Waiting For The King
Published: Fri, 04/28/23
I've been reminded of this glaring lack of appreciation on my part because one of my favorite music podcasts, Nate Wilcox's Let It Roll, has just re-run a series of episodes about Bing Crosby, Sinatra and Elvis, positioning them as a kind of triptych of mid-century American pop ubiquity and success. The Bing Crosby episodes were particularly fun because Wilcox interviewed Crosby biographer Gary Giddins, who has long been one of my favorite writers on jazz. But during the Elvis segments, they of course cut to some clips from various points in Elvis' career, and what can I say? I didn't come of age during the big bang of fifties rock'n'roll, much the opposite in fact: Presley was pretty much a punch line for my era, easily mocked with a curl of the lip and a honeyed, romantic warble. Which has made it hard to take the real thing seriously ever since, even though I do think "Baby, Let's Play House" and "Money Honey" are cool songs.
This begs an essential question about listening: Where's the righteous point on the spectrum between "I loved this the minute I heard it" and "Maybe I could learn to appreciate this if I spent enough time with it"? Because there's music that smacked me upside the head the first time I encountered it, no question. There was no trying to like B.B. King, "Day Tripper," Highway 61 Revisted, the Bach inventions, Duke Ellington's "Blue Serge." the Benny Goodman Sextet with Charlie Christian, or Shawn Colvin's "You And The Mona Lisa." But giants like Coltrane, Lester Young and Louis Armstrong were baffling at first, and it's only through going back for repeated doses over time that they have gradually begun to come into focus. And I still don't get Pet Sounds, to the horror of one and all. So is there hope for me and Elvis? Or should I just chalk up the King as someone who will never be my jam, no matter how much time we spend together?
Maybe it's the operatic thing; I'd rather listen to Dylan than Roy Orbison any day. One thing that is definitely not operatic, and which I do get, is turnarounds. So in today's Youtube lesson, I explain how to take one of the all-time classic Delta blues turnarounds in E and dress it up with a handful of tritone chord substitutions. Which, come to think of it, is pretty operatic for a humble turnaround. Maybe there's hope for me yet.
You can find the lesson at the link below:
What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Tritone Substitutions On A Delta Blues Turnaround
More soon,
David
Build your repertoire, improve your right-hand coordination and learn to improvise with the organized, ongoing lessons in the Fingerstyle Five membership! Learn more and sign up at www.fretboardconfidential.com