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Alexis Korner, Blues Band, Blues harmoniaca, Davy Graham, East -West album, East West, Eastern influences, guitar, Indian music, Indian ragas, Middle Eastern music, Mike Bloomfield, modal jazz, Paul Butterfield, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Sitar
The explosion of ‘new’ music in the late 50’s and 60’s saw many influences of mainly Black musicians and singers (from the West). However we should not underestimate Eastern influences.This goes further than sitar playing by Brian Jones and George Harrison. I would like to include Davy Graham in this discussion, although much underestimated, he certainly brought Indian and Middle Eastern notes, scales and tunings into more traditional acoustic folk and blues.
Let me give you a couple of examples.
Listen to the start of Leaving Blues and the guitar break in the middle:
and how about a Taste of Tangier (instrumental):
and his take on She Moves Through the Fair with an Indian flavour (tuned DADGAD):
“I started to play the guitar about seven years ago, while I was still at school- homework always gave in to music, so I was no genius! As soon as I got home, I would put on a blues record- Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Memphis Slim, Champion Jack Dupree and Muddy Waters and many others as well as modern jazz greats like Charlie Parker, Charlie Mingus and Thelonious Monk, who are still my favourites.
When I got tired of the city and a job suffocating in an office, I went to Paris and sang and played in the streets to cinema queues and up and down the French Riviera. I must admit I was very glad when I was invited to play in night clubs where I could put down the plectrum and play finger style, as I still do. Every summer for three years I would break the chains of a job (anything from librarian to crate – humper) and leave for the continent, taking £5– the fare to Paris, freedom and the sun of the Cote d’Azur. When I came back to England in the winter of 1961, I started to get more regular work playing in folk song clubs, and got my first “break” playing as accompanist along with Alexis Korner for Shirley Abicair, the Australian folk singer on broadcasts for radio, a TV series and a concert at the Royal Festival Hall.
Bad video below, but some good sounds:
Try this more traditional blues – I cannot Keep from Crying Sometimes
and from a later recording -Misilou
and ‘All of Me ‘ showing Davy’s dexterity on guitar:
British guitar virtuoso Davy Graham inspired a multitude of artists such as Paul Simon, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix. Combining different music genres, Graham proved to be one of the 20th century’s most versatile guitarists and songwriters.
Lets explore another influential band -the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and their ‘East -West ‘album in particular.
Before a discussion, it may be good to listen to the title track ‘East West’, particularly featuring Mike Bloomfield on guitar:
East-West is the second album by The Butterfield Blues Band led by Paul Butterfield, released in 1966 on Elektra Records, EKS 7315 in stereo, EKL 315 in mono. It was recorded at the famed Chess Studios on 2120 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago. It peaked at #65 on the Billboard pop albums chart, and is regarded as highly influential by rock and blues music historians.
One result was the inclusion of two all-instrumental extended jams at the instigation of Bloomfield following the group’s successful appearance at The Fillmore in San Francisco during March alongside Jefferson Airplane. Both reflected his love of jazz, as the blue note-laden “Work Song” featuring harmonica by Butterfield had become a hard bop standard, and the title track “East-West” used elements of modal jazz as introduced by Miles Davis on his ground-breaking Kind of Blue album. Bloomfield had become enamoured of work by John Coltrane in that area, especially his incorporation of ideas from Indian raga music.
Marsh, interviewing Naftalin, notes that the tune was inspired by an all-night LSD trip that “East-West”‘s primary songwriter Mike Bloomfield experienced in the fall of 1965, during which the late guitarist “said he’d had a revelation into the workings of Indian music.”
Marsh’s expansive liner notes observe that the song “East-West” “was an exploration of music that moved modally, rather than through chord changes. As Naftalin explains, “The song was based, like Indian music, on a drone. In Western musical terms, it ‘stayed on the one’. The song was tethered to a four-beat bass pattern and structured as a series of sections, each with a different mood, mode and color, always underscored by the drummer, who contributed not only the rhythmic feel but much in the way of tonal shading, using mallets as well as sticks on the various drums and the different regions of the cymbals. In addition to playing beautiful solos, Paul [Butterfield] played important, unifying things [on harmonica] in the background – chords, melodies, counterpoints, counter-rhythms. This was a group improvisation. In its fullest form it lasted over an hour.”
In his summation, Marsh points out that “‘East-West’ can be heard as part of what sparked the West Coast’s rock revolution, in which such song structures with extended improvisatory passages became commonplace.”
Going on to call the Butterfield Blues Band “one of the greatest bands of the rock era”, Marsh concludes that “With ‘East-West’, above any other extended piece of the mid-Sixties, a rock band finally achieved a version of the musical freedom that free jazz had found a few years earlier.”
East West is a 13:10 minute long winding spiral through psychedelic terrain that bleeds into Indian raga and back into jazz and blues, over top of a constant walking bassline. Butterfield’s harp handles the ride like a boss, it is sharp and potently delivered. Bloomfield’s Fender Telecaster on this track is simply acrobatic, with solos all over the road, using reverb through his Fender Twin Reverb Silverface amplifier. The effect is hypnotic.
The album cut a wide swathe of influence among guitarists, Bloomfield said in an interview, “Pre- East West I was listening to a lot of Coltrane, a lot of Ravi Shankar, and guys that played modal music. The idea wasn’t to see how far you could go harmonically, but to see how far you could go melodically or modally. And that’s what I was doing in East West, and I think that’s why a lot of guitarists liked it”. This new sound paved the way for such groups as Quicksilver Messenger Service, Santana, and the Grateful Dead. In fact Santana’s longtime singer piano/organ player Gregg Rolie is on record saying, “The music that we were going after was blues and jazz based with conga drums on it. One of the songs that kind of kicked us into playing a little bit differently was from the Butterfield Blues Band, East West”.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East-West_(The_Butterfield_Blues_Band_album)
Try the rest of the album: