Country/Folk Music and Jazz/Blues

[Farmer Reil]

If anyone is wondering why I've grouped those four totally different musical genres together... well, if you can explain the difference I'd be grateful. I'm strugglin'. Especially between the two styles within each group. The differences between jazz and country are pretty obvious even to me, but jazz and blues? Country and folk?

Backstory: My local runs two music nights a month, the first is a free-for-all bring your own instrument and join in type dealio, where they/we play mainly folk music. The second is a more structured deal with invited guest musicians (in addition to the core 'house band' that are also at the folk night). Anyway, how I got started going to these things is a long story, involving a drunken Scot and my room mate's father. Moving on... I quite like it. Now, I'm not talking Garth Brooks, Dolly Parton, etc. I'm not that old yet. And I still don't like Townes Van Zandt. But some stuff is excellent, even when played by several averagely talented (and some very talented) drunk guys in a pub.

I've got a few albums so far: Steve Earle's Best Of, B.B. King/Eric Clapton 'Ride with The King', a Tommy Emmanuel album, a Seasick Steve album and the Crossroads soundtrack (the 1986 movie with Tuvok and The Karate Kid, not the ITV soap, obviously). Edit: I have to say though, I much prefer the vocal stylings of Earle and Seastick Steve to, say, BB King. King just seems to shout "Owww mah babey!" a lot between every other word for no real reason. Gets sort of annoying

So yeah. Any suggestions along those lines would be good. Especially artists similar to Steve Earle. There's just something I like about his music.

Obviously Clapton's entire discography is a must when funds will allow; how I managed to like music as a whole so much, yet completely ignore Eric Clapton is just... what the fuck have I been doing these past few years?

So:

Clapton. Who's next? I'm mainly looking for the 'big' artists within each genre. The artists you'd expect to hear played if you went to such a jazz/country night. I figure a good start would be to find out who the 'main' artists are and get each of their Best Of's, where applicable. I'll get into the newer/more obscure stuff later. I know we have a few guys into this type of music, so any help would be appreciated.

Edited September 21, 2008 by Farmer Reil

[Guest Mr. Bump]

Jazz vs. blues I can kind of help with, although I take it you're looking for jazz rock/blues rock more than non-rock.

As an extreme generalization 'jazz' can be one genre of which things like 'swing', 'blues', 'true r&b' etc. etc. are all subsets. Blues is GENERALLY slower and one of the main differences is that it has standard chord progressions, but that probably won't mean anything to you.

Blues rock would include Clapton/Cream as you mentioned, Led Zeppelin, The Band, Colin James (not that anyone would recognize it), David Wilcox (ditto), Jeff Healey Band, Van Morrison, George Thorogood...

If you want to expand it into other forms of jazz, look at Frank Sinatra and his imitators (obviously this might not fit with your clientele), the Blues Brothers (most of their music was closer to R&B), swing stuff like the Brian Setzer Orchestra, Steely Dan (actually, if you're to take one band away from this, let it be Steely Dan), Blood Sweat and Tears, Paul Anka's "Rock Swings" album, and for more rock-oriented stuff, maybe some Dire Straits - or, at a stretch, Steve Miller Band.

Anyhow, there's a few names that will hopefully help.

[Hobo]

If you like Steve Earle, you might like Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt.

[Skummy]

Ugh, Clapton is dreadful - the epitome of everything wrong with the blues - the blues should have all but died out after rock and roll kicked in, if it weren't for the fact that hundreds of middle-class white pricks thought it would be cool to play a derivative version of it themselves, without any clue as to the context of the music, and generally bastardising the whole thing. When was the last time you heard a young black man play the blues? And even if they did, when was the last time a black man played the blues to a black audience? B.B. King's just as bad, he cashed in on what white people wanted out of the blues and created some utter, utter shite.

Good blues singers - Howlin' Wolf (the ultimate), Screaming Jay Hawkins, Son House, Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson. If you like Seasick Steve you should like at least a few of them. If you take only one of those away, it should probably be Robert Johnson - far from my favourite, but he's the blues singer, especially if you like Clapton, who is obscenely indebted to his work.

