Jake Baynes Quarter One Literature Blog

264-320 As I am coming towards the end of my BB King autobiography titled Blues All Around Me,  I have begun to think about the differences in phrasing between Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and BB King. What I have noticed after reading about their approaches as well as listening to their music is that they are all so different. Not only in their lifestyles, but in the way that they produce music. Each musician seems to have a completely different idea on how music should be created and what it should sound like. In my opinion, this has to do with their backgrounds as well as who they are in general. Clapton was raised well through a good school system with a lot of family tension. Clapton did not experience many limitations in what he was trying to do, other than those created by his relationships with people. Mainly, Clapton was a musician with an idea that began his own career and  did his own thing. Jimi on the other hand had a lot of limitations since he was a black man in...

I recently watched this video of BB King talking about his phrasing over a slow blues. I will definitely be applying what he is playing here in a later video! I think that this video is great because BB actually talks about how what he is playing sounds like talking. 

211-234  Leading up to this point in the book, BB has talked about his rise to fame and all of the gigs that he had played throughout this time. Through the huge amount of playing that BB did through 1956 and 1957, he created his own style. (According to BB, in 56' he played 342 one night stands!) Style is something that BB has talked a lot about since the beginning of this book. The way that BB played the guitar and sang meant a lot to him. According to BB, the guitar is like an extension of the human voice. He said that blues is a call and response type of music. This means that one part of the music is creating a call. That is then responded too melodically or rhythmically by another part of the music. To BB, his voice was the call and his guitar was the response. You can see this in the quote that I chose for this blog. BB talks about connecting his singing to his guitar playing as if the two were talking to one another. To further this, BB also has talked a lot about the way ...

128-211 Lucille (111) - The name that BB King gave numerous of his guitars that he felt as though fit the name. Work song (113) - The songs that would be sung during work on plantations. Blue note (130) - The note that makes the blues the blues according to BB King. This note is the Flatted seventh. Blues (130) - A style of music that is purely based from the soul. Delta (131) One of the three most popular styles of blues. Transition (133) WWII marked the transition from acoustic blues to electric blues Chant (114) - A style of singing that was found on the fields of plantations Chicago (132) - The second of the three popular styles/ origins of the blues. Bend (158) - A technique BB King used on the guitar to sound like he was singing through his guitar Vibrato (158) - Another technique that BB used to sound like he was singing on the guitar. Diminished (160) A common sound that BB enjoyed plugging into his solo ideas. He got this idea from Charlie Christian. Charlie Chris...

120-128 Something that I have noticed from reading these three books on famous blues musicians is that they all had very unique past lives that heavily affected their careers in many ways. Clapton, for example, had an extremely complicated childhood with the relationships that he had with his guardians. The examples that he had of a true relationship were tainted and his ability to trust people was damaged. This carried on over into his adult life as he had many relationship problems all the way up to his current relationship. As far as trust issues go, Clapton went through a lot of friends and managers due to his lack of trust in them. Jimi's childhood was full of music and encouragement to be different from his father. Thanks to this, Jimi grew up trying to be unique. This uniqueness is a big factor of his success as he did many things that no other musician would even think about doing. Moving onto BB King, King grew up with divorced parents. At the age of 9 he lost his mother...

113-120 Here is a video of all my favorite musicians playing together. My number one favorite is Derek Trucks. Derek is the one with the long blond hair playing the red guitar in the beginning. The reason that all of these musicians are on stage with BB King is because BB felt as though they represented the blues the best and had the best feel. For me, seeing this video gave me large gratification in the sense that my favorite musicians are phenomenal musicians! Their feel moves me every time I listen to them!