Gaye Adegbalola

Gaye Adegbalola

It is a rare performer who can pull off being funny with blues music, even fewer who use the truth to supply the lyrics. Gaye Adegbalola has been writing blues songs since the 1980s, when she was a founding member of Saffire – The Uppity Blues Women. She won a W.C. Handy award in 1990 for her song Middle Age Blues Boogie.

Her songs have always spring from her actual life and circumstances.  In her words: “While I try to maintain the BLUES FORM in all my compositions, I write about contemporary content, contemporary problems (often in a humorous way). The BLUES CONTENT thrives on double and triple entendre. It is poetically rich. My song topics address ageism, sexism, domestic abuse, unemployment, education, civil rights, health insurance, incest, i.e. contemporary problems.”

Richard Skelly, writing a biography of Gaye Adegbalola for allmusic.com^1. says it better that I ever could – “Gaye Adegbalola is best-known to blues fans as the flamboyant, flashy, very funny frontwoman for Saffire, The Uppity Blues Women. But on her debut release as a solo artist for Alligator Records, she's in fine voice, accompanied by some great players and, true-to-form, pushing into new thematic ground in her lyrics. That's why Adegbalola is a breath of fresh air on the contemporary blues scene…”

Yes, she is! I find it encouraging that an established blues performer writes contemporary lyrics – this is the whole thrust of my blog. But it is discouraging to realize that nobody else has recorded her fine contemporary songs on their own albums. ^2.  I understand why an artist might not record a song about wanting another girl in her jail cell (Jail House Blues) and many songs are too specifically autobiographical for artists who are not black, lesbian, abused as a child or battered as an adult. But songs like Blues in the House, Tomorrow Ain’t Promised, Cold Pizza Warm Beer and Only One Truth could work for anyone.

It is sad that the song with the highest number of iTunes purchases and Spotify plays is a cover tune -  It Hurts Me Too. Consolation - Big Ovaries, Baby comes in at #2.

Adegbalola is primarily an acoustic artist. Musically, most songs derive from musical forms of older “folk blues”, spirituals and blues standards. Her melodies and chord structures are less adventurous than her lyrics, which may be a result of her desire to preserve the Blues Form as she has expressed. She could stretch out musically a little more, as shown by Images which takes the spiritual form into an extra dimension.

Focusing on lyrics, let’s start with the Saffire songs. Middle Aged Blues Boogie helped them find commercial success and this song epitomizes the humor and “uppityness” that makes them popular. The humor is broad and tends to wear on me after a while because it seems too obvious. Given that the songs have to come across live in concert, maybe they have to be that obvious. Listening to Adegbalola singing about her vagina is entertaining the first couple of times but after four or five vagina-related songs, it feels like she is rubbing it in my face.^3.

I find many Saffire humor songs just a little too cutesy, even though they are honest and deal with life as it really happens in the 21^st century. Humor is balanced by songs about civil rights, injustice, racism, child abuse and there a bunch of songs I’d just call fun blues.

Continuing her career as a solo artist after Saffire disbanded, Gaye Adegbalola continued to be funny, entertaining, and also damn scary honest. Who can you think of that could pull off a humorous tune and a six-minute political speech on the same album?

I hope that Adegbalola inspires blues songwriters to write about what is actually happening in their own lives, and what they truly feel about these things.

Some of the topics she takes on -

Being a battered woman – You Don’t Have to Take It Like I Did

Being abused as a child – Nightmare

Contraception - Bareback Rider.

She shows her honesty when she addresses nuances and contradictions in her life. For instance, she has a ton of songs that celebrate being a lesbian, but she slips in a song like Hetero Twinges where she finds herself attracted to a man. My favorite Adegbalola song is Step Parent Blues - a great example of what modern blues could and should be. It is so specific and focused that it expresses the universal – any step parent, whether gay or straight, will empathize and identify with the singer. A lesbian wife wants to be closer to her partner’s child. She has been “Stepping to the side, And Steppin to the back, Steppin on eggshells, And taking too much flack. The law won’t recognize me, And you pay me no respect. I know you want me to step away, And step back. What am I supposed to do? I got those step parent blues.” Then in the bridge – “There’s no loving her, Without loving you… I need your help, To end my step parent blues.” This timeless song is so heart-felt, so real, so honest, so Gaye Adegbalola.