Jazz is completely different. Whilst blues is derived from work songs, field songs and African American church singing, jazz is rooted in the fact that black people began learning to play "European" instruments but were never given access to classical training, and created something of a parody of white dance bands with unique rhythms and such because of their self-taught nature. Now, the first few decades of that are utter wank. Jazz starts to get good around the '30s - Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Count Basie etc. - even if you haven't heard any of their songs, you'll be at least marginally aware of their style because it's so consistently leant itself to homage and parody - a lot of music in cartoons, and pretty much all the music in films like The Corpse Bride lends itself to this kind of era.

Bebop, cool and hard bop in the '50s are probably the strongest point for jazz, it's where more of the household names come from - Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane for example - Charlie Parker's probably my favourite of that era, although obviously Davis is one of the greatest, and Coltrane's "Blue Train" and "A Love Supreme" are must-have jazz records.

Chet Baker is worth checking out from around this time, too, he's a kind of distilled cool jazz that lead to more of the vocal-based types that get labelled "jazz" for whatever reason by the music press - the Jamie Cullums of the world - he was a trumpeter turned vocalist who wrote and recorded some beautifully melancholy songs, again there's a few that you might know without ever realising they were one of his.

Billie Holliday's another obvious one - if you're looking for stuff with vocals, then Billie is the ultimate. Hell, Billie is a Goddess whatever you're after, everyone needs some of her music in your life. A close second is Nina Simone - again, someone with plenty of songs you'll have heard covered even if you've never heard her versions - most notably in recent years would be "Feeling Good", which Muse did a surprisingly good job of.

Sun Ra is also definitely worth checking out - he's one of my all-time favourite musicians and heroes, an insanely talented bandleader and pianist, recorded literally hundreds of albums from the '50s right through to his death in '93, was a fantastically eccentric individual and despite often being discredited for being something of a novelty through the more outlandish elements of his personality and stageshow and through the anachronisms of his material (playing free jazz when such a thing didn't truly exist, yet when the world was desperate to hear the kind of thing he'd been playing decades earlier, playing note-perfect covers of entire concerts by old swing bands), he's one of the most phenomenal, overlooked and important figures not just in jazz, but in music. He pioneered the visual elements of live music, the use of lightshows, and creation of mystique and character - without Sun Ra there's an argument there'd be no MC5, no Pink Floyd and certainly no Parliament/Funkadelic - and the influence of all of those bands is nigh-on immeasurable.

Basically, while blues is a very self-contained genre and, due to its massive influence on rock and pop music (well, white rock and pop music - black music tends to be far more progressive and has stripped itself of pretty much all blues influence) is relatively easy to get into, and to understand once you've got there, jazz is something entirely other. It would be like saying "recommend me some rock bands, I really want to listen to some rock" - where do you begin? It's a whole different musical world, more often than not completely apart from anything else, so it can be a lot trickier to find your way into.

And I still don't like Townes Van Zandt.

If you like Steve Earle, you might like Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt.

As for country and folk, the difference there is largely to do with origins. Country music comes from the US Southern States, folk music refers to any kind of traditional indigenous music - so folk music in the UK is entirely different to folk music in Russia or Africa, and folk music in America is something of a question mark. More often than not, though, it's used to describe the '50s and '60s folk music revival, in which case;

Woody Guthrie. Cannot go wrong there. He's the American folk singer, even moreso than Bob Dylan. Although, obviously, Dylan's someone to check out too. Be careful where you start there, though, despite having a reputation as one of the all-time greats, you need to pick the right album - because get a bad album, and chances are it'll put you off Dylan for a long time. Start with Blood On The Tracks or Blonde On Blonde and you're pretty much sorted.

Country - Johnny Cash is the obvious choice. Some Willie Nelson can be pretty good, although he goes down the country gimmick path a little too often for my liking, Waylon Jennings is a pretty safe bet, and Gram Parsons is absolutely brilliant. Hank Williams is an obvious suggestion.

In fact, Hank Williams III might be something to your liking - he plays country music in the tradition of his grandfather (and father, to a lesser extent), but with something of a disdain for the country music establishment, and with a definite punk and metal influence to his music, as well as playing guitar with Superjoint Ritual and having worked with Pantera, The Melvins and the Rollins Band.

