DOCSLIB.ORG

Music Evaluation-Cross Road Blues

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Music Evaluation-Cross Road Blues Standin' at the Crossroads There are three clearly blocked out lines of question-question-answer statements across five verses as "Cross Road Blues" follows the 12 bar blues form with some style variances. The song appears to "speed up" as the verses progress, which lends to the heightened sense of despair as the story is told seemingly faster. In actuality, the first lines of the first couple verses are extended to a 15 bar form which is what gives us the sense of a quickened pace toward the end as the verses return to 12 bar form. What we hear in the last verse is a standard 12 bar blues form, with a two measure ending phrase included. To analyze the form further, I will reference each of the three lines in order within each verse-form. For the first two verses, there are six measures in the first line instead of the standard four, with two extra measures extending the guitar's response to his lyrical question before moving on to the second line. Verses three and four extend the first line by only one measure, making a total of five measures. The second line is only extended by one measure in the first verse, again making a total of five measures. The third line remains the standard four measures throughout all five verses, with the exception of the two measure ending in the fifth verse finishing out the full four measures of that line. The first few twangs of the guitar hook you into this blues tale and set the tone for the story being illustrated by Robert Johnson's expressive voice. It is a story of desperation and hope, of regret and loneliness, of a man on the brink. His guitar cries the words he isn't singing. The words he feels but cannot express with verbal language. Like the voice of a spirit singing through his guitar, the sliding high notes wail at him as if to say, "tell me more." A strong pluck of a single string at the apex of his lyrical answer punctuates the downward spiral, the sinking down of his soul. Emotion and banter between guitar and player builds with every verse, and by the end of the song Johnson has imprinted the blues deep into all who hears it. The story has no definite beginning, as if we were dropped into the middle, and it is unfinished, it could seemingly go on forever. Poetic imagery within in the lyrics allow a scene to be painted in our imagination of a man standin' at the crossroad tryin' to flag a ride as the risin' sun's goin' down only to be passed by, lord save his soul. I have been fascinated by the delta blues ever since hearing "Devil Got my Woman" by Skip James on the soundtrack of a movie way back in the 1990's. There was something so haunting and truthful about the whiney vocal style and twangy guitar picking that grabbed at my soul. Then I heard Robert Johnson and my heart leaped. His tell-tale strong plucked single note in the third line seems to imitate is own voice. This particular song called to me for analyzation because I have never mentally broken his songs out in my head during casual listening, as I often do with other artists, and I wanted to figure out why I hadn't. I believe it is because at times there is no separation between his voice and his guitar, which has a mesmerizing effect on my mind. The form of this song in particular feels like it is organic and not calculated at all; as if he is performing it for the first time on this recording. Yet he could have been deliberately stretching the measures for a specific affect. I would have to listen to alternate recordings of this song to determine whether or not the 12 bar variation was intentional. While writing this paper I listened to the song on repeat. It played at least 50 times, and I never got tired of it. I heard something different each time; a new line of lyric or call/response of the guitar or a backbone rhythm. I connect with Johnson's bouncy guitar style and whirring voice, and I feel the blues..
