The Poetic Spirit of the Blues

 New blog....
    Musings on the lyrics of blues as an expression of an existential philosophy. A natural rather than an academic philosophy, an implicit attitude for coping with the oppression and repression of segregation and discrimination against the descendants of enslaved Africans in North America but also with the experience of exploitation shared in common with the working poor and all the disadvantages that come with living in a society and culture shaped by money, property, and power...An approach to the blues inspired in part by Paul Garon's "Blues and the Poetic Spirit". The singular and unique experience of slavery in America was essential to the birth of the Blues but its universality and global appeal is its insight into the human condition from the bottom up...
http://poetryblues.blogspot.com/

Basement Boogie 1981

Cover Art from 1981
Before the Fall
into Wage Slavery
Copyright: Terence Echterling

Another blast from the past. Artwork from my mixed career of creating art

for my own projects and psychologically damaging experience of working in

a "corporate" environment...that is, where the company can claim "authorship"

of someone else's work. Does the current copyright law really violate the spirit

of protecting a creator's effort and is just another means

 to gain control and rights to another's creations.

Buddy and Junior 1970

Charles Sawyer has three photo's of Junior Wells and Buddy Guy at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival that look like the same performance I photographed and he gives the year as 1970. 

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~sawyer/blues-gallery.html

Maybe my memory isn't as bad as I thought it might be.

Buddy Guy 1970

More shots from Ann Arbor

all photo's copyright

Terence Echterling

He was right in front of me!

See my OTHER STUFF page "Ann Arbor 1970" (in box to left) for

some comparisons with shots by other photogs.

Ann Arbor Blues Festival 1970?

See my OTHER STUFF page "Ann Arbor 1970" (in box to left) for

some comparisons with shots by other photogs.

Ann Arbor Blues Festival 1970 or 1969?

A cropped but longer shot of Buddy Guy on stage.

Definitely not the Fuller Field stage of "69".

Copyright: Terence Echterling

All rights reserved.

Buddy Guy and Junior Wells 1970

I found some prints but no negs yet.

Dick Waterman give 1969 for his shot of this performance too.

But the Ann Arbor Chronicle clearly shows the "69" stage as different from this photos.
See photos in link and longer shot by me in the next post.

http://annarborchronicle.com/2009/08/27/column-singin-the-ann-arbor-blues/

The list of performers in the comments section has Junior on Fri. nite in 1969 but

I was only there Sat. nite for Wolf and Muddy and Otis Rush

so I couldn't have taken these photos in 1969!!
Photograph copyright Terence Echterling
All rights reserved, etc., etc., so don't use it
without permission
unless you're commenting on the dating controversy.

Ann Arbor Blues Festival 1970

Another shot of Buddy Guy as he came out into
the audience as he played. I've got more photo's somewhere but I'm still looking for them and the negs.
Other photographers seem to think this performance was in 1969 but I'm pretty sure it was in 1970.
But if you remember the 60's you weren't really there.
Photo copyright: Terence Echterling
and used with my permission.
(coz that's me)

Buddy Guy 1970

The Ann Arbor Blues Festival of 1970
Buddy Guy was cooking and showing his stuff as THE Chicago blues guitarist of the day.
Shots by other photographers of this performance say it was 1969
but I didn't take pictures that year so it had to the second festival in 1970.
The schedule has Guy doing an afternoon performance.
 But who am I to question Jim Marshall, etc., if they thought it was 69?
Photo copyright: Terence Echterling

Somethun' Funny 01-03-11

   A slight departure from my earlier vlogs on Youtube in that it is built on a bass line rather that rhythm guitar, a direction I first explored with using the drums as the foundation of "Fightin' in the Streets." It also marks a shift in direction as I search for my musical persona - not really an assumed facade - but a style that reflects who I am and where I'm at as an artist expressing myself in words and music and images. I was a touch too late to be part of the beat generation but there was something in the poetry of the beats and their affinity for jazz and existentialism and buddhism and disenchantment with the moral hypocrisy of society that appealed to me. I tried to express it in painting but I was again too late for abstract expressionism. But I recently remembered on an old magazine from 1970 that I'd hung on to alluding to a link between surrealism, social liberation and rebellion against repression and oppression, and the blues. I can never authentically be a Delta blues singer but the poetic spirit of struggling for freedom to be fully human is shared by us all...