Blues in all Flavors is an album of blues songs for children, with a mixture of novelty songs and advice.  Topics range from vegetables (Blues for the Greens) to good manners (Please, Please, Please, Please and The Thank You Song.) Gaye Adegbalola was a junior high school teacher for many years (awarded Virginia State Teacher of the Year in 1982); most of these songs seem more aimed at elementary age kids.  Comfort and ease going to Grandma and Grandpa’s House. She sings about bullying – using the melody of Wooly Bully in Stop That Bully. One sparkling gem is It Hurts (the Picked Last Song). A very nice touch is that Adegbalola provides lyrics and chord charts for all of these songs on her web site to make it easier for kids to learn the songs (I assume). Many local Blues Societies have Blues for Kids programs – Gaye’s “Blues in all Flavors” album would be an excellent resource. She has published her lyrics and essays here on her web site.

Good songwriters know that using the naked, unadorned truth can be incredibly powerful. Gaye Adegbalola has that power under great artistic control. Artists who have this many humorous songs are often regarded as novelty acts. Is Gaye Adegbalola a novelty act? In a sense, yes, because she is novel – totally her own category.

I listened to the Gaye Adegbalola albums Bitter Sweet Blues (1999 Alligator Records), Gaye Without Shame (2008 Hot Toddy), and Blues in all Flavors (2012 Hot Toddy). Also the 32 Saffire songs attributed to Adegbalola as composer on allmusic.com.

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/gaye-adegbalola-mn0000801526

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaye_Adegbalola

http://www.adegbalola.com/index.html

http://www.gayeandthewildrutz.com/

1. http://www.allmusic.com/artist/gaye-adegbalola-mn0000801526/biography

2. With the exception of Saffire members. If I am wrong about this, I’d really be pleased, and eager to know who made the recordings.

3. OK, sorry. 

Have you heard Eric Bibb on mainstream radio?

It is very encouraging how well-liked and respected Eric Bibb has become in the blues world. He is an annual nominee on most Best-of-the-Year lists and the International Blues Foundation honored him as Acoustic Artist of the Year in 2013 (his album “Deeper in the Well” was nominated too). But he states clearly on that album that he is no traditionalist. He sings, “Music is more than rules and tradition…If I feel it, that’s good enough for me” (in the song “Music”).

His songwriting is excellent – well crafted, written to hit his sweet spots as a performer, full of integrity and personality. I feel like I know the guy, though I've never met him. 

“Deeper in the Well” was the first Eric Bibb album I listened to from beginning to end. It is definitely a blues album (more so than the other five albums I listened to in depth) and Bibb brings new structure and chord forms to the blues tunes. The instrumentation is refreshing – fiddle, mandolin, banjo, harp and accordion are endemic to the structure and setting of the songs, not just guest artists taking solos. The language is plainspoken and doesn't try to be clever. The topics of the songs generally don’t get far outside the blues pantheon – life is good; don’t let yourself get messed up on drugs; life is what you make it; life has ups and downs; she’s so fine. But nothing is hackneyed and nothing sounds like an overused phrase that was stuck in the verse just because he needed a rhyme.  

Most of the original songs have a modern outlook and some have interesting twists and mechanisms. On “In My Time” Eric tells us how his personal life has ups and downs. He pairs up opposites to show how his life has gone and you get the sense that it was all good. He’s been treated like a boss/like a boy; like a tramp/like a star. Lived fast/taken it easy.  Played in Paris, Rome /on front porch back home. Ridden in Bentleys/on a mule. Great detail, cinematic in places and all with a ring of truth.  Once his credentials are established Eric gives us his advice - Best thing you can do is be a faithful friend.

In “Music” Bibb takes music snobs to task. He pokes fun at people who need to categorize music before they can decide whether to like it. “Like looking at the labels on the faucet tap before they can tell if the water’s hot!” Beautiful!

There are four songs written by others ¹, one co-write and two traditional songs. A very satisfying recording and I recommend it as a good first experience for people who are new to Eric Bibb.

As I listened further, I realized that Bibb is primarily a gospel singer. He describes his music on 2008’s “Get on Board” as "a further exploration into the place where blues meets gospel and soul."  That’s a good description of all the stuff I listened to, especially the emphasis on “further exploration”. Eric Bibb makes new cloth out of the well-worn garments he has lived in for years.