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Feature Guitar Songbook Series
    feature guitar songbook series 1465 Alfred Easy Guitar Play-Along 1484 Beginning Solo Guitar 1504 The Book Series 1480 Boss E-Band Guitar Play-Along 1494 The Decade Series 1464 Easy Guitar Play-Along® Series 1483 Easy Rhythm Guitar Series 1480 Fender G-Dec 3 Play-Along 1497 Giant Guitar Tab Collections 1510 Gig Guides 1495 Guitar Bible Series 1493 Guitar Cheat Sheets 1485 Guitar Chord Songbooks 1494 Guitar Decade Series 1478 Guitar Play-Along DVDs 1511 Guitar Songbooks By Notation 1498 Guitar Tab White Pages 1499 Legendary Guitar Series 1501 Little Black Books 1466 Hal Leonard Guitar Play-Along® 1502 Multiformat Collection 1481 Play Guitar with… 1484 Popular Guitar Hits 1497 Sheet Music 1503 Solo Guitar Library 1500 Tab+: Tab. Tone. Technique 1506 Transcribed Scores 1482 Ultimate Guitar Play-Along Please see the Mixed Folios section of this catalog for more2015 guitar collections. 1464 EASY GUITAR PLAY-ALONG® SERIES The Easy Guitar Play-Along® Series features 9. ROCK streamlined transcriptions of your favorite SONGS FOR songs. Just follow the tab, listen to the CD or BEGINNERS Beautiful Day • Buddy Holly online audio to hear how the guitar should • Everybody Hurts • In sound, and then play along using the back- Bloom • Otherside • The ing tracks. The CD is playable on any CD Rock Show • Use Somebody. player, and is also enhanced to include the Amazing Slowdowner technology so MAC and PC users can adjust the recording to ______00103255 Book/CD Pack .................$14.99 any tempo without changing the pitch! 10. GREEN DAY Basket Case • Boulevard of Broken Dreams • Good 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Robert Johnson, Folk Revivalism, and Disremembering the American Past
    The Green Fields of the Mind: Robert Johnson, Folk Revivalism, and Disremembering the American Past Blaine Quincy Waide A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Folklore Program, Department of American Studies Chapel Hill 2009 Approved by: William Ferris Robert Cantwell Timothy Marr ©2009 Blaine Quincy Waide ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii Abstract Blaine Quincy Waide: The Green Fields of the Mind: Robert Johnson, Folk Revivalism, and Disremembering the American Past (Under the direction of William Ferris) This thesis seeks to understand the phenomenon of folk revivalism as it occurred in America during several moments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. More specifically, I examine how and why often marginalized southern vernacular musicians, especially Mississippi blues singer Robert Johnson, were celebrated during the folk revivals of the 1930s and 1960s as possessing something inherently American, and differentiate these periods of intense interest in the traditional music of the American South from the most recent example of revivalism early in the new millennium. In the process, I suggest the term “disremembering” to elucidate the ways in which the intent of some vernacular traditions, such as blues music, has often been redirected towards a different social or political purpose when communities with divergent needs in a stratified society have convened around a common interest in cultural practice. iii Table of Contents Chapter Introduction: Imagining America in an Iowa Cornfield and at a Mississippi Crossroads…………………………………………………………………………1 I. Discovering America in the Mouth of Jim Crow: Alan Lomax, Robert Johnson, and the Mississippi Paradox…………………………………...23 II.
    [Show full text]
  • The Devil in Robert Johnson: the Progression of the Delta Blues to Rock and Roll by Adam Compagna
    The Devil in Robert Johnson: The Progression of the Delta Blues to Rock and Roll by Adam Compagna “I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees, I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees, Saw the Devil and begged for mercy, help me if you please --- Crearn, “Crossroads” With the emergence of rock and roll in the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties, many different sounds and styles of music were being heard by the popular audience. These early rock musicians blended the current pop style with the non-mainstream rhythm and blues sound that was prevalent mainly in the African-American culture. Later on in the late sixties, especially during the British “invasion,” such bands as the Beatles, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, and the Yardbirds used this blues style and sound in their music and marketed it to a different generation. This blues music was very important to the evolution of rock and roll, but more importantly, where did this blues influence come from and why was it so important? The answer lies in the Mississippi Delta at the beginning of the twentieth century, down at the crossroads. From this southern section of America many important blues men, including Robert Johnson, got their start in the late nineteen twenties. A man who supposedly sold his soul to the Devil for the ability to play the guitar, Robert Johnson was a main influence on early rock musicians not only for his stylistic guitar playing but also for his poetic lyrics. 1 An important factor in the creation of the genre of the Delta blues is the era that these blues men came from.
    [Show full text]
  • At the Crossroads Pottery by Mark Hewitt Pucker Gallery | Boston 2
    1 At the CrossroAds Pottery by Mark hewitt Pucker Gallery | Boston 2 BiG Vase, CArPenter’s eGG, black manganese glaze with revealed salt glaze, yellow, and pink polka dots 43.5 x 24 x 24" Mh101 Cover: ten GAllon vAse, alkaline glaze with blue glass runs and black manganese neck 26 x 17.5 x 17.5" Mh99 All works Are stonewAre. 3 At the CrossroAds Pottery by Mark hewitt essAy By ChristoPher Benfey strAnGe thin Gs hAPPen At A southern Southern potters and comes up with his own distinctive kind of crossroads. Consider the red-clay town of Pittsboro, North ceramic music, utterly new and fresh—and very, very big. Carolina, where Mark Hewitt turns and burns his big-hearted Take a long look at two of Hewitt’s monumental pots, pots, down a winding gravel lane called Johnny Burke Road. Ike’s Peacock (MH102) and Carpenter’s Egg (MH101). These Smack-dab in the center of town, where two highways cross, magnificent pots, in their burgeoning scale, are unprecedented stands the Chatham County Courthouse, built in 1881 of in the North Carolina folk pottery canon. Solemn and seductive, rugged brick made down the highway in Sanford, the self- with their scale providing a thrilling clout, they have an immediate designated “Brick Capital of the U.S.A.” Or rather, the new appeal like that of Martin Puryear’s visionary sculptures, with courthouse stands there, since the old building, except for their own intersection of folk tradition and modernist panache. its façade and its statue of a Confederate soldier standing at They also represent the passage from the past to the present.
    [Show full text]
  • Robert Johnson from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
    Robert Johnson From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Background information Birth name Robert Leroy Johnson Born May 8, 1911 Hazlehurst, Mississippi Died August 16, 1938 (aged 27) Greenwood, Mississippi Genres Delta blues Occupation(s) Musician, songwriter Instruments Guitar, vocals, harmonica Years active 1929 – 1938 Notable instruments Gibson L-1 Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American singer-songwriter and musician. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937, display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson's shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend, including the Faustian myth that he sold his soul at a crossroads to achieve success. As an itinerant performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson had little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime. It was only after the reissue of his recordings in 1961, on the LP King of the Delta Blues Singers that his work reached a wider audience. Johnson is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly of the Mississippi Delta blues style. He is credited by many rock musicians as an important influence; Eric Clapton has called Johnson "the most important blues singer that ever lived." Johnson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early Influence in their first induction ceremony in 1986. In 2010, David Fricke ranked Johnson fifth in Rolling Stone′s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. Life and career Early life Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi possibly on May 8, 1911, to Julia Major Dodds (born October 1874) and Noah Johnson (born December 1884).
    [Show full text]
  • Counseling at the Crossroads
    Counseling at the Crossroads By: Craig Cashwell, CACREP Chair, Fall 2009 "I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees. I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees. Asked the lord above for mercy, save me if you please.” - Robert Johnson This article originally appeared in The CACREP Connection and is reprinted with per- mission from CACREP. I am a huge Robert Johnson fan. In 27 short years, a poor man from the Mississippi Delta wrote and performed music that remains popular and has influenced many blues and rock artists, including Muddy Waters, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, and Eric Clapton. Clapton once called Johnson the most important blues singer that ever lived. There is a legend that when Johnson was a young man living in rural Mississippi, he longed to be a great blues musician. He took his guitar to a crossroads at midnight and met the Devil who tuned Johnson’s guitar, played a few songs, and then returned it to Johnson. The legend holds that Robert Johnson then created the greatest blues anyone had ever heard….in exchange for his soul. I believe that the Counseling profession has gone down to the crossroads. The choices that have fragmented us as a profession are taking a toll. The choices we make over the next decade will shape the future of our profession. Have we sold our soul? As a profession, we struggle with the fact that the term “counselor” has a generic quality, unlike “Psychology” or “Social Work”. This is a given that we must always strive to overcome by communicating a clear sense of who we are as Professional Counselors.
    [Show full text]
  • Robert Johnson, Blues Musician
    Robert Johnson, Blues Musician Robert Jr. Lockwood Compiled from an interview with Worth Long When I was young, I couldn't play reels and popular tunes at home 'cause I was living with my grandfather. We played them on the organ when my folks would leave. But when they'd come back, we'd play church music. There was no name for the first songs I started playing. I had two cousins who could play two or three little tunes on the piano, and I just watched them and learned how to play it. Maybe I was born to play. Because Robert was living with my mother, he told me I could go watch him play. I didn't have a guitar. Everytime he set the guitar down, I'd pick it up. He'd set the guitar down, and he'd be with momma, and I'd pick it up. He finally asked me, "Do you really want to play?" and he decided to teach me. He'd play a tune and then show me how he did it, and I would do it. He didn't have to do it but once for me. I had a sense of time, and I knew three musical changes, so when I started playing the guitar, it wasn't a problem. I couldn't get the real feel of it like he was doing but I could still do the notes. Within three months time, I was playing. I was only 14. Robert Jr. Lockwood After I learned to play, I went to Clarksdale with Robert.
