# Blues influence or what got you started...



## wingsfan (Aug 26, 2010)

Just got back from a lesson were my instructor and I were parsing out a Ry Cooder tune.
This got us to talking about the movie soundtrack it was from (crossroads) . It was funny in that we both had found blues as our favourite sound from that flick. Got me to wondering what influenced
others specifically, was it a cool riff from a tune? a movie? concert? whatever lets hear them.
by the way Crossroads with Ry Cooder and Steve Vai and that karate kid guy not the britney spears one lol


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## shoretyus (Jan 6, 2007)

I just rode the wave.... folk was big and was easy to handle. You get more hippie chicks with a guitar than with out. Toronto is close to Detroit and Buffalo lots of blues and Motown on the radio. Then bluegrass hit it big. That is when I got serious about playing. My social gang loved Ry Cooder in the early days.. too or three notes and I can usually tell which Ry tune it is 

Crossroad was the first Guitar Hero type. Hollywood..for sure but one of the first about the guitar.


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## flattopterry (Mar 6, 2011)

First blues influence has got to be Johnny Winter back in 1970 "Johnny Winter And" 

Then I learned about the guys that influenced Johnny. And then Rory Gallagher.


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## Bobby (May 27, 2010)

its gonna sound cheesy as hell,but G.E. smith from his time on SNL.

i was maybe 12 or 13 at the time,didnt even play yet. but i remember really liking the show,and eventually liking the breaks more cause i got to hear him play. i wondered why i didnt hear that in the music i heard on the radio. sort of strange that it affected me so much 2 or 3 years before i even picked up the guitar.

Bobby


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## shoretyus (Jan 6, 2007)

Bobby said:


> its gonna sound cheesy as hell,but G.E. smith from his time on SNL.
> 
> 
> Bobby


No shame in that he's a well respected player.


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## washburned (Oct 13, 2006)

Neil Young and Crazy Horse.....so much distortion and volume!


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## Sneaky (Feb 14, 2006)

shoretyus said:


> No shame in that he's a well respected player.


Yeah, and you also heard it on the radio. He was Hall & Oates guitarist on many of their hits.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

As a teen I started listening to British bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Kinks, Jeff Beck, and some north American bands like Crowbar, Lighthouse, Alice Cooper, Mahogany Rush, The Guess Who, etc. In March of 1974, aged 16, I attended a Roy Buchanan concert in Ottawa. Suddenly, the relationship between the blues, folk, and rock revealed itself, and I started to get what blues was about. Thereafter I started listening to lots of Roy Buchanan, Rory Gallagher, Buddy Guy, Freddie King, B.B. King, Albert Collins, Albert King, and when they became available earlier recordings from previous generations. I still listen to and play blues based music, in spite of a healthy dose of jazz and classical filling my ears regularly. My blues interest was helped along by my older brother who was and is a huge blues fan.

Not too many guys had a picture of Hound Dog Taylor on their school locker door.

Peace, Mooh.


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## jeremy_green (Nov 10, 2010)

two words - Tony Iommi!
Sabbath hit me like a freight train.


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## shoretyus (Jan 6, 2007)

Mooh said:


> Not too many guys had a picture of Hound Dog Taylor on their school locker door.
> 
> Peace, Mooh.


 Nope it was a picture of Hound Dog Ann from 9b ....

Oh Roy.. Tvo aired a film on him early in the 70's .. that was an eye opener too


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Though I had been plunking away for probably 2 years at that point, and there were all sorts of kuh-ray-zee solos on the radio to learn, a friend played me the first Paul Butterfield Blues Band album in '65 or '66, with Bloomfield and Bishop on guitars, and my jaw fell. The East-West album, and that track in particular, kind of cinched it. Once the San Francisco sound kicked in, with all those extended solos, and also seeing the Dead and the Airplane live and up close, when I was 15, I hunkered down and woodshedded.


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

Like mhammer sez - Paul Butterfield Blues Band. First and second albums. Mike Bloomfield was my first guitar god.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

For a kid who had never really listened to jazz, or instrumental music that wasn't improvised prior to that point, those albums were one of the first occasions where I heard guitar solos that weren't simply brief exercises for the purpose of letting singer grab a swig of water between verses. _East-West _is still one of the greatest 2-guitar exercises on record. Right up there with Television's _Marquee Moon_, or some of the better Derek & the Dominoes tracks (e.g., _Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad_).


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## Alex Csank (Jul 22, 2010)

I was always musical. My parents loved music and played records a lot. But, it was when I was about 6 or so, saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan and then others like The Rolling Stones and The Animals that I decided I needed to learn to play the guitar. I learned about the Blues, Jazz and lots more as I became more and more fascinated and captivated by fabulous music over the next several years and even took a great college course called "The Poetry of The Blues", back in 1976!


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## Bobby (May 27, 2010)

Sneaky said:


> Yeah, and you also heard it on the radio. He was Hall & Oates guitarist on many of their hits.


to what shoretyus said abovei cant figure out how to include two quotes,and i dont wanna double post just for this). yeah,your right,i guess i just let peoples opinions affect my outlook sometimes. i remember reading this article in guitar player(or one of the guitar mags) about how he was doing a disservice,mugging for the camera,and bassically almost calling him a hack. in the end,what the hell does a magazine editor know more then anyone else? it just stayed with me though. at the time,guitar mags were my only source of info from the world of guitar playing,so it was like reading a monthly decree from the pope,lol. but in the end,it was kinda weird that it would stay with me like that,they are just people with opinions,like anyone else.

