" ha ha ha ha! a bluesman?!! $@!&! this is rich! Where, where you from?" "Long Island"

"hahahahaha! Looooong Island! the famous breeding ground for bluesmen!"

Blind Dog Fulton the one and only Willie Brown.

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

i'm an old metal head. when i think blues i think of "stormy monday". you pick the artist.

Gorgon, that's from the beginning of the movie when he's still in the nursing home. By the end of the film, Willie sees him as a real "blues man" and tells him to take the blues to new places (right before the end credits). You apparently saw the movie, but I'm not sure you quite 'got it'.

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Yeah i got it and here it is! "You gonna be a janitor, act like one!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sholYRVh0g#t=11m29secs

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

::::face-palm:::: again, this clip is from the beginning of the movie.

Looks like ol' Willie is feeling it in this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfH_bikDZS4

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Yeah but he was feeling like that 'cos he was drunk on that whiskey he was sluggin' back!!!

That scene from the nursing home was brilliant, putting the young whippersnapper in his place

That whole film is on YT.

Like the bit in there when Eugene says "I'll put on some mileage when i get out of Juilliard" and Willie says "When you get out of Julie who?!!"

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

Does he seem sober in this clip at the end?

"Take the music some place else, take it past where you found it, 'cause that's what we did"

http://youtu.be/Aw4dUbutja4?t=13m21s

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I've got one of those Pignose's as well!

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

Blues has nothing to do with race, financial status, background or even experiencing the "loss" of something precious.

By that definition, only white hayseed southerners should be able to play country and western, only black heroin junkies can play jazz, only white suburban northerners can play folk, and only Europeans can play classical.

Blues has nothing to do with that--it has everything to do with touch, feel, emotion, sensitivity and (for lack of a better term), "soul"...

Billy Gibbons grew up comfortably in the better part of Houston, but that man is as authentic of a blues player as anyone.

Kim Wilson is (arguably) the greatest blues harp player ever (outside of Little Walter)...he can play in the style(s) of Little Walter, Big Walter, both Sonny Boys, James Cotton...and his own amazing style as well.

Jimmie and Stevie, Peter Green, Tab Benoit, Buddy Whittington, Rollo Smith, Duane Allman, Greg Allman, Reese Wynans, Lee Roy and Rob Roy Parnell, Ry Cooder, Sonny Landreth, Tommy Shannon, George Rains, Dr. John, Sarah Brown, Rory Block, Derek O'Brien, Mick Taylor, Johnny Winter, Warren Haynes, Paul Butterfield...even our own Rebecca Laird...all excellent blues players.

Clifford Antone did as much as anybody to preserve and revive interest in blues during the 70's, 80's and 90's...he treated all musicians (no matter what their race) with dignity and grace...he respected, fostered and lifted up the forefathers of the genre and paved the way for new artists to tread. He wasn't primarily a musician (he was a passable bassist), but he was just as much a bluesman as any of the artists mentioned in this thread.

All white.

Good Lord, Bonnie Raitt is a redhead! You can't get much whiter than that...(excluding Johnny Winter, of course), and she was/is accepted as a blueswoman by many or the Titans of Blues (Muddy, John Lee, Sippie Wallace, Buddy Guy, BB King...).

Fort Worth bluesman Memo Gonzalez is a fabulous blues guitarist...and of Mexican ethnicity.

If you close your eyes, you can't tell what race, ethnicity, color or background I am when I play harp, guitar or slide guitar. My late Mexican father-in-law (born in 1912) heard me playing some acoustic slide guitar right after I married Lady Armadillo, and he  said, "That sounds like the music the black men used to play when I was young!" He recognized it as a "black" or "African-American" artform, but he didn't question a white kid from a small town in Texas playing it...he just accepted that it was the style I played. He himself was a decent harmonica player.

Race is immaterial.

I've always thought of Muddy Waters as the perfect example of a blues band leader; his seminal band of the 1950's is the progenitor of the modern rock group, and everyone in his group was a master at their own instrument (and many of them went on to be famous or notable as solo artists). By the 1970's, his band was integrated with several non-African American players. The guy could choose anybody he wanted, and he chose them, not by race, but by ability.

The same could be said for Buddy Guy's band today...more white than black.

Whoever says you have to be raised picking cotton on a sharecropper's plantation in order to be "a true bluesman" is not only dead wrong, they're also condescending to the art form itself.

No black, no white, just blues.

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Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
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Love this.

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No you're dead wrong in thinking like this ^^^^

You are confusing someone picking up a instrument and playing modern blues with someone being a bluesman. For example some see EC as a Bluesman. No no no no no! nothing could ever be further from the truth. None of the guys from that era are/were bluesmen. To claim so is condescending to the whole thing itself and tries to put people like EC, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and the like alongside blues legends like Charlie Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson, Rev Gary Davis, Bukka White, Leadbelly, Blind Lemon, Skip James, Lightnin' Hopkins.

It's like comparing cheap crap quality ice cream made with water to the best tasting creamiest ice cream made with the best ingredients.

The music came from the roots of African music and was perpetuated in the deep south by African slaves and then handed down to the black workers who laboured on the plantations.

To try to say that modern players like Bill Gibbons and EC,to name but two, are blusmen is highly disrespectful of the black musicians who were the very roots of the music. Those guys couldn't shine the shoes of the real bluesmen from the deep south.

These guys are rock musicians who use the blues in their playing. They are not bluesmen. The only bluesmen left alive are the guys who grew up from the direct roots of the music. BB King and Buddy Guy and IDK who's left. They were bluesmen, ut not rock players who have led a priviliged life and the hardest job they've ever had to do was attend art college!!!

There's a big difference between that and the life experience of the early blues pioneers. They had to escape lynchings and being worked to death by unscrupulous plantation owners.

Don't try to tell me ZZ Top's Eliminator album is a blues album????

Imagine trying to put these players in the same league! These are different worlds.

Listen to RL Burnside playing "Long Haired Doney" and compare that to modern players! I mean come on!

Next you'll be saying Jack White from the white stripes is a bluesman!!!!!

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

What do they call a Troll in Glascow.. ??

cheers!

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I can see where you're coming from Gorgon, but put it this way if all the recent technology was available to the real bluesmen as you call them, I mean if Robert Johnston had EC's gear it might have been a different story, they just took what was available for them to play, some of the players you mention as not being real bluesmen can bring a tear to the eye, or make you scream to soothe an aching heart in a song with just a phrase during a solo, I think what's avalable to modern players allows greater expression, it's all an artform, just todays players have more brushes.

Eric Clapton wrote Tears in Heaven. Not a blues genre song, but if this ain't the blues, I don't know what is.

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OK Gorgon, this is a guitar forum so I assume you play. What styles of music do you play? I'm just wondering if your geographic location and skin color entitles you to play in those styles.

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