Can Blue Women Sing the Whites?

This is a transcipt of a semi-serious email exchange over Christmas between Dubai Nikolai (Nik) and a friend - "F" - on the meaning of emotional authenticity in popular music and the relationship between technical prowess and communicating "soul". If the word anorak is rapidly coming to mind, switch off now. If you're still interested, read on.

F: i know you disapprove of my guilty pleasure, Joss Stone....but
honestly, she was endorsed by James Brown's horn section and bass
player....I know you're a purist, as I am, but I think she may prove
to be the real deal.....only I bet she'll need to gain 250 pounds and
and age 20 years before you accept her? haha.

I guess cutesy teeners aren't supposed to be authentic singing the blues.

Listen to her, at 16, singing "chokin' kind", and I mean really
listen....she's the real deal and better you jump on board now rather
than be proven wrong in 10 years?
No guitarist can touch what Johnny Winter does on Still Alive and
Well...In fact, I need to burn you a copy. It oozes and creams
endlessly. I've never heard better guitar playing (not from Robert
Johnson, Tampa Red, Wes Montgomery, you name it). He's all balls.

Nik: apologies as I thought i'd removed that (anti-Joss Stone) comment from facebook.....she would need to black up as well.. my point is not to dispute her technical capabilities but the unprovable, entirely subjective, notion of emotional range, as a 17 year old she cant convey emotion beyond the format of the song itself....bob has emotional range even though he cant sing....

as for Johnny Winter, I'm happy to receive free music any time...I always found him a bit lacking in ...well...emotion...very capable, lots of white blues rock bluster but nothing of the soul of bbking or elmore james...or (not bad for a white man) the jazz influenced blues playing of john mclaughlin playing with mid 80s miles davis (Your Under Arrest)

F: I suppose you're right on all those points; however, may I tease out an idea? the assumption seems to suggest that only one who experiences X (pain from racism, heartache, poverty) can write, sing, perform authentically about those worldly ills. And thus, only those who experienced the Thing (not rock man from Marvel comics) can do art about the thing. Now I fully agree for the most part. You remember Hanson, the pretty boy rock band? I remember them singing "Where's the Love" and thought to myself, now how are these teen boys going to advise me about the perils of love? But ultimately, they just sucked at their art. It was wrong for me to hurl an ad hominum at them, attacking their age/ethos rather than their actual thesis statement on love. For after all, they were only singing about the same perils of love that Shakespeare alerted us about in Romeo and Juliet. (And Shakespeare was only saying what the legacy of western literature said before he said it, only Shakespeare said, to quote Pope (Alexander, not Benedict), what was oft thought, but never so well expressed. In other words, it's the musicality and the technicality that matters, not some authentic ethos (for many live the life of the blues but still pump gas rather than 3 chords).

And so, I state further, didn't Stephen Crane write realistically about the Civil War and yet he never donned a uniform nor shot a gun?

Didn't Dostoevsky capture the physical stress and mental torment of killing a pawn broker in his classic work Crime and Punishment without ever having commit a murder himself, didn't Berlioz compose symphonies without knowning how to play an instrument? And doesn't a male doctor tell a woman about pregnancy and pregnant conditions and experiences without ever having spread his own legs and crap out a kid, as they say in Texas? And so the authentic ethos seems to be an artistic construction, in my view, not something uniquely lived.

Nik: This does feel like an academic debate now (with maybe the emphasis on the word academic)?..

I may in fact have set off a false hare. I do not think you have to be black and or poor to sing about suffering, although frankly it can OFTEN (but not always) help to sing about being poor if you've experienced it. Much trad blues lyricism is the stuff of songs the world over: emotional heartache which can afflict us all, from any walk of life. Bob at one time did "authenticity" on the subject of poverty despite being the son of middle class professional parents, so this proves the case you are making (and I am not disputing this).

My more substantive point as about what I, perhaps a bit pretentiously, call "emotional range". This, as I said, is entirely subjective. The names I mentioned - from one particular album - John McLoughlin, neither black nor I think from particularly proletarian roots. Does an artist play or sing with emotional conviction is for me a key factor, especially when they are performing in the arena of soul, love ballads, etc (But how on earth does anyone pass a test akin to ideological policing by communists, I hear you wonder).

This is all in the ear of the beholder. Age and relevant experience, I would suggest, can help, but they are NOT the sole qualifications.

