Blues Mandolin - One Way Out

[Kevin Briggs]

Hi Everyone,

Hope you’re all great. :-)

Here’s an Elmore James song transposed to the mandolin. It was tricky finding a way to establish a rhythm luck for it, but the saxophone part actually was best. So, what I’m playing is actually like the saxophone in the original recording. Hope you like it!

[jaycat]

I thought that was a Sonny Boy Williamson song. Anyway, nice job.

[Kevin Briggs]

I thought that was a Sonny Boy Williamson song. Anyway, nice job.

Hey man!

Thanks so much for your response. I did some googling and found a good ol’ Wikipedia entry on the song. I know Wikipedia is not the highest brow source of information, but it serves well more often than not in my opinion. :-)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Way_Out_(song)

The bottom line seems to be that it’s not clear who wrote it. Elmore may have been first to record it, but SBW was the first to release it. The Elmore being the writer part is up for debate. Sometimes both he and SBW are listed as the writers, along with their producer, lol. It sounds to me that they were all pretty liberal with claiming writing credits, perhaps due to wanting additional royalties.

[journeybear]

I checked the wiki too, because I'd thought what Jay said, too. Looks like The Allman Brothers split the difference and credited them both. I'll tell you who did NOT write it - Marshall Sehorn, who gets credit on Elmo's version.* He was a recording engineer and record producer. It was fairly common back then for some music biz guy (usually white) to get himself listed as a co-writer on a record made by a (usually black musician) in order to get a split of royalties. A much more famous example is Chuck Berry's first hit, "Maybellene," which somehow got co-credited to Allan Freed. How the Cleveland DJ got his fingers in Chuck's pie, when it was recorded on Chicago's Chess label, is mystifying. But these were the days of payola and ... stuff happened.

Anyway, I am much more familiar with the ABB version, a rock classic, than either of the originals. And it is substantially different musically from the originals, which are similar to each other (apart from the instrumentation). Go figure.

Personally, I'd have brought the E string in, with either 2245 A or 2243 A7. But maybe that's just me.

* That's what the single's labl says: Elmo James. I've never seen that before, either.

[Charlie Bernstein]

. . . I know Wikipedia is not the highest brow source of information, but it serves well more often than not in my opinion . . . .

It's by far the best web place I've found for learning who wrote what. Especially with blues, sites for lyrics, chords, and videos get it wrong too often. Richards and Jagger did not write "Walking the Dog." Steve Miller did not write "Mercury Blues." Jim Morrison did not write "Backdoor Man." Sorry, YouTube. It just ain't so.

And with old-school blues, there usually isn't one composer. Songs bleed into each other. One song morphs into another. A good one-liner gets dropped into a dozen songs. Try tracing the roots and branches of "Rolling and Tumbling," for instance. It's like playing 3-D chess. On acid. In a blackout. On the moon.

So on songs like "One Way Out," Wiki music editors and contributors are careful to say "first recorded by." That's not an origin story. That's jumping on a horse in full gallop.

Acts like Led Zep and the Stones and Elvis are often rightly accused of stealing blues artists' material. Fair enough, but a lot of those songs were stolen from earlier blues artists — in a good way: It's the pass-it-down tradition, the folk process. Culturally, we'd be nowhere without it.

[Charlie Bernstein]

I checked the wiki too, because I'd thought what Jay said, too. Looks like The Allman Brothers split the difference and credited them both. I'll tell you who did NOT write it - Marshall Sehorn, who gets credit on Elmo's version.* He was a recording engineer and record producer. It was fairly common back then for some music biz guy (usually white) to get himself listed as a co-writer on a record made by a (usually black musician) in order to get a split of royalties. A much more famous example is Chuck Berry's first hit, "Maybellene," which somehow got co-credited to Allan Freed. How the Cleveland DJ got his fingers in Chuck's pie, when it was recorded on Chicago's Chess label, is mystifying. But these were the days of payola and ... stuff happened.

Anyway, I am much more familiar with the ABB version, a rock classic, than either of the originals. And it is substantially different musically from the originals, which are similar to each other (apart from the instrumentation). Go figure.

Personally, I'd have brought the E string in, with either 2245 A or 2243 A7. But maybe that's just me.

* That's what the single's labl says: Elmo James. I've never seen that before, either.

I love Doc Pomus's story. He was just getting started, hadn't actually sold a song yet. Walked into a bar, and a juke box was playing something he'd written.

He called the record company and said they'd recorded one of his songs. The owner said, "Oh! I guess you want some money!"

[Charlie Bernstein]

Nice pickin', Kevin. You kept the feeling in it!

[Kevin Briggs]

Personally, I'd have brought the E string in, with either 2245 A or 2243 A7. But maybe that's just me.

* That's what the single's labl says: Elmo James. I've never seen that before, either.

The wild world of blues lyrics, lol!

