Cymbal #1:: Muddy Waters and The Great American Night
Written by Satyajit // August 17, 2010 // Media & Popular Culture // 1 Comment
What’s really interesting about the first video is how vividly it capture the post-war English hunger for all things rhythm and blues; a hunger which would later find it’s voice in the great English bluesmen and rock bands. For just a moment, inspect the set; the barrels, the railroad, the “Wanted” posters, the little bell. For crying out loud, there’s a dude in a rocking chair nodding wisely!
Muddy Waters – You Can’t Lose What You Ain’t Never Had
And, a version with James Cotton on harp
The scene is a pastiche of visual cues all pointing (a little self conciously) to the South, the Great American Night, Travel Across Monumental Distances and the Soul of Black Music. The audience sits across the tracks, literally and metaphorically, looking in on a still painting – looking, in some ways, back in time.
Now that you know this, because the blues is a machine for the transmission of wisdom, not knowledge, but wisdom, think of all the bankers who didn’t!
One Comment on "Cymbal #1:: Muddy Waters and The Great American Night"
It maybe the blues was never about transmitting anything? It was simply a matter of expressing, in simple ways, some very complex emotions of sadness? Why does this have to necessarily be wisdom?