@Sneaky: you are correct of course. i had completely forgotten about that(Smith playing with hall&oates,as well as being a session player for many other artists) i probably heard alot more hall&oates(whether i liked it or not,lol) then i heard him playing on SNL.but i really liked the blues side of his playing,which was alot more obvious in that context.

Bobby


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

i bought my first guitar @18, because i wasn't allowed to own one when i lived with my parents. i went to my brother in law, ad asked him to teach me how to rock like ac/dc and judas priest (it was 1983)
he said. "man, if you wana rock, you gotta learn the fundamentals. he put on some blues, i don't even remember who it was anymore. i could feel it filling an empty space in my head that i wasn't even aware of. i still wanted to rock like angus, but suddenly there was a whole 'nother form of music for me to explore that i couldn't seem to get enough of.


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## J S Moore (Feb 18, 2006)

It was going to see "The Song Remains The Same" at the Broadway theater here in Hamilton. Watching Jimmy Page on that huge screen. Good times.


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

I got into blues from listening to bands that were bluesy, but still more rock oriented, and reading interviews where they talked about the blues and various blues singers & musicians.

But what really sparked my blues interest was discovering CKUA's Natch'l Blues on Saturday, many years ago.
I started taping it and listening as much as I could (Sometimes I worked Saturdays back then.)
And I hunted down albums by the artists I heard--sometimes it was easy, sometimes not.
I got a great blues education listening to that show.

One Saturday, after not being able to listen or otherwise engaged, I decided to check the CKUA website if the show was still around, and I was happy to find out it is.
I listen whenever I get the chance.

They also have The Friday Night Blues Party and several other shows based on a variety of musical styles.


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## Vox71 (Mar 25, 2008)

Like a lot of people my first exposure to blues music was second hand through bands like the Stones, Zeppelin, Animals and early Van Morrison (Them). I was aware that these artists were paying homage to blues greats, but didn't really bother sourcing out the original material. Then I took a course in university. 

The course was basically a history of black-American music. It was at York University, and the instructor was Rob Bowman. Rob is THE guy when it comes to the history of Stax Records. He has won a couple of Grammies for historical liner notes (Otis Redding, Stax Singles and The Band.. I believe). He was one of the first (and last) north American music writers to get an interview with Bob Marley. Professor Bowman is a wealth of knowledge, and his class was amazing. That is where the world of the blues and R&B opened up for me. 

That is where I first heard the Library of Congress recordings of Alan Lomax. Earth-shattering stuff, and for people who are curious look up Alan Lomax on iTunes...it's there. Anyway, Alan Lomax was an ethno-musicologist who travelled around the U.S. (particularly the south) during the latter part of the 1930s, and the 40s & 50s with a field recorder to commit to tape localised folk music of the U.S. I believe he is the first person to record Muddy Waters right in the cotton field (Muddy was a sharecropper). The Lomax recordings that really blew me away, however, was his collection of "Work Songs and Field Hollers". I believe he is the only one to capture these songs. Specifically, he had recordings from Parchman Farm (a prison farm) that really stirred something in me. The pain, and angst, of these singers (in the heat of hard labour, and sung to the backbeat of a pick axe) jumped right out of the speaker, and for any Big Sugar fans the song "500 Pounds" is taken directly from the Alan Lomax recordings (a song called "Black Woman"). Alan Lomax's recordings are kept in the Library of Congress, because it is the definitive collection of indigenous American folk music. Lomax's sole intent was to document it. 

As if the Lomax recordings weren't enough, I also heard Howlin' Wolf belt out "Smokestack Lightning", and it was all over from there. I would be a blues fan for life


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## shoretyus (Jan 6, 2007)

The Lomax stuff is totally amazing.


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## Sneaky (Feb 14, 2006)

These guys did it for me...


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## whammybar (May 7, 2008)

+1 on what sneaky said. Then I saw them live however and thought I might as well give up guitar forever. Stopped playing got into the complexities of life and was revived by a guy who had just passed away. SRV. Still I didn't start playing again just listening. Then I head the electric portion of the 'Any Given Thursday' concert by John Mayer and was blown away by the sweetest clean strat tone I had ever heard. Bought a cheap strat copy and been playing ever since. (and have since learned crossroads just to bring things full circle).


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## bcmatt (Aug 25, 2007)

I'm embarrassed it took me so long and the method by which it happened, but I LOVE the blues now. Being born a month before the 80s started, the rock and blues greats were names known to me but I didn't get it. Of course, I sort of liked Zeppelin and Sabbath in Highschool but I was just anxious for something heavy and Weezer was sort of THE sound my ears were aching for (which is really just some simple fuzz and some melodies/harmonies).

Anyways, fast forward to just about 4 years ago or so when I saw the movie *"Black Snake Moan"*. Eep! Ya, that one with Samuel Jackson and Christina Ricci. It's funny that it took that, but then something clicked and I needed blues all the time. I started with The Black Keys and worked my way back through time. So of course, now Clapton is not just that guy that does girly acoustic albums about heaven, and the Stones are not just weird old farts that spawned the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. These guys actually rocked in the 60s! and I can't get enough of it. Of course, there are lots more too, but if I don't sense some blues in music now, I don't really feel like it counts as rock and roll.


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