Interesting about the E string. I avoid it almost entirely when playing rhythm as I find it to be more shrill and/or cutting than I prefer. In emphasizing the G and D strings and preferably on the lower frets I’m going for as much chunk as I can get. I think I’d do what you suggested in a solo spot if it worked it’s way in there. :-)

[journeybear]

Acts like Led Zep and the Stones and Elvis are often rightly accused of stealing blues artists' material.

Zep got to be better about crediting sources. That may have been after they got called on not doing so from the first. But still, it seems to me that the way I learned about older blues guys was through rock acts, reading liner notes and record labels.

Interesting about the E string. I avoid it almost entirely when playing rhythm as I find it to be more shrill and/or cutting than I prefer. In emphasizing the G and D strings and preferably on the lower frets I’m going for as much chunk as I can get. I think I’d do what you suggested in a solo spot if it worked its way in there.

I like to use the whole chord more often than not. And that form especially. The I and V on the bottom strings, and the III and the ♭VII on the top strings - they're almost like two instruments at once. Plus it's pretty easy to slur the III note, with the ♭III being the "blue note."

Not the best example (no ♭VII) but all I've got.

[Kevin Briggs]

I like to use the whole chord more often than not. And that form especially. The I and V on the bottom strings, and the III and the ♭VII on the top strings - they're almost like two instruments at once. Plus it's pretty easy to slur the III note, with the ♭III being the "blue note."

Not the best example (no ♭VII) but all I've got.

[/QUOTE]

Thanks, man! Sweet mando, and awesome singing. :-)

[journeybear]

Aw shucks! You're making me blush. You're too kind. Really, I just managed to keep it (mostly) together for three minutes.

Just so you know, there isn't any reason to quote something that was just said - it's pretty obvious from the context. And if you must, OMG don't quote the video, too! It's bad enough folks have to see my fat butt and goofy face once. Twice?!? Heavens to Murgatroyd!

Anyway, I just wanted to demonstrate what I meant about working the low and high strings separately yet together. It adds to the overall presentation. IMO, natch.


PS: Quoting Tip # 13. 5 - A) (2): To make a partial quote work, make sure to leave the starting code [QUOTE] and ending code [/QUOTE ] intact when you remove whatever text you want to exclude. Please note in this demo, I added a space to the ending code so it wouldn't form a quote bubble.

[tmsweeney]

I
Acts like Led Zep and the Stones and Elvis are often rightly accused of stealing blues artists' material. Fair enough, but a lot of those songs were stolen from earlier blues artists — in a good way: It's the pass-it-down tradition, the folk process. Culturally, we'd be nowhere without it.

We all know the story how they English/American rockers ripped off the blues and got rich (even Bill Monroe), but I did see in an Eric Clapton documentary, where BB King said something to the effect of "we were playing small clubs and and dives and barely getting by, but then people like Eric Clapton started adding us to the big festivals and promoting the blues, after that we were doing all right".

so in the end the blues was brought into the main stream, and I think we can all be thankful for that.

[journeybear]

Right-i-o. Not only did the old blues guys get added to festivals (some were already, but it increased enormously), they started doing better on their regular circuit - better and bigger clubs, more bookings, more recordings.

Also, FWIW, Cream were good at giving credit on their records. The first time I saw "McKinley Morganfield" (Muddy Waters) it was on "Fresh Cream," "Rollin' And Tumblin." Butterfield was good about this too. I forget where I first saw "Chester Burnett" (Howlin' Wolf). Pretty sure I first saw "Robert Johnson" on a Cream record, too, for "From Four Until Late." Then "Crossroads," of course, which was actually put together with verses from that and "Travelling Riverside Blues," I later learned.

But I digress ...

[Kevin Briggs]

Appreciate the evolution of this thread very much. :-)

With respect to the musicians in the early 20th century who spent their lives playing and developing blues music, it's fair and important to say there was clearly cultural appropriation happening here. The severity of it has to do with how much or how little the black musicians who created the blues were specifically credited on a song by song basis. Interestingly, the founding musicians freely borrowed and/or took from each other (i.e. One Way Out) so it muddies the interpretation regarding which musicians are appropriating which culture, but common sense suggests until the 1960s or so it was music created and shared by black musicians.

Although that is clear, and like we've been discussing, it seems important to note that whatever cultural appropriation was happening was a catalyst for the originators of the music having the opportunity to earn more money and play in nicer places, like BB shared. People like Mike Bloomfield, Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix (not a member of the blues community) worshipped those blues players and as far as I can tell gave them credit consistently and enthusiastically, and of course were eager to meet and jam with their guitar heroes as well.

In the end there's some polarity here, because although pop musicians appropriated blues music they also turned it into the multi-million dollar industry it became. It seems possible to embrace both truths. The original blues musicians should have gotten more credit and more royalties, and many of them benefitted greatly from what happened.

[Bob Gnann]

Cool bluegrass version by Balsam Range out there too.

[lowtone2]

Sometimes I think that blues is just a lot of different dance grooves and feels with some common lyric phrases, occassionally a new phrase is discovered, and then everyone cops the new phrase. It’s even kind of true, but not exactly. There are a few songs unique enough to disprove the theory.