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Jazz is not Blues and Blues is not Jazz.......

I have been a music fan all my life and listen to classic Jazz and female vocals mostly.  I did not see this throughout most of my life, but now some internet sites and more seem to lump Jazz and Blues into the same thought. 
B.B. King is great, but he is not Jazz.  Paul Desmond is great, but he is not Blues.   

Perhaps next Buck Owens will be considered Blues, or Lawrence Welk or let's have Buddy Holly as a Jazz artist? 

Trite, trivial and ill informed, it is all the rage in politics, why not music?




whatjd
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,923 posts
 

Another common denominator between Blues and Jazz is the absolute requirement of being able to "swing". It helps for other musicians, but is absolutely essential for drummers. You might be surprised by how many can’t play a good shuffle (what the swing feel is called in Blues), pure Rock drummers in particular. Not to disparage the dead, but Neil Peart revealed himself as being unable to swing when he performed at the tribute show he put together to honor the recently-deceased Buddy Rich. That’s not me talking Peart fans, that was a number of other pro drummers after the show.

One guitarist who can play both very well is Robben Ford. He was living in San Jose for a while in the early 70's, and I used to see him live regularly (the bassist in my senior year high school band was playing bass in The Charles Ford Band, named after Robben and his two brothers'---also in the band--- dad). Robben later joined Charlie Musselwhite's band, and later Miles Davis himself. Musselwhite and Miles---as Blues and Jazz as you can get, and very different from one another.

frogman
7,476 posts
 
Glad you added that “other common denominator”. I was about to point that out as a response to your “obvious connection” of ethnicity comment. Putting ethnicity aside, swing is the most important component of both Blues and Jazz and another obvious common ground as you point out. And as your Neil Peart account describes so well, the reason that relative “difficulty“ is not as obvious as it may seem. Sure, from a music theory and “technical” standpoint, Jazz is usually more complicated; but, not always.  Take Miles’ “KOB”, most of those modal tunes are actually even simpler harmonically than many Blues tunes. I would bet BB could have played some relatively simple, but very tasty solos over some of those tunes. The tasty part? THAT’S the difficult part. There’s good reason why Jazz players often judge another player’s true mettle based on whether that other player can play the Blues.
orpheus10
8,668 posts
 
https://www.google.com/search?q=b+lues+players+from+mississippi&rlz=1C1CHBD_enUS804US804&oq=...
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,254 posts
 
Surely there are different styles of music, but for the most part the labels we placed upon them are marketing terms that assist record labels, radio stations and other music distributors.  Genre labels can be helpful, but they shouldn't be taken too seriously.  Is it really that important that southside Chicago blues was slightly different than westside Chicago blues?
It's my observation that if you can make a living playing music that you have the versatility and talent to play most forms of popular music.   As an example, take Paul Humphrey.  He's primarily known as a jazz drummer, but he worked with Albert King, Frank Zappa, Dusty Springfiled, Jerry Garcia, Tony Orlando and Marvin Gaye.  He was also the drummer in the Lawrence Welk Orchestra.  He made a living playing music.
orpheus10
8,668 posts
 

The premise of this thread is quite relevant, and one that I have often wondered about myself.


We have clearly illustrated that even the people who create the two genres are so very different; then why shouldn't the music be different. Beyond the commonality of ethnicity, I can't see any similarities. Even the same word means two different things; when a jazz musician refers to "The Blues", does his reference sound like Howling Wolf?
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