    [Show full text]
  • Down at the Crossroads: Art Has Great Power in Our Lives and in Our Collective Consciousness
    Down at the Crossroads: Art has great power in our lives and in our collective consciousness Robert Johnson stands at the crossroads of American music like the legend that he once stood at Mississippi crossroads and sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the ability to play guitar like no one else. Johnson was a songwriter of searing depth and a guitar player with a commanding ability that inspired generations of blues musicians and rock and rollers. Born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, in 1911, Johnson picked up the guitar in his teens and learned from Charley Patton and Son House. During the Depression years of the early 30s, Johnson lit out with his guitar and earned his keep not only as a master of the blues but of the popular tunes and styles of the day. His travels took him throughout the Mississippi and Arkansas Deltas, where he performed at jook joints, country suppers and levee camps. He also saw the big cities, traveling with fellow bluesman Johnny Shines to perform in St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago and elsewhere. Such Robert Johnson classics as “Cross Road Blues,” “Love In Vain” and “Sweet Home Chicago” are the bedrock upon which modern blues and rock & roll were built. In an eloquent testimonial included in the liner notes to the box set Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings (Columbia Records, 1990), disciple Eric Clapton said, “I have never found anything more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson. His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice.” (Notes adapted from Rock and Roll Hall of
    [Show full text]
  • Blues Song Lyrics
    BLUES SONG LYRICS “Three O’clock Blues,” by B.B. King “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day,” by Robert Johnson Well now it’s three o’clock in the morning And I can’t even close my eyes If I had possession Three o’clock in the morning baby over judgment day And I can’t even close my eyes if I had possession Can’t find my baby over judgment day And I can’t be satisfied Lord, the little woman I'm lovin' wouldn't I’ve looked around me have no right to pray And my baby she can’t be found And I went to the mountain I’ve looked all around me, people lookin' far as my eyes could see And my baby she can’t be found And I went to the mountain You know if I don’t find my baby lookin' far as my eye could see I’m going down to the golden ground Some other man got my woman and the -'a That’s where the men hang out lonesome blues got me Goodbye, everybody And I rolled and I tumbled and I I believe this is the end cried the whole night long Oh goodbye everybody And I rolled and I tumbled and I I believe this is the end cried the whole night long I want you to tell my baby Boy, I woke up this mornin' Tell her please please forgive me my biscuit roller gone Forgive me for my sins Had to fold my arms and I slowly walked away “Stones in My Passway,” Robert Johnson spoken: I didn't like the way she done Had to fold my arms and I I got stones in my passway slowly walked away and my road seem dark as night I said in my mind, "Yo," I got stones in my passway trouble gon' come some day and my road seem dark as night Now run here, baby I have pains in my hearts
    [Show full text]
  • Language-Of-The-Blues.Pdf
    ` ` Ebook published February 1, 2012 by Guitar International Group, LLC Editors: Rick Landers and Matt Warnock Cover Design: Debra Devi Originally published January 1, 2006 by Billboard Books Executive Editor: Bob Nirkind Editor: Meryl Greenblatt Design: Cooley Design Lab Production Manager: Harold Campbell Copyright (c) 2006 by Debra Devi Cover photograph of B.B. King by Dick Waterman courtesy Dick Waterman Music Photography Author photograph by Matt Warnock Additional photographs by: Steve LaVere, courtesy Delta Haze Corporation Joseph A. Rosen, courtesy Joseph A. Rosen Photography Sandy Schoenfeld, courtesy Howling Wolf Photos Mike Shea, courtesy Tritone Photography Toni Ann Mamary, courtesy Hubert Sumlin Blues Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: 6DPXHO&KDUWHUV³7KH6RQJRI$OKDML)DEDOD.DQXWHK´H[FHUSWIURPThe Roots of the Blues by Samuel Charters, originally