described as Old-Time, Americana, Bluegrass, Alternative Country, and “Folk-Country”, the group started out infusing old Appalachian “tunes from jug bands and traveling shows, back porches and dance halls, southern Appalachian string music and Memphis blues.” with new punk energy. WIKI

 

Boogie->Rock

Blues, Jazz, Country and Bluegrass are original music forms that arose in the southern states of north America within enslaved African and previously endentured British populations in the 18th century and were further developed through social changes leading to abolition of slavery, and waves of pan-European migration into Appalachia.

The styles are designed for dancing and audience rapport and combine a mix of experimental instrumental techniques, vocal harmonies from folk and church traditions and story-telling possibly dating from the Scandinavian saga tradition but certainly proliferated through English culture as demonstrated by the large number of ballads re-telling stories of Robyn Hoode. Blues is characterised by blue notes and improvisation. Improvisation is also traceable within the English folk tradition notably from Northumbria.

The geographically separated but related developments of Blues and Country, infused with rhythms and instrumentation from military bands entwined to produce rock and roll by the late 1940s and in the early 1950s Elvis incorporated gospel themes that softened the melodies juxtaposed against the brasher sound of drums and guitar.

But the early awakening of rock and roll resides in the African American juke joints as much as half a century previously where musicians experimented with a diversity of styles including boogie woogie and later rhythm and blues. Musicians included Pete Johnson (born Kermit H. Johnson, March 25, 1904-March 23, 1967) an American boogie-woogie and jazz pianist and Joseph Vernon “Big Joe” Turner Jr. (May 18, 1911-November 24, 1985) a ‘Blues shouter’ from Kansas City, Missouri. According to songwriter Doc Pomus, “Rock and roll would have never happened without (his)” rock-and-roll recording in the 1950s of “Shake, Rattle and Roll”.

Chuck Berry, Charles Edward Anderson Berry (October 18, 1926-March 18, 2017), nicknamed the “Father of Rock and Roll”, refined and developed rhythm and blues into songs such as “Maybellene” (1955), “Roll Over Beethoven” (1956), “Rock and Roll Music” (1957) and “Johnny B. Goode” (1958).

Johnny Cash was not defined by a single genre. His songs drew from rock and roll, blues, rockabilly, folk, and gospel genres. Emerging in the 1950s, dressed in all black and with a distinct baritone voice, Cash made his mark in 1957 with “Folsom Prison Blues” and “I Walk the Line.”

Indeed the transitions between styles of music within the African American community in the Mississippi Delta and later Chicago has been so remarkable that it has been formally interpreted. “The dialectical approach seeks to identify the internal stylistic tensions and contradictions in terms of thesis and antithesis that give rise to new musical forms (synthesis). (This) provides a framework for the history of jazz in the years 1900-1970, and shows how transitions between “ranks” (Benzon, 1993) may be generated. However, dialectics is considerably less successful in the construction of a model to explain the period since 1970.

(a) Swing (synthesis) emerged out of the opposition of New Orleans (thesis) and Chicago (antithesis) in the 1920s.

(b) Swing (thesis) was opposed by the more traditional Blues-oriented Jump style (antithesis) in the 1930s from which emerged Bebop (synthesis).

(c) In the late 1950s and early 1960s Hard Bop (thesis) was opposed by Free (antithesis), producing Freebop (synthesis).

(d) In the late 1960s Freebop (thesis) was opposed by Rock/Soul (antithesis) resulting in Fusion (synthesis).

(e) In the early 1980s Fusion (thesis) was opposed by Post-Bop (antithesis), producing M-base (synthesis).
[It may be noted that (a) corresponds to Benzon’s emergence of Rank 2, and (b) to the emergence of Rank 3.]

Click to access jses.pdf

Bluegrass Clog Dancing

 ▶ Best Bluegrass Clog Dancing Video Ever Made – YouTube.

Bluegrass

Bluegrass

Bluegrass music developed in the 1940s in the Appalachian region. The genre derives from Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys and was further developed by musicians who played with Monroe, including 5-string banjo player Earl Scruggs and guitarist Lester Flatt. Monroe characterized the genre as: “Scottish bagpipes and ole-time fiddlin”. It’s Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. It’s blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound”. Bluegrass features acoustic string instruments and emphasizes the off-beat. Notes are anticipated, which creates a higher energy than blues where notes are behind the beat. As in some forms of Jazz, instrumentalists take turns playing, and improvising around, the melody; called breakdown, characterized by rapid tempos, instrumental dexterity and complex chord changes. By contrast, in Old-Time music, instrumentalists play the melody together, or one carries the lead throughout. WIKI

Gospel influence

Sister Rosetta Tharpe (March 20, 1915-October 9, 1973) was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and recording artist. She attained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mix of spiritual lyrics and rhythmic accompaniment that was a precursor of rock and roll. She was the first great recording star of gospel music and among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll audiences, later being referred to as “the original soul sister” and “the Godmother of rock and roll”. She influenced early rock-and-roll musicians, including Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Tharpe was a pioneer in her guitar technique; she was among the first popular recording artists to use heavy distortion on her electric guitar, presaging the rise of electric blues. Her guitar playing technique had a profound influence on the development of British blues in the 1960s; in particular a European tour with Muddy Waters in 1964 with a stop in Manchester on 7 May is cited by prominent British guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards.