Phew. Longer than I expected. Hopefully of some help, got carried away with jazz.

[Spee]

I see folk has been somewhat lost in the shuffle so far here. The main distinction between it and country music is that the former term mainly applies to Southwestern American genres that have 'country' as a catch-all term. It has its roots partly in roots folk and gospel music, good examples being any of the Hank Williams dynasty, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline and the Dixie Chicks; folk music isn't limited to one area of the world in its use - even 'world music' (a terrible term for a genre) is sometimes included in it.

Thematically, a lot of the songs concern a simpler time and a lot of traditional music would be under the umbrella of folk; it goes back hundreds of years and predates classical music (though that term ought to strictly define a period of music rather than an entire genre). Then there is folk rock/popular folk, which has its roots in traditional music. Famous examples would be Bob Dylan, The Pogues, Clannad, Fairport Convention and Donovan.

Edited September 22, 2008 by Spee

[METALMAN]

Steely Dan (actually, if you're to take one band away from this, let it be Steely Dan

You likee Steely Dan?

I think they're fantastic.

[Hobo]

Reily can BIH for not loving TVZ. :@

Guy Clark is still six shades of awesome. Steve Earle's son Justin Townes Earle is also not that bad. Woody Guthrie can get a bit grating, like a lot of folk singers of his ilk everything is kinda sung in the same manor and I personally wouldn't think him very good to listen to in a large dose. I'd say go for the later Cash, some of the early stuff is good but again - if you like hearing different songs played over the same bass and guitar sound then that's your business But with Cash there is alot of stuff like Dylan too, it's not all great but what is really great is really great.

Willie Nelson, his pure country stuff is kinda bleh to good. Avoid Country Man (his reggae album), The Great Divide, Songbird and Across The Boarderline are some fantastic albums of his. Teatro isn't bad either.

Other names I can think of, John Prine, Kris Kristofferson, if were talking folk I'll throw Loudon Wainwright III into that mix. I suppose Harry Chapin could go in this too.

Edited September 22, 2008 by HoboObohHbob

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

Steely Dan (actually, if you're to take one band away from this, let it be Steely Dan

You likee Steely Dan?

I think they're fantastic.

I'm not a huge fan, but they're probably the best example of mainstream jazz rock there is

[METALMAN]

Oh. I thought I had finally met someone other than my dad I could talk about Steely Dan with. I'll have to keep looking I suppose.

[Lowerdeck]

Since Willie Nelson was brought up, has anyone else heard the live album he did with Wynton Marsalis?

[GRIFT]

I second the Chet Baker love. Grab his Prince of Cool double disc collection-- one half is instrumental and the other is with him singing.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Steve Earle's son Justin Townes Earle is also not that bad

Adding to that, neither is Bob Dylan's son, Jakob. His solo stuff is a little more in the vein of what his daddy did. I may as well be legally required to pimp Johnny Cash out as well, seeing as he's from Arkansas. Tex Ritter, John Ritter's father, he's good. Marty Robbins is a little more mainstream but he's got some good songs too.

There's a guy that I'm forgetting and it's really bugging me now, but I remember listening to him in a country documentary called Naked In Nashville or something to that effect. All I can remember is that the guy's friends with Hank III and tends to agree with him on a lot of things about modern country.

[K]

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[Vendetta]

David Allen Coe (Stay clear of the X-rated shit. Its not him and He has gone as far as completley tearing the composer of the x-rated shit a new asshole.)

Merle Haggard

As far as folk music..Everlast qualifies I do beleive. I have his newest album and its pretty tight. Steve Earle is great that entire Copperhead Road album is fucking great.

[Hobo]

Bonnie Prince Billy/Will Oldham kinda fits in here too come to think of it.

[Skummy]

Lee Hazlewood. How the fuck did I forget Lee Hazlewood? One of the finest producers and songwriters of all time, bar none. He wrote "These Boots Are Made For Walking", and it wasn't even CLOSE to being one of his best. That's how good he is.

[Vendetta]

Kriss Kirsstoferson

[mrmayhem87]

If I read into your OP corectly, you are looking for the big acts crrently charting in the genres. If that is correct, I can help you with country, I would suggest you start out with Brad Paisly and maybe some Rodney Atkins.