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Blue Devils,
or A fit of the blues. A fit of spleen, low spirits. Roach and Esquirol affirm, from observation, that indigo dyers are especially subject to melancholy; and that those who dye scarlet are choleric. Paracelsus also asserts that blue is injurious to the health and spirits. There may, therefore, be more science in calling melancholy blue than is generally allowed. The German blei (lead) which gives rise to our slang word blue or bluey (lead) seems to bear upon the “leaden downcast eyes” of melancholy.
I found it somewhat of a revelation that there was no such thing as country drummers, blues drummers, gospel drummers or rock drummers in the very first generation of adding drums to those styles of music. It turns out that most of the guys who played on the early country, blues, gospel and early rock ‘n’ roll sessions considered themselves jazz drummers. For example, in 1935 when Bob Wills wanted to add a drummer to his Western Swing group the Texas Playboys he got Smokey Dakus, who was a jazz drummer, because there was no such thing as a country drummer at the time. Drums weren’t added to Nashville country music until the ‘50s. And the guy who did most of those early country sessions, Buddy Harman, was a jazz drummer as well. There were no real country drummers at that time. If a country musician wanted a drummer on his record at that time, he hired a jazz drummer. So the real revelation is that for about the first 50 years of U.S. music history the only kind of drumming going on was jazz drumming, whether it was New Orleans style, swing style, bebop or early rhythm and blues drumming, which is really more of a big band concept applied to a small group with a singer or sax player out front... And the same with the blues guys. When Chess Records added drums to Muddy Waters and other blues players recordings in the early 50s...there were no blues drummers yet so they added jazz drummers like Fred Below. Same with gospel recordings. They’d have Panama Francis play or some other New York or Memphis drummer who had a jazz background. It was real interesting for me to see that the jazz drummers were really the original drummers in every genre in American music...Confessions of a U.S. Ethnic Drummer
posted by hermitosis at 7:23 AM on March 23, 2007