Blues for lindy hop

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CafeSavoy
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#16 Post by CafeSavoy » Wed May 14, 2003 5:02 pm

i'd agree with Lawrence about Charles Brown, some examples
Charles Brown, So Goes Love (nice version of Money Getting Cheaper)
Charles Brown, One More For The Road (nice version of Route 66)

There's a blues version of Route 66 on James Cotton's Superharp that might work.
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=am ... xuak3kkm3x

You could try the blues tributes to Louis Jordon, one by BB King and the other by Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown.
The B.B King Boxset,King of the Blues, might have some useable stuff too.

The Carrie Smith (St Louis Blues) and Helen Humes (Sneaking Around with You)
on the Definitive Black and Blue Recordings might work too.

Some other blues artists you might want to check out

Big Al Dupree, Swings the Blues
Jimmy Nelson, Rockin' and Shoutin' the Blues
Alberta Adams, Born with the Blues
Willie "Big Eyes", Bag Full of Blues
Anne Di Price, Wild Women

if i think of more, i'll post them later.

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LazyP
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#17 Post by LazyP » Thu May 15, 2003 3:09 am

Thanx for all the tips, I'll check them out as soon as I get the time to do it (hopefully during the weekend)

/Patrik
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main_stem
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#18 Post by main_stem » Thu May 15, 2003 8:04 am

Lawrence wrote:
Drew wrote:Blues is a word with so many different meanings and implications.
That's why I avoid using the Swedish (Herrang) term "Blues dancing:" because of the very confusion that results from it. Why add to the ambiguity?
I just call it the slow grind.
"We called it music."
— Eddie Condon

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main_stem
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#19 Post by main_stem » Thu May 15, 2003 8:09 am

Another person you might try is Big Joe Turner. The album Boss of the Blues [1956] is great. It also features Pete Johnson on piano.
"We called it music."
— Eddie Condon

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#20 Post by CafeSavoy » Thu May 15, 2003 8:26 am

main_stem wrote:Another person you might try is Big Joe Turner. The album Boss of the Blues [1956] is great. It also features Pete Johnson on piano.
Yeah that's sweet. Another great one from '56 is "Big Joe Rides Again"
with Pete Johnson plus Coleman Hawkins and Vic Dickenson. It's a nice
mix of blues and standards.

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#21 Post by KevinSchaper » Thu May 15, 2003 12:50 pm

Lawrence wrote: That's why I avoid using the Swedish (Herrang) term "Blues dancing:" because of the very confusion that results from it. Why add to the ambiguity?
The term goes back at least to Mura Dehn using it in Spirit Moves, the dancing on film isn't exactly the same, a more "perfomy" version of the same thing, I think, but her description is dead on...

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#22 Post by LazyP » Fri May 16, 2003 12:35 am

Yeah, I already got some Big Joe Turner. Went through all my BJT stuff and came up with one full cd (80 mins) with good stuff for lindy.
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Greg Avakian
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#23 Post by Greg Avakian » Fri May 16, 2003 6:46 am

Lawrence wrote:Jimmy Witherspoon made his name partly as a Blues shouter singing jump blues before he mellowed out quite a bit and sang with more jazzy combos. Lindy Hoppers tend to only know about his less famous, jazzy-blues, Groove-swing stuff, not his popular stuff. Y'all are referring to different periods of his career or different recordings in his vast book of recordings, so you're all correct, in a sense.
He definitely started out as a Jump Blues guy.
I have about 10-12 Witherspoon albums which I bought in the hope that they would all be as good as "Jazz me blues" or (my favorite) "The 'Spoon concerts".

Look at the personel on the spoon concerts, how could you go wrong?

"This single CD (which reissues all of the music from an earlier two-LP set) includes the high point of singer Jimmy Witherspoon's career. On October 2, 1959, he appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival and created such a sensation that it caused his career to go through a renaissance. Heard at the peak of his powers, Witherspoon holds his own with a mighty group of veterans (trumpeter Roy Eldridge, both Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins on tenors, clarinetist Woody Herman, pianist Earl Hines, bassist Vernon Alley, and drummer Mel Lewis). Although the five-song set only lasted 25 minutes, Witherspoon's performance was the hit of the festival. The other half of this CD features Witherspoon romping through ten mostly traditional blues songs two months later with Webster, baritonist Gerry Mulligan, pianist Jimmy Rowles, bassist Leroy Vinnegar, and drummer Mel Lewis; the performance is equally exciting. Highly recommended, this CD is the one truly essential Jimmy Witherspoon release." — Scott Yanow, Allmusic.com
Last edited by Greg Avakian on Fri May 16, 2003 12:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Lawrence
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#24 Post by Lawrence » Fri May 16, 2003 11:05 am

KevinSchaper wrote:
Lawrence wrote: That's why I avoid using the Swedish (Herrang) term "Blues dancing:" because of the very confusion that results from it. Why add to the ambiguity?
The term goes back at least to Mura Dehn using it in Spirit Moves, the dancing on film isn't exactly the same, a more "perfomy" version of the same thing, I think, but her description is dead on...
I have not seen that movie, but that brings to mind yet another ambiguous meaning of the term: namely, what "artist-dancers" (mainstream performance dancers) mean when referring to "Blues Dancing:" more like Gene Kelly's montage dancing in An American In Paris; demonstrative, big, individual, choreographed, Greek-tragedy-style body movement that is quite the contrary to what "we" mean (subtle, slow, unchoreographed movement with a partner).

Just adding the word "slow" to make it "slow blues dancing" would help. "Blues dancing" is too ambiguous: implying that dancing to Stevie Ray Vaughn, up-tempo Jimmy Witherspoon, or even Count Basie is not "Blues Dancing." It's also not a big deal; just something I've found moderately annoying enough over the years to elicit a comment.
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#25 Post by KevinSchaper » Fri May 16, 2003 11:30 am

Lawrence wrote: "Blues dancing" is too ambiguous: implying that dancing to Stevie Ray Vaughn, up-tempo Jimmy Witherspoon, or even Count Basie is not "Blues Dancing."
It also helped that there were a little more specific names in the film (dunno if they were invented by Mura or came from the dancers).. I can't recall any of them now, other than the Al Minns solo diaper bit was called Male Shake Blues - I think the close subtle(r) one had a name having to do with rent parties...

but what can you do - there are people that associate swing dancing with the backstreet boys. :)

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