Lingua Franca
Published: Fri, 10/06/23
But when I went to look it up, I couldn't find any version by a female singer; someone named Gordon Jenkins kept popping up instead. So I sprinted over to Wikipedia to discover that Mr. Jenkins was, among other things, a composer and arranger for Decca records as well as Ms. Mahr's ever-loving husband, and he created "Crescent City Blues" – and had his wife sing on it – as part of a concept album about crossing the country by train and encountering various situations and characters along the way..
It seems the connection between these two songs is no revelation; if Wikipedia is on the money, Cash expressed concerns about plagiarism prior to recording "Folsom Prison Blues and did indeed eventually pay a healthy settlement to Jenkins years later. But it was news to me, and I love learning these kinds of details, especially the genealogy of the songs themselves. Sometimes things really do appear out of thin air; more often than not, you can follow a winding thread back through the labyrinth and discover what the work you love was built out of, or upon.
And this matters, as much as anything about music really matters, because no matter how into the guitar or the gear or the soloing you get, music – at least, the kind of roots music we talk about around here – is about songs. Songs are the unit of measure, the delivery system, the lingua franca. Sit down to play with someone, and probably the first thing they'll ask is "So what songs do you know?" Stand up to play for other people, and probably the first thing you'll ask yourself is, "Now, what song should I play next?"
I've been teaching an arrangement of "Matchbox Blues" in the Fingerstyle Five membership over the past month, and it's got me thinking about the difference between playing a song that's a twelve-bar blues in A, and playing "twelve bar blues in A." Besides being more recognizable as a specific piece of music and sounding less noodley, playing a specific song gives you all kinds of advantages when it comes time to start improvising. In this week's dramatically titled Youtube lesson, I explain exactly what I mean:
The Biggest Soloing Mistake (And How To Fix It)
More soon,
David
Learn new fingerstyle blues arrangements, and how to improvise on them, with the Fingerstyle Five membership! Learn more and sign up at https://www.fretboardconfidential.com/