He shows his blues chops on “Blues Ballads and Work Songs” (2011) – a compilation of mostly traditional songs recorded between 2005 and 2011. But Gospel is the center of Eric Bibb’s songwriting – redemption, faith, courage, perseverance, life is what you make it, get on board, a new and better life awaits. Bibb’s Godfather is Paul Robeson; his father is Leon Bibb, a prominent African-American folk musician of the 50’s and 60’s.

Bibb released albums in 1977 and 1980, and then there is a gap until 22 albums since 1997. Many albums have lyric or subject themes (e.g. freedom and Martin Luther King on “Blues People”) or a thematic vibe (e.g. “Deeper In The Well”) that comes from the instrumentation and overall feel of the playing. 

Eric Bibb lived in Finland for many years. I will guess that he developed his music in relative isolation from any particular music scene – I’m thinking about folk, blues, gospel music communities that might have drawn him to center on a particular genre and adopt its definitions and rules. He goes his own way and does not limit himself to the boundaries on any particular genre. I thought it interesting that on “Blues Ballads and Work Songs” the original tunes were much less bluesy-folky than the covers. I was surprised (end encouraged!) that the album the IBF voted as acoustic blues album of the year in 2011 (“Troubadour Live”) does not contain a single traditional 12-bar blues.²  

Comments on some specific songs that taught me something as a blues songwriter.

The album “Jericho Road” was released in 2013.  Check out With My Maker I Am One. It is a very 21st-century blues lyric, set into a timeless gospel theme. The singer takes on 24 different roles of characters doing their thing – Okie, landlord, junkie, slave, juke stomper, banker, candy man, movie star  and states “…with my Maker I am One”.  It does have the traditional blues themes of life has its ups and downs or life is what you make it, but the roles themselves are a mixture of modern and blues stereotype.

On “Troubadour Live” Shavin’ Talk is particularly poignant and full of current-day language. As he looks at himself in the mirror while shaving, Eric muses on how lucky he is, given that life is far from perfect. He keeps the shaving story going throughout the song, and ends with a very non-traditional set of rising chords. It remains a blues song.

“An Evening with Eric Bibb” (2007) has a couple of songs I found notable. To Know You is a straight-forward positive love song, heartfelt and eschewing the traditional “she’s so fine” attitude. I wish there were more positive love songs in blues music. Shingle By Shingle is another great 21st-century lyric dealing with a traditional blues topic – life is what you make it – as he patches the roof, piece by piece.

Eric Bibb is a staple on every blues curator’s playlist that I looked at, including the internationally syndicated programs. He deserves much more mainstream radio play in the USA. I hope that happens a lot in 2015 – the year of the blues songwriter!  

Notes.

1. Including a lovely song by Harrison Kennedy (Could Be You, Could Be Me) that makes me want to explore Harrison’s music as soon as I've finished typing this post.

2. I am defining “traditional 12- (or 8-) bar blues” as having only I, IV and V chords. And certainly not a II major (even though Robert Johnson’s version of Love In Vain kind of does).

Current definitions of Modern and Contemporary Blues

These are quotes from Allmusic.com -

Modern Acoustic Blues finds contemporary artists reviving the older, more country-derived styles of blues in its myriad strains. The form places a great deal of emphasis on instrumental expertise, providing the genre with some astounding players who do more than merely replicate older styles. An outgrowth of the folk music boom and original blues revival of the mid-'60s, its emotional makeup can encompass everything from provincialism to intense personal statements. While clearly honoring traditional forms, the style also has room for original material, providing a forum for new ideas as well as extending the genre's musical repertoire into the future.

Contemporary Blues draws upon traditional acoustic and electric blues, but offers a more smoothed-out take on the genre that incorporates the influences of rock, pop, R&B, and/or folk. As such, contemporary blues is most often (though not always) electric, and rarely (though once in a while) purist. Because of its up-to-date production and mellower audience sensibility, the style tends to be more polished and sometimes even a bit genteel; it's still definitely soulful, but not quite as earthy or gritty as the music that predates it, and not as aggressive or fiery as modern-day electric blues from Chicago or Texas. Since it's informed by other types of music, contemporary blues has a greater chance of crossing over to pop, album rock, or adult-contemporary radio formats. Artists like Robert Cray, Keb' Mo', and prodigies Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Jonny Lang epitomize the contemporary blues sound.

I think these are pretty good definitions. Well written too!