4 Jul
2003
4 Jul
'03
11:27 a.m.
On Fri, 2003-07-04 at 07:16, Daniel James wrote:
Bo Diddley listened to (and borrowed from) every other blues musician
around at the time.
He was on heroin before he was rich and famous. My point was that
*everyone* has had it bad at some point in their life. No one has
exclusive rights on suffering. I get real tired of hearing that old
line - you can't play blues because you're A) white, B) not poor, C)
didn't grow up during the depression, D) not an alcoholic/addict, E) not
from Mississippi, F) fill in your reason here. Music, of any genre, is
not the sole property of any one group of people. You can still play
and write good reggae even if you're not from Jamaica ;-)
Jan
I suppose that's why Chuck always insisted on being paid in full, in
cash, before he would go on stage. There's a famous story about a
promoter in the UK having to push banknotes one at a time under the
dressing room door.
That's outstanding. I don't blame him a bit.
Will Bach be
upset that Chuck Berry lifted complete sounds from
his work at times?
I don't think the lift was quite so complete, or close in time. To
take the example of Bo Diddley, he would have been able to hear
plenty of derivative music coming out of his radio while he was still
working. On one level that's flattering, on another it must be
upsetting - especially if the sound-alike bands are getting all the
attention and making all the money.
The general problem of 'intellectual property'
seems to apply across
many arts. Disney, for example, had very few orginal ideas, but is
now keen to keep all the folk stories it borrowed in an
ever-extending copyright envelope. Just parody or otherwise adapt
Mickey Mouse, and see how far a defence of creativity gets you in
front of the judge.
The fairy tales *are* public domain, Mickey Mouse was an original
creation. You can legally parody Mickey Mouse any time you want (it's
been done a million times).
Those 60's British musicians weren't exactly starting with the raw
stone - more like taking a mould of the sculpture.
Bo Diddley did the same thing. Robert Johnson got some of his lines
from other blues players of his day. The wheel is always turning. I
still remember the first time I heard La Grange by ZZ Top. I was
walking through the parking lot of a local arcade and I heard irt
playing on the juke box. I thought "Great, we've got John Lee Hooker on
the box!". When I went to check it out I was wondering who the hell ZZ
Top was. Bernard Bessman later sued over that song - ZZ Top settled out
of court and the settlement is sealed. They've had other problems along
those lines too. This is humorous because Jimi Hendrix at one time said
that Billy Gibbons was his favorite guitar player.
In my opinion,
anyone
who has been addicted to heroin and whose son has done a one-way
nose dive out of a fourth story window has a right to play the
blues.
I think Clapton's career as a bluesman was well established by the
time those things happened.