Chet Atkins Vs The Meters
The_Non
5,691 Posts
I was listening to this Chet Atkins LP with Jerry Reed and was amazed at what a thin line country, blues and R&B had between them (I will say had, today's country is equivalent to pop for rural living individuals of the US IMO). Check this clip from the LP I was listening to, to my ear it's just a different rhythm track away from sounding like something The Meters would play:
http://thewaxcrusade.com/chet.wav
Opinions? Am I losing it? Take how the rhythm track was structured away, leave the bass and guitar, it would pass for a Meters joint in my opinion. The Chet LP is from '72. I would like some Strutter opinions as to why this is.
Peace
T.N.
PS I just listened to the clip and for some reason, when I record early stereo LPs, the sound of one side of the channel gets pushed away. The guitar in there is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay in the background, damnit. Why is this?
http://thewaxcrusade.com/chet.wav
Opinions? Am I losing it? Take how the rhythm track was structured away, leave the bass and guitar, it would pass for a Meters joint in my opinion. The Chet LP is from '72. I would like some Strutter opinions as to why this is.
Peace
T.N.
PS I just listened to the clip and for some reason, when I record early stereo LPs, the sound of one side of the channel gets pushed away. The guitar in there is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay in the background, damnit. Why is this?
Comments
i don't mean to be a bung-hole, but you just now realized this? This is far from a revolutionary concept.
Aren't they more like parallels rather than seperate trajectories?
More like one big interconnected, intersecting, mutually beneficial mass...
exactly.
I once read in some book that a dude walked up to Chuck Berry on his tour bus while Chuck was listening to Hank Williams. the guy was confused on some "what is a black man doing listening to Hank Williams" type shit, and said something to Chuck - who said something like, "Shit man, I am from the South! We ALL listen to Hank Williams, Foll!"
Not that this illustrates my point super well, but, yes - country music & raw funk pretty much come from the same exact place. it's not even parallel lines. The lines are incredibly blurred.
dude how many country songs are bassed on a simple thudding 4 on the floor kick drum build up with instrumental breaks ontop of it??
i peepd a keith urban track on cmt recently that has a sick intro that wouldnt sound out of place on a baldelli cosmic mix.. until the song kicks in anyways
< --
has got house beats with faux pedal steel licks played by years truely in a true cosmic country chooglin stylee
-It's funny to me now thinking about country now vs then vis a vis r&b.
-Country while perhaps having kick drum intro thudding does not resemble the rhythm tracks of a disco beat. Disco is routed in city/dance/gay aesthetic sensibilities, while I would say country is a rejection of most, if not all, of those things.
I like the discussion here. I just wish I was being clearer with what I was saying!
oh yes, definitely. I'm not sure how well documented it is though.
I am also guessing that those same players did a lot of disco tracks as well.
I would not be surprised at all.
well i would say that alot of country is a non urban form of dance music
HONKY TONK BADONKADONK[/b]
I wish someone would write a book on key session players from the 50's 60's and 70's. I bet they have some great stories.
It's probably because of Jerry Reed. A lot of his early 70's hits had a decidedly funky feel. Listen to his big hits "Amos Moses," "Ko Ko Joe," and "When You're Hot, You're Hot" - there's chunky rhythm guitar for DAYS.
Also look out for Connie Smith's oldie "If It Ain't Love"...it's a full-on country song, and a very good one, but every now and then it gets broken up by this wah-wah guitar that could have come from an Isaac Hayes soundtrack...those Nashville session cats were straight-up gearheads and went out of their way to keep up with the latest electronic doo-dads (probably still do). This was 1972...if the rest of the world was affected by things like this, the country guys weren't getting left behind.
Peace
T.N.
You're basically right about country and soul separating when disco came out. That's when black music shed it's rural roots (and where I stop listening to it!).
About ten or eleven years ago, there was this compilation called Rhythm, Country & Soul where they got all these black R&B singers to do duets with white country artists.
Every last one of the black artists were from "back in the day," and there was probably a reason for that. I think these older heads related to country quicker than Bobby Brown or even Boyz II Men.
Anytime, man.
And for the rest of you...I believe he's referring to the WHITE Ray Charles...these R.C. Singers are not to be confused with the Raelettes...
A lot of Shelby Singleton's productions had soul and country guys mixing it up. That's just the way it was in Nashville. You can hear it on Joe Simon's recordings on the Sound Stage 7 label, and it's dead obvious on Peggy Scott & Jo Jo Benson's "Soul Shake" (which has a fuzzy acid-rock guitar AND a pedal steel; on paper, it sounds like it should be a mess, but it works out fine on the record). And believe me, there's WAY more examples than these...
Exhibit A: Dobie Gray.
Ha, was just looking back at the thread title. Chet Vs. The Meters? Shoot, I would have liked to have heard Chet AND the Meters (or maybe Jerry Reed and the Meters, since Chet went on to that Great Guitar Shop In The Sky).
I'm glad everyone is at the conclusion that these two styles/genres were never far apart, instead running parallel and intermingling.
As for the disco theory:
It wasn't that there was a monumental schism at this time but a growing trend that manifested with the gradual disappearance of the rural way of life. Soul and country can both be traced to the same thing: southern folk music. Keep in mind, that before the 1950s there was really only country and city life. There was no such thing as a suburb. Before this, the rural form of musical expression developed in a unique and confusing way in the south, which may even be hard to understand today if you've never spent a significant amount of time here.
There's always been segregated locations in the rural south, but by and large the communities themselves are integrated, whereas in the rest of the country ethnic/racial groups have established neighborhoods that actually function as the community. Small southern dowtowns consist of an intersection and a factory/plant. That's it. This is why whites felt the need for segregation since everyone was using the same facilities. Try as they might, they were, and still are, very aware of each other's culture. The witticisms in the language are the same, the religion is practiced similarly, the food is prepared the same, etc. As a result of this system of segregated "communities", the music here grew in that same way: Jimmie Rogers and Louis Armstrong sang/played over the same rhythm (and even dueted in the 20s), Bob Wills played in a swing band with fiddles (as mentioned), Chuck Berry basically sang country music, Memphis/Muscle Shoals studios' racial dynamic, the standards "Tobacco Road," "Motherless Child," I'll Fly Away," plus what everyone else mentioned...the list is endless and it really couldn't have happened anywhere else.
Both country and soul/rnb mutated in the late 70s, because the future inventors and practioners no longer lived their lives the way that resulted in the music's birth. Both are currently in the same state now: mainstream/common denominator/Clear Channel pop or saccarine, not-quite-right throwbacks in the forms of neo-soul and alt-country.
As for session men:
Members of Nashville's music mafia that played for SSS International, mainly, and other small soul labels: Teddy Paige, Mac Gayden, Charlie McCoy, Ed Kollis, David Briggs, Billy Linneman, William Sanders, Kenneth Butrey, and Karl Himmel (some of them were later in Area Code 615)
....whew, that's my longest post ever...I hope someone reads it.
I read it and thought you did an excellent job...
A few other "country" musicians who played a few R&B sessions in their time...
- sax player Boots Randolph
- multi-instrumentalist Charlie McCoy (his first album, 1968's The World Of Charlie McCoy is a flat-out white soul LP, although most of his later LP's were C&W harmonica instrumentals)
- and this guy...[/b]
Ray Stevens played on quite a few sessions on a variety of instruments in the early part of the sixties.
awesome!
area code 615 are pretty amazing!
(check out my uncle on the far right)