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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
orpheus10
8,668 posts
 

Ray Charles

Genres
R&B, soul, blues, gospel, country, jazz, rock and roll,
Occupation(s)
Musician, singer, songwriter, composer


Apparently Ray Charles does it all; consequently, he is also a "Jazz musician".
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,947 posts
 

Good example, @orpheus10. Ray is imo the most important and influential male singer of 20th Century Pop music (along with Hank Williams). Does that sound too "grand"? ;-)

And I consider Big Joe Turner perhaps the first Rock 'n' Roll singer. He too straddled the line separating Blues and Jazz, coming from the Kansas City Jazz scene, but recording the original version of "Shake, Rattle, & Roll" (covered by Bill Haley for the white market). I came to love Joe when I discovered the whole Jump Blues scene of the late-40's/early-50's. Great, great stuff.

edcyn
1,876 posts
 
Yeah, Orpheus, I was trying to be as straightforward as I could when describing the technical differences between the two genres.  That, though, doesn't mean I prefer one genre over the other.  Particularly, when it comes to the guitar, blues has it all over jazz in my book. To my ears, most jazz guitar playing comes off as fussy, smug and under powered.  More interested in technique than passion or emotional expression.  As a matter of fact, the only jazz guitar player I ever truly loved or aspired to play like was Django (and I do relentlessly play Django-style guitar and Stephane Grappelli-style fiddle).  Good blues & rock guitar playing, by contrast, truly plumbs the emotional depths.  Happy, sad, angry, ironic, jubilant, tender, strutting...guitarists put it all on the table.
ebm
9,311 posts
 
Wow nothing to say again.
orpheus10
8,668 posts
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n3VJQIKduU
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