Posted on 12/21/2012 8:34:37 AM PST by chessplayer
A number of problems with that "logic":
No.one: no white person today was around during the days of slavery and few during the days of segregation or involved with the practice. Most white people who liked to play the blues certainly weren't anti-black.
No. two: rock and roll is a derivative of the blues. Virtually all the big hits of early rock were blues structures with a rock beat. Nobody complained about that.
No three: if white people shouldn't be allowed to play the blues, then by similar logic they shouldn't be allowed to listen to it.
No. four: how is it that white people like the blues (an obviously black-born musical expression) in the first place? Liking the blues (or any other black originated musical form like jazz) should be something completely alien to white people's consciousness.
The truth is: people should be allowed to play and sing and listen to any kind of music they want. All humans are connected through music. Which in the final analysis is all the people in the world are: human beings who like what other human beings produce culturally and materially.
...in today’s music market, would it be as big a hit or even a hit as it was over forty years ago?"
That song still kicks ass. I've been slinging rock guitar since the latter '60's, and that's a longtime favorite of mine. He recorded it with a Tele played through a tiny, single-speaker amp (don't recall what brand right now) cranked all the way up to get that distortion. Mic'ing is a lost art now, it seems, especially in the studio.
I saw Walsh and Glenn Frey play with some studio cats at, of all places, an IBM convention in Vegas some years ago. First time I ever got to watch Joe play live, and he was nothing short of amazing. Frey was spacey as hell and just looked.....old. Joe was engaging, funny, and was the undisputed leader on stage. Amazingly fluid playing; one hell of a guitarist/performer.
To your question....I'd love to think that a "Funk 49" produced today would get the requisite airplay to make it a hit, but I sincerely doubt it. The crap most stations put out sounds the same and has all the emotion and fire of chewing on a worn piece of plastic.
My all time favorite musician, hands down, was the late, great Gary Moore. That Irishman could flat wail. He passed not long ago at 58; by the end he had put on a rather enormous amount of weight, and his live performances (can be seen on Youtube) suffered for it. Compare his later versions of "Empty Rooms" to his masterpiece performance of the song, live, in Sweden in 1987. Unbelievable performance. Gary should have stuck to studio work in his latter years, frankly. To this day, though, no one can wring more emotion from a guitar than Gary (Santana included).
“Can’t pretend that getting older doesn’t hurt”
Kind of the theme of the thread, no?
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