Mississippi delta blues....which being from there...i know... i grew up with it
Its about women problems more than bad white folks
Leadbelly....yes i know.. not Miss....is one notable exception....he had a hard on for crackers
I knew BB King.....Son Thomas instructed my cousin....those men didn't hate whites....they may have resented their hard station early on but hell most rural whites were poor too.....their biggest issues were women...vice...the law ...no money.....not strange fruit
And 2 more points
Rock and roll is as much country as blues....listen to Hank or Jimmy
Blacks were not blackballed.....segregation yes...but folks heard them trust me
Berry like Jerry Lee killed his career due to his wild Johnson....a racially blind animal....the Johnson
And btw.....where did Charley, Son, Robert and Blind get those guitars?
Did their kin bring em over on slave ships?
Nope....evil white man provided and inspired em somewhere along the line
Everything is not about whites being bad to blacks....
That sorta mindset has given us the poor dead black kid cir
I just stand stunned how much folks just eat it up.....
Alan Lomax senior....righteous recorder of great men
His son a liberal turd who overcharges for pics
Btw....whites like Stones....Cream....SRV....and so forth owe no apologies for taking the old music to new heights and really transforming it any more than Jimi owed Dylan
/rant
I was talking with John Lee Hooker one day in his house in Redwood Shores in the SF Bay Area back in the mid 80s. He back up what you are saying, “The Blues was born when woman was born, if there were no women, there are no blues.”
I was there at his 70th birthday, green were cooking on the stove, Frank had just called to wish a happy birthday and Carlos dropped by with A Lucille from B.B. Robben Ford was there are well as members of the Coast to Coast Blues Band. Robben had a new album out.
I remember his living room, there was a BIG picture of SRV hanging there. He would say that George would come over and rifle through that box over there—the one that had all the songs and George would steal his songs (saying that with a smile.)
JLH told of how he was battling the music companies so that musicians could get their money. He was trying to get back royalities for Muddy’s estate.
I remember my wife and I sitting in his bedroom when John Lee would have his foot up because of the gout and how he got on the phone to Carlos to set up a gig.
I asked John Lee once, sitting in his living room with the ball game on; a living room that was quite ordinary and suburban; if he ever imagined that he would have it this good, (or something to that effect), John Lee’s answer was simply, “no.”
He talked about the Stones and how Mick and Keith would sneak backstage with their runny noses to get up close, (This would have been during the American Folk And Blues Festival Tours that began hitting Europe in the very early 60s)
Have they ever heard of Berry Gordy and Motown. Was Motown, "white bread," even though the company was started by one black man, and utilized the talents of mostly black people, in performing, composing, and business? Motown's first million selling single (Shop Around, by the Miracles #2) was in 1960, and first #1 (Please Mr. Postman by the Marvelettes) were long before the Beatles and Stones made it. In this guy's opinion the white Rolling Stones had to bring black music to the attention of America, because Motown didn't exist. And by the way, Gordy enforced a standard of dress and performance that Dean Martin certainly would have been comfortable with.
(By the way, the Rolling Stones covered many Motown songs, the ones I know of being: Ain't to Proud to Beg and Just My Imagination, and My Girl from the Temptations, Can I get a Witness and Hitch Hike from Marvin Gaye, I Don't Know Why from Stevie Wonder, Money from Barret Strong (co-written by Gordy), Going to a Go Go by Smokey Robinson. Under my Thumb was obviously an homage to Motown) If the Stones acknowledge Motown as legitimate, how come they needed to bring it to a white bread America that was already widely consuming it?
***Charley, Son, Robert and Blind***
These guys were born about fifty years after slavery, of course they didn’t sing about it. The blues is much older that we have recordings of, Alan notwithstanding.
I should restate my earlier premise in that it was not so much about “massa”, but about long days and hard work as well as all the usual things people deal with.