From small farms to urban neighborhoods, from the region itself to the more distant worlds of the southern diaspora, we discover the stories, music, and art of the American South.
The Club Circuit
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Del curso dictado por The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The American South: Its Stories, Music, and Art
256 calificaciones
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
256 calificaciones
De la lección
The Blues
Focusing on this distinctive form of music, so intimately defined by sense of place, class, race, and tradition.
Conoce a los instructores
Dr. William FerrisJoel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History; Senior Associate Director of CSAS; Adjunct Professor in the Curriculum in Folklore
Department of History
[MUSIC]
Blues will always be associated with the chitling circuit.
The little clubs out in rural Southern worlds that served chitlins,
and corn liquor, and played the blues on Saturday night for their customers.
This is the place that musicians, from B.B. King, to Bobby Rush, know well.
And Bobby Rush explains how important those clubs were to his musical career.
[MUSIC]
When I'm on stage it's not that I'm trying to get the blues across,
I'm trying to get Bobby Rush across.
And if, if that gets the blues across that's a plus.
But I first try to get me across, as an artist, as an entertainer.
I try to get to people's in my hand for them to love me.
And at the meantime, once I get them in my hand,
I can then tell them what I come to tell them.
And I come to tell them about the Blues.
My first thing is to get them in my hand.
It's just like a preacher.
You can only preach to them peoples once you get them in your hand.
And I love that thing, and I'm not going to leave it.
[MUSIC]
I've had to sing a song, like I feel bad my lady friend feel bad.
And come to the club, he's down.
I try to sing the song, Jokiefied so I can lift him up.
Entertain them.
Make them forget about their problems.
But yet, that don't solve the problem with blues because you do have the blues.
It's just a temporary thing that makes you forget about your problems, for
a temporary to a temporary thing.
I mean, it's still the blues
[MUSIC]
When I think about the sound of my music come from, a lot of people,
I think that's why I come up with the kind of cross wing of that sound.
I'm not just, just the blues, I'm not just pop.
I'm not just any one thing.
because when I come up, I come up like in John Lee Hooker.
I love John Lee Hooker.
I love Prince, who's crank on the scene now.
I love Big Mabel.
I love Elvis Presley.
There's several, Ray Charles.
I'm talking about some of the guys whose, you know,
style was a little bit for me.
You know, Muddy Waters, the whole bit.
And I like a lot these guys.
It wasn't no one particular guy I like.
And that was, and in my coming up,
there have been audits that, that I wasn't particular fan of audits.
He'd come up with a song, who I just fell in love with.
Like a Tony Joan White.
I fell in love with the song, and when I saw him, I fell in love with
his performance. Johnny Cash, I just loved his songs,
just songs man and that was a whole lot of people who just loved his songs.
So, I'm not struck on one person
that would sell a guy who strikes my heart, and then overall,
that give me the blues of the thing not being just a blues.
Do that, because I, because you talk about being in blues,
you talk about most guys in my category who say, here's a blue guy.
They go by one side of the fence.
Just the blues.
I think that's why, I can draw white and
black, because I'm not just a one, one tracked kind of a guy.
And it was.
[MUSIC]
Well song come to you in time.
I don't think there's anybody can write without experience.
It's just like writing a book.
You can only write about what you know about.
And songs come to you about what you know about.
I've been out here for a long time.
I've done 30 years in the business.
I know a lot to write about.
I know lots, I don't know it's what I, I don't know, everything, but
I know a lot to write about.
And that's how songs come about your experience in life.
What you see, and what you don't see.
When I say what you see, and
what you put together what you imagine is, and that song comes back.
Just knowing life.
I just write about what it is.
[MUSIC]
85 % of my club's a black club.
I think the black peoples in the South accepted me
better than the Northern black peoples.
Although they was from the South, but it's something, when they got in Chicago,
they forgot about where they come from,
a little bit quicker than the guy who was in Jackson, Mississippi.
Yeah, whatever.
[MUSIC]
I had a black disk jockey to tell me one time, I took a record to him of mine
and he said, well Bob, I can play this record, but it really don't fit my format.
It sounds too black.
Was a cold shot to me.
Some black guy tell me that my record sounds too black,
he couldn't play it on the air.
I turned my head when I starting to cry.
I didn't cry about him not giving me help.
I cried about who, a man who's like not what the roots will lie.
I had another gentleman that make me feel so bad.
He said well, I played the blues, but I really don't like the blues.
I respect him saying what he don't like.
But when a man, black man especially telling me he don't like the blues,
he's saying he don't like his mother, because that's where he come from,
how can you say you don't like where you come from?
I think he just didn't realize and that's what I was sad about, a man who just
didn't realize of what he was really was saying and that was the sad part.
And that hurts
[MUSIC]
[NOISE]
[MUSIC]
[APPLAUSE] They just talking about hard work, and just said I can do it,
and I just worked hard, and I worked so hard for nothing, for zero, for no money,
and I've been trying to get to where I can get money to get to the last,
like the end of the road in my career to last four or five,
eight years, something started happening in the meantime, there was like a fire.
I had proven to myself that I was in good shape.
So now, I'm a pro in the band stand and in the meantime,
he wouldn't plan, no drawn out plans for me to do this and get good at it.
I was going to do something and get money,
and it kept drawing out, for one year seem like I'll get there next year.
Not that, next year, seem like I'll get, they just kept delaying me
delaying me, and finally I drew out ten or 15 years not with a hit record, but yet
working on a bass tan trying to get that and made a pro out of me.
It wasn't like a plan.
I would like to have a hit record 25 years ago, but
I probably couldn't have it like I have it today.
I probably wouldn't been a pro as I am on the bandstand.
But if the censor it like this, I'm ready for
anything behind there on the bandstand.
You can tell when I walk on the bandstand whether you saw me before or not.
When I walk on the bandstand you can tell his a pro.
[MUSIC]
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