published: Boston: M. Boyars, 1981. Transaction Publishers: Excerpt from Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia by Roger Abrahams. Warner-7DPHUODQH3XEOLVKLQJ&RUSRUDWLRQ6NXOO0XVLF/\ULFIURP³,:DON2Q*XLOGed 6SOLQWHUV´E\0DF5HEHQQDFN Library of Congress Control Number: 2005924574 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means- graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage-and-retrieval systems- without the prior permission of the author. ` Guitar International Reston, Virginia ` Winner of the 2007 ASC AP Deems Taylor Award for Outstanding Book on Popular Music ³:KDWDJUHDWUHVRXUFH«DVfascinating as it is informative. Debra's passion for the blues VKLQHVWKURXJK´ ±Bonnie Raitt ³(YHU\EOXHVJXLWDULVWQHHGVWRNQRZWKHLUEOXHVKLVWRU\DQGZKHUHWKHEOXHVDUHFRPLQJ IURP'HEUD¶VERRNZLOOWHDFK\RXZKDW\RXUHDOO\QHHGWRNQRZ´± Joe Bonamassa ³7KLVLVDEHDXWLIXOERRN$IWHUKHDULQJµ+HOOKRXQGRQ0\7UDLO¶LQKLJKVFKRRO,ERXJKW every vintage blues record available at the time.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Birmingham Two Approaches to Tonal
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Birmingham Research Portal University of Birmingham Two Approaches to Tonal Space in the Music of Muddy Waters Curry, Ben DOI: 10.1111/musa.12084 License: None: All rights reserved Document Version Peer reviewed version Citation for published version (Harvard): Curry, B 2017, 'Two Approaches to Tonal Space in the Music of Muddy Waters', Music Analysis, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 37-58. https://doi.org/10.1111/musa.12084 Link to publication on Research at Birmingham portal Publisher Rights Statement: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: CURRY, B. (2017), Two Approaches to Tonal Space in the Music of Muddy Waters. Music Analysis, 36: 37–58, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/doi:10.1111/musa.12084. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving. General rights Unless a licence is specified above, all rights (including copyright and moral rights) in this document are retained by the authors and/or the copyright holders. The express permission of the copyright holder must be obtained for any use of this material other than for purposes permitted by law. •Users may freely distribute the URL that is used to identify this publication. •Users may download and/or print one copy of the publication from the University of Birmingham research portal for the purpose of private study or non-commercial research. •User may use extracts from the document in line with the concept of ‘fair dealing’ under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (?) •Users may not further distribute the material nor use it for the purposes of commercial gain.
    [Show full text]
  • I Believe I'll) Dust My Broom (Elmore James Version) New Lyrics: Elmore James (Based on Robert Johnson's "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom") (Song Recorded - 1959
    (I Believe I'll) Dust My Broom (Elmore James version) New Lyrics: Elmore James (Based on Robert Johnson's "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom") (Song Recorded - 1959) I(E) I'm gettin' up soon in the mornin', I believe I'll dust my broom. IV(A) I(E) I'm gettin' up soon in the mornin', I believe I'll dust my broom. V(B) IV(A) I(E) I quit the best girl I'm lovin', now my friends can get in my room. I'm gonna write a letter, telephone every town I know. I'm gonna write a letter, telephone every town I know. If I don't find her in Mississippi, she be in East Monroe I know. And I don't want no woman wants every downtown man she meets. No, I don't want no woman wants every downtown man she meets. Man, she's a no good doney, they shouldn't allow her on the street. I believe, I believe my time ain't long. I believe, I believe my time ain't long. I ain't gonna leave my baby and break up my happy home. Dust My Broom Elmore James Tab Tabbed by: Francisco & Vitor Ribeiro Suman This is one of the most traditional blues tunes ever, and has been played in many different ways by a lot of different artists. By playing this Elmore James version you can have the idea of what to play if you want a different version. James used a bottleneck, his trademark. If you have one, use it, it will sound a lot better.
    [Show full text]