Willing to cross the line between sacred and secular by performing her music of “light” in the “darkness” of nightclubs and concert halls with big bands behind her, Tharpe pushed spiritual music into the mainstream and helped pioneer the rise of pop-gospel, beginning in 1938 with the recording “Rock Me” and with her 1939 hit “This Train”. Her unique music left a lasting mark on more conventional gospel artists such as Ira Tucker, Sr., of the Dixie Hummingbirds. While she offended some conservative churchgoers with her forays into the pop world, she never left gospel music.

Syncopation

Syncopation and swing, often considered essential and unique to jazz, are in fact lacking in much authentic jazz, whether of the 1920s or of later decades. Again, the long-held notion that swing could not occur without syncopation was roundly disproved when trumpeters Louis Armstrong and Bunny Berigan (among others) frequently generated enormous swing while playing repeated, unsyncopated quarter notes.

To repeat Armstrong’s famous reply when asked what swing meant: “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.”

Swing

Swing, in music, both the rhythmic impetus of jazz music and a specific jazz idiom prominent between about 1935 and the mid-1940s—years sometimes called the swing era. Swing music has a compelling momentum that results from musicians’ attacks and accenting in relation to fixed beats. Swing rhythms defy any narrower definition, and the music has never been notated exactly.

Steel or Slide Country

Steel guitar began showing up in country music in the 1920s. Jimmie Rodgers featured acoustic steel guitar in “Tuck Away My Lonesome Blues” (1929).

The electrified steel guitar appeared in the 1930s (Bob Dunn of Milton Brown and His Brownies western swing band). Leon McAuliffe advanced steel guitar technique in his 1936 composition “Steel Guitar Rag” that helped popularize the style. By the late 1940s steel guitar was prominently featured in “honky tonk” country music arrangements; Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell and Webb Pierce.

Steel guitar method was developed in Hawaii by Joseph Kekuku in the late 19th century. The steel guitar is usually positioned horizontally with the treble strings uppermost and the bass strings towards the player, and by using a steel above the fingerboard rather than fretting the strings with the fingers; strings are plucked with one hand, while the other hand changes the pitch of one or more strings with the use of a bar or slide called a steel (generally made of metal but also glass). This may be done with any guitar but is most common on instruments designed and produced for this style of play.

Great (non-pedal) steel players are few and far between because some techniques can be challenging such as slanting the bar, palm damping, thumb damping, and styles of picking not easily mastered.

The Hawaiian guitar style often involves slack-key played in the conventional Spanish position using a conventional fretted guitar in various open tunings, generally with the strings tuned considerably lower than usual. Steel guitar tunings tend to feature closer intervals (2nds and 3rds) whereas slack-key tunings more often contain 4ths and 5ths.

Dobro is a brand of resonator guitars, but the word is most often used to describe bluegrass instruments of several different brands. Tunings and techniques are similar to acoustic Hawaiian steel guitar playing, but have evolved somewhat differently in the bluegrass idiom, which generally involves faster picking and changes than Hawaiian music does.

Bottleneck guitar may have developed from Steel guitar technique. It is similar but the guitar is held in the conventional position and a tubular form of slide is slipped over the middle, ring or little finger to accommodate the playing position. The slide is almost never slanted. Common bottleneck tunings are open D and E chords.

WIKI

Country

Country music was one of the first genres of modern American popular music, and old-time music was its earliest style. It developed in the southeastern states of the USA as a mix of folk music from the British Isles, church music and African American blues. It was played with guitar, mandolin, autoharp, fiddle and banjo. Old-time music was first recorded in the 1920s, with recordings of the Carter Family becoming the most popular. https://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/music-country.htm

James Charles Rodgers (September 8, 1897 – May 26, 1933) was an American singer-songwriter and musician who rose to popularity in the late 1920s. Widely regarded as “the Father of Country Music”,[1] he is best known for his distinctive rhythmic yodeling. Unusual for a music star, Rodgers rose to prominence based upon his recordings, among country music’s earliest, rather than concert performances – which followed to similar public acclaim. Rodgers’ affinity for entertaining came at an early age, and the lure of the road was irresistible to him. By age 13, he had twice organized and begun traveling shows, only to be brought home by his father. His father found Rodgers his first job working on the railroad, as a water boy. Here he was further taught to pick and strum by rail workers and hobos. As a water boy, he would have been exposed to the work chants of the African-American railroad workers, known as gandy dancers.[4][5] A few years later, he became a brakeman on the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad, a position formerly held by his oldest brother, Walter, who had been promoted to conductor on the line running between Meridian and New Orleans.

Dixieland

Dixieland, sometimes referred to as hot jazz or traditional jazz, is a style of jazz based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century. One of the first uses of the term “Dixieland” with reference to music was in the name of the Original Dixieland Jass Band (which shortly thereafter changed the spelling of its name to “Original Dixieland Jazz Band”). Their 1917 recordings fostered popular awareness of this new style of music.