I spoke on jazz and blues at the University of Jordan, a modern 45,000-student institution, in an event sponsored by the American Embassy while in Amman on family matters a couple weeks ago. About 50 avid students of music, arts and literature and their informed faculty watched videos of Louis Armstrong at age 32 doing “Dinah,” Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie playing “Hot House,” Billie Holiday with all-stars singing “Fine and Mellow” and Muddy Waters among other immortals from the American Folk Blues Festival, 1962-69, vol. 3. I talked about blues and jazz being one in essence, but different in practice. Then second-year Jordanian student Nabil Gonzalez played banjo, harmonic and sang two original numbers in a U.S. folkie style. “I’m passionately in love with bluegrass music!” Gonzalez told me. Other of the young people were eager for jazz and blues, but said they had little access to the music or information about it.
Robert Johnson on speed
Musicologists are convinced blues icon Robert Johnson’s recordings as released are 20% faster than he performed in two solo sessions in 1936 and 1937. It’s unclear whether they were sped up intentionally (to push their excitement, which seems hardly necessary) or accidentally at some point in the chain between microphone and pressing plant. What is obvious is that since only 11 of the 41 existent Johnson takes were issued by Vocalion on 78 rpm discs during his lifetime (and one posthumously), his complete documented repertoire of 29 tunes issued on two Columbia Records lps, King of the Delta Blues Singers (1961) and King of the Delta Blues Singers, Vol. 2 (1970) and finally 41 tracks, alternates and all, released on a best-selling 2-CD boxed set, Robert Johnson The Complete Recordings by Columbia in 1990, we have probably never heard what the blues’ most influential singer-guitarist actually sounded like.
Blues lyrics: write to win
For tickets to Jazz at Lincoln Center this weekend or a dvd of Wynton Marsalis and Willie Nelson performing live, try writing a blues. How hard can it be?
“Minutes seem like hours, hours seem like days,
Seems my baby would stop her lowdown ways” — Muddy Waters, “Country Blues”
 “Woke up this morning, looked ’round for my shoes
You know I had those mean old walkin’ blues” — Robert Johnson, “Walkin’ Blues”Â
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“Whoa, oh tell me baby
Where did ya stay last night? An’ why don’t ya hear me cryin’?
Whoo hoo, whoo whoo,Â
Whoo who. . . ” — Howlin’ Wolf, “Smokestack Lightning”