Silent Etudes

This blog is a mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. It's a place they turn the lights down low, the jigsaw jazz and the jet fresh flow. A place for the humble, the nimble, the inward and the handmade. A jam session where Django Reinhardt meets Ludwig Wittgenstein while listening to Baden Powell quoting Charlie Parker. A pithy palace of puns and subversions. A place for broken chords and backyard tropes.

Monday, March 10, 2008

JB Lenoir: A Natural Man with an Unnatural Beat


There's nothing in the blues like JB Lenoir's Natural Man. You can go through all the Chess, Excello, VeeJay, Sun, sides that you want, and I really doubt you'll ever hear a beat like this. Where did it come from? Lenoir turns the beat inside out and upside down. Breaking all conventions, the drummer smacks the snare on the 1 and the 3 while the rest of the band plays on the usual 2/4. It is chaotic and wonderful.

JB himself is playing a boogie bottom with a horn section riffing along. As for the bass, I'm not sure what is going on there. But somehow it works and hangs together, how, I don't know. Everyone is pretty much playing in a different time signature.

But this was no screw-up. There's many more of these "inside out" 1/3 blues by Lenoir. He must have wanted it this way, and you know, he was right. No one and nothing else sounds like him.
Natural Man

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posted by njbuzz | Monday, March 10, 2008

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