My point about white blues-rock bluster is not to say I don't like it, but it to me is contrasting say the subtleties of Robbie Robertson with another blues influenced stylist Steve Ray Vaughan. Josh Stone does not make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end, but then nor do many black singers (as opposed to some black jazz players). Perhaps older white men are in a better position to do that to me personally (at my age). At the of the day, it will not be done with "balls" but with a capacity to run the emotional gamut ? from balls to beauty, soft to hard, and back again. "Listen To the Lion" , the live version from "It's Too Late to Stop Now" is in my view one of the greatest soul songs of all time. That's soul with both a capital and a small s.

F: Ah....so here is something for us to unearth: We both have decades of listening experience in many genres, from dixie land to grunge. Bob has raised the hackles on both of our unshaven backs. I totally know what you mean when you say Van Morrison makes you weep; for me it's Tupelo Honey, and They Sold Me Out. And I can totally relate to Stevie Ray V; in fact, I think he blows Hendrix away, maybe for those subtleties and for the ability to run the gamut from balls-y bathos to sublime beauty that you mention. In a word, then, I say I trust your judgement; your appreciation for the greats and the gods is an appreciation that stems from sincere commitment, an understanding both of the head and the heart.

But how in the hell can you take that poseur BB King seriously? He's the Stephen King of the Blues; what the Pussycat Dolls are to pop, BBKing is to the blues. In addition, he's a horrible hack on the guitar, an embarrassment to the instrument; and even the non-guitar slinger should be able to figure that out with a simple comparison between BB King's playing and any other Blues player. BB King is the biggest name in the blues and he's the least talented. Is it possible, that even with all of our shared listening experience, that we let a few undeserved ones in?

I mean, those who don't really get crazy about music will usually listen to a song, say, in a hotel pool side, because they are used to the song, rather than songs they don't know. This is why the undiscovered talents of the world play covers at Holiday Inn pool sides and not their own original music. Better to hear a bad version of "Dream Weaver" than a good version of an unknown song? My point is this: just as one can make mistakes in playing music, especially when they are new to the instrument, is it possible that one can make mistakes in listening and judging music, especially when first encountering the genre? I'm assuming you've been a long time fan of BB King; is it possible he snuck in before your better judgement was formed? And, because BB is a brand (like Mac or HP) perhaps you got used to it and perhaps his name is so big that one not dare criticize such a big brand. It would be like dismissing Honda?

Now, Joss Stone I accepted long after decades of hearing the greats. Trust me, I was the first one to stare with mouth and ears agape when I first heard her.....thinking this can't be true. This must be a voice over. But I think her age and cutesy teen look is a surprise defense of her authenticity. She has risen far above those who shrugged her aside. All the greats are aberrations; is not Joss Stone the most incredible aberration one has ever seen in blues music?

I must say a few words in praise of Johnny Winter. The guy is a god on guitar. He's gritty and balls-y but his greatest gift is hearing the sweet notes in his wicked solos, like begonias on hills of a gritty shit pile, I suppose (shit in this sense as in "the shit"). But maybe only guitar players can notice it? After all, he's a guitar player's guitar player, in the way I'm a man's man. haha.

Let me ask you the key question in my crusade to make you a Joss Stone fan: have you heard one full album from start to finish?

Nik: BB King can do (a lot of) subtlety and plays it with warmth; he also has a great soul voice (check out Live at The Regal)

Again, the danger is measuring talent by technical ability, or perhaps allowing talent to equal emotional engagement (I therefore refer to my previous statements on the latter)

I am in need of hearing more JW, but not more Stevie Ray V (my point on him was meant to emphasize that were he still alive he wouldn't be fit to clean out Robbie's water closet

Joss all the way through??no. never could cope?but don't copy me one?please!

F: i think there is a false dichotomy between "feeling" and "technical ability"; in the same way "feeling" songs are "slow" and technical ability songs are "fast." ?????

for example, there's a Fernando Sor guitar piece that is very slow but the fingerings on the fret board twist into knots, takes great technical ability.

ultimately, i believe that a musician cannot "sell" feeling in a song without having technical ability. (although the sex pistols seem to do this, so maybe I'm wrong).

The ultimate music is a Bach Fugue: it demands technical skill, feeling, intellectual composition, and a combination of rigid form and the freedom of jazz as it develops.

So, actually, in my opinion, we should trash every musician we ever mentioned, because, as I declared in 1992, "All Roads Lead to J.S. Bach"

and, in 1993, I declared, "Bach is God."

Nik: I simply meant that fast can mean bluster; slow can certainly be complicated, in music and many other respects....

By the way, thanks for reminding me of Fernando Sor...I have an old vinyl LP of his only, so its nice to recall his talents...

obviously rock n roll is awash with those who convey feeling without technical ability (we've already discussed Bob's vocal exploits!)

God is in the mind, no?

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