Word: bluesmen
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DIED. BROWNIE MCGHEE, 80, guitarist-singer; in Oakland, California. McGhee and harmonica player Sonny Terry brought the folk-flavored blues of the Carolina Piedmont to the world, influencing generations of rockers, folkies and bluesmen...
...equally at ease with Ionesco's plays or Muddy Waters' music, plays tough-mama blues, slapping her guitar strings with an old bottleneck or steel slide to produce a gutsy low-down sound. Isolating herself from rock's opulence, she cultivates the friendship of elderly black bluesmen and devotes a large proportion of her profits to activist politics. She explains, "I deliberately don't spend money on cars or land...
That something was essentially what he had learned as a kid hanging around folk clubs in Los Angeles, where he was born 27 years ago. He listened to groups like the New Lost City Ramblers and offered old bluesmen passing through town five bucks to play for him so that he could learn the intricate picking styles that were fading into obscurity. His first albums reflect his drive to build a kind of historical mythology out of the music of the recent American past. He sings of grifters and gamblers, outlaws and farmers, offers reflections on taxes, infidelity...
Cooder is a revisionist, an adapter, not an original composer. He snuggles into history like a time traveler, singing in a husky, good-natured voice that carefully preserves a ragged edge. But it is his w12ardry with a bottleneck that gives him a tangible link with the old Delta bluesmen. Cooder applies the neck of a vinegar bottle to his Martin D45 guitar and makes the music ring, giving the notes a natural resonance in which you can almost hear the past...
Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee was the best bet at the beginning of the week, and nothing's changed three days later. The two veteran bluesmen, who have been around forever and influenced practically everybody, are at Passim's in the Square. It might be a good place to sneak off to while everybody else is out seeing the big names, and it's probably the best concert around for learning what music's all about. Until July...