Recommend me some blues

[Trussrod]

Jimi Hendrix, Joe Bonamassa...

[VitaminG]

I was joking about Blues Hammer. Funny but ridiculous.

I heartily agree with Gary Moore, Tbone Walker, Joe Bonamassa, Jeff Healey, Stevie Ray, Buddy Guy, Rory Gallagher already recommended. Also check out Robben Ford & the Blue Line. Derek Trucks. Check out Gary Moore's band, BBM, with Ginger Baker & Jack Bruce. Doyle Bramhall II. Robert Randolph & the Family Band. Los Lonely Boys is pretty good too

[Special-K]

Check out John Lee Hooker, definetly classic.

[axmann]

Hell, Derek Trucks, awesome. John Lee Hooker, master. John Dawson Winter III , Without a doubt.

[sacredgruvn]

Dave Meneketti is quite often overlooked as a blues player. but is worth a listen or two.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-grw2EIh58

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sISxbNm8oE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-YnM0RvKvk

[axmann]

Meneketti is great also. Y&T was an underated band. Too many to list.

[sharktooth]

Joe Bonamassa..
Seen him(and band ) three times now.
Brit festival, BB king 80th birthday celebration. BB King, Joe Bonamassa..and Kenny wayne Shepard!!
Great songs, classics ..new stuff. BB let the 'boys' jam. bonamassa prevailed.
BB stated Joe is like SRV and Jimi, but better.
Joe Bonamassa is modern blues, not the old blind lemon..howlin' wolf contemp stuff. not that there is anything wrong with that stuff!
but...
Bonamassa (Mr) inspired me to start playing again..
(after A hair metal incident/type/second income/situation.
not to ramble, but givin' up on strats..ibanez suck..tried A SL3 recently. Man.
That is the neck/feel for me!
I welcome myself to A wicked cool site!!

[micha]

Oh wow, lots of replies! Thank you very much!
I'll have a look at each recommendation, but it's quite a lot already, could take me a while...
Seems like I definately have to check out Gary Moore and SRV for sure.

@dg: sorry your link is not working. Germany is kind of crazy with music copyrights and stuff, it's a pain in the butt...
But I'll look that up later.

@Endrik: Thanks for your input!
I think I'm looking for both. Rock music with pentatonics is all over the place on my playlists (Zakk, Randy, Alexi, Gilbert, they all have pentatonics everywhere) and I really like it, but I thought it would be nice to have a look at their roots.
I know about this dialog thing going on in the blues, guess it helps imrpovising if you can exchange input with other musicians or try to complement the lyrics...
Your first link is not working here as well, but the second one is pretty nice!
But I think you mean Clark Terry, right? Terry Clarke is a drummer AFAIK...
Got an album with Clark Terry and Oscar Peterson, really good stuff but more jazzy as you mentioned.

@jgcable: totally agree with your point. A lot of players really sound the same and repeat themselves over and over.
I do my best to break out of my habits, boxes and phrases to keep on growing as a player, and I often just feel like some of these guys are praised just for not doing so.
Their tricks and licks are great, and they most likely mastered them, but none the less it feels like they kind of stagnated in second year with regards to what notes to play.
I think many musicians don't care all too much about the instrumental part and just want to express themselves and deliver a message and such, everything else is by-product.
But I'm more a player when listening to music. I wanna hear fresh notes and phrasings I wouldn't have come up with myself.
Though Hooker, BB and all the old masters have my respect, I could not listen to them all night I guess. Well, live most likely but not on CD.
At least not without one bourbon, one scotch and a beer every half an hour.

@Hellbat: Oh Jeff has been mentioned in the first post already IIRC.
But I love his music, great song you chose as well!

@tonemonster: eeerm, ya. Thank you.
All this my woman left me, got no money, fridge is empty lyrics that are everywhere almost feel like writing a powermetal-song to me.
Slay the dragon, stand united in battle, with the sword in your hand, for glory and victory...
Sure it's cool but choosing always the same topics feels quite limiting to me.


Lots of great music here and still many names to check out.
Thanks a lot for contributing everyone!


Oh and welcome aboard sharktooth!

[Endrik]

I say Terry Clark, I'm just a gentlemen and address the soloist formally when introducing him, also some members here are Japanese, I try to be polite.




But none of those guys you mentioned have roots directly from the blues but 60's/70's blues based hard rock... but everyone knows this stuff. But for blues it's better to listen to real blues players and understanding not so much what they played but WHY they played the way they did. And actually it's more eye opening to play with the really old stuff... delta blues records... Robert Johnson and so on... that kind of playing is very different from the electric blues stuff... it still had a lot of the western african folk feel and when it comes to rhythm and voicings then it can be much more complex then the later blues. All these rock players thought that Robert Johnson had two guitars but it was only one.

[micha]

Alright, got myself some Johnson as well as Moore so far. Let's see whether I can adopt some of their style.
Sure there's no way of comparing them.

Johnson sounds a bit like Homer Simpson once in a while when he's going down with his voice...
Musically Clapton seems to go after his direction a bit. At least on his acoustic pieces some of sounds familiar now.
Puristic and more chord based IMO.
Did he use bottlenecks a lot?

But Moore sounds interesting as well. I got Bad for you Baby so far, let's see how it's working for me on the long run.
"Someday Baby" got me almoust instantly, others didn't start of all that great, but it will take some time anyway. I seem to like this slower/mid tempo stuff. Lot's of room left for going crazy there... I like it.
But I'm positive I can get something out of that for sure!

Anything special I should look for with SRV?
Read an interview with his brother Jimmie a while ago. Is he worth a try as well?

Let's see if I can listen myself thru all these recommendations...
Thanks again!

Oh and bye bye sharktooth. Has been nice to chat ya

[Mr Sandman]

Anything special I should look for with SRV?
Read an interview with his brother Jimmie a while ago. Is he worth a try as well?

What exactly are you looking for micha?

A certain technique or tricks that Stevie used?

[VitaminG]

Anything special I should look for with SRV?
Read an interview with his brother Jimmie a while ago. Is he worth a try as well?

depends on what you're after. They have very different styles. Stevie is more from the fiery ball-tearing blues-rock school, lot of Jimi influence there. There's plenty of Albert & Freddy in their too, but it's generally a more fiery style of play. I love it.

Jimmy is more of a traditionalist. So less pyrotechnics. He sounds like all the really old electric blues guys he loves. Slow, tasteful, economical. Stevie is the kid brother who always wanted to go too fast

SRV recommendations? Anything. Everything. His first album, Texas Flood, is an excellent starting point. Or the Montreux live album. Or Live At The El Mocambo dvd.

[micha]

Well, actually just an album to start with, but if he's got something like a signature technique it would be great of course to get a good example of that.

I just found out I enjoy hearing bluesy stuff lately, recognize more elements in the music I usually hear I count as blues-licks or ideas, and I'm just trying to find a way through all these names.
Sure I've heard most of them before, but they all have been there for quite a while and already have like 20 CDs out or something.
I'm looking for some new ideas playing wise and some good music to listen to.
I thought it could be a good way to check out many players of that genre and hear what they do. Most of them I should know about anyway... This whole style is way out of my comfort zone as a player, but that's a shame I think.

edit: I should finnish a post once I start writing... Thanks a lot VitaminG! I'll have look at that!

[murkat]

Want some Bluesy, harden Rock?
Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush (Live) album. (recorded in 73 and still rips my face off.)

[Mr Sandman]

I`m not too sure if this is gonna answer your question or not, but for playing blues (and I play ALOT of blues) you need to know those stock BB, Albert and Freddie licks that everyone knows to communicate the fact that YES, this is the blues...

If we`re talking I, IV, V progressions for playing/soloing (and taking risks musically), I find soloing over major chord progressions to be alot more sonically forgiving (when you get it wrong) then minor blues (which is alot easier to sound terrible over).

Learn you way around the major blues scale as well and slot whatever notes you can from that into that stock pentatonic box we all know and love...

Also, Just say we`re in E major... using that major 3rd (which is G#) is a great way to reinterate the fact that we are in E major (take Angus`s verse riff from `High Voltage` for example).
Also, have a look a Angus`s lead break in `Highway to Hell` for short, quick and simple illustration of mixing minor pentatonic licks with major blues (in the key of A)...

As for the flatted 5th, then T-Bone Walker was the king of tastefully milking the absolute shit of out that note!

Just say we`re E major blues, and lets have a look at your box of tricks in the position of the 12th fret (but mainly what you got on the 3 highest strings)...
I`ll leave the IV (or A) alone cause I wanna talk about when you get the V (or B) in the progression cause it`s really the place to take risks, be dynamic, make peoples ears prick up and get away with it if you sluff it up!
So, what`s stopping you moving your whole box of tricks to the seventh fret position? ...and there`s a whole lotta stuff to do when you get there. You got another important pentatonic shape on the seventh fret (or the Clapton box as they call it), you also got E Dorian (or D major) that fit`s in there nicely, drop a few notes out of that and you got B penatatonic...
Hit us with a major third for B (which is gonna D sharp) to let us know the progression has moved into the V, and bingo your in business.
or go chromatic, be-bop, get off your face!
I`m not saying do this, or do this all the time, but it`s another thing that`s there...

The V in the progression really is the place to take risks musically (and get away with it!)...

A jazz player would call it playing tonally... SRV got this off Buddy Guy (I think). Hendrix did it as well to a lesser extent. I got it off Angus...

Have a look at this kid playing a Stevie song...