Friday 6 April 2012

MICHAEL DES BARRES: Hoochie Coochie Man

Somehow, Michael and I have got onto the subject of the blues and soul music of the mid 1960s. I shouldn't say 'somehow' because I know perfectly well how we got onto the subject; we were talkingabout it the other night but I wasn't expecting to still be chatting about it via email three days later.

One thing I don't understand (actually, there are lots of things that I don't understand, but this blog is so inadequately small to list them all) is how and why the blues (which was after all a working class, black American music) became so popular, and indeed so well crafted amongst the middle and upper class young men and women of the Home Counties during the sixties.

I am sure that if I could understand that, I would understand a lot more about how and why the universe operates the way it does. In the meantime here is a case in point; a song called 'Hoochie Coochie Man', written by Willie Dixon, first sung by Muddy Waters in 1954, and performed by the Marquis Des Barres.



BTW for those of you interested in such minutiae, according to Wikipedia:

Meaning of 'hoochie coochie'
The Hoochie coochie was a sexually provocative dance that became wildly popular during and after the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.[8] Since the dance was performed by women, a "hoochie coochie man" either watched them or ran the show.

1 comment:

  1. Everyone gets the blues, some of us are just more talented at expressing and thus purging the feelings than others are. Mr. DeBarres excels at communicating in a myriad of forms.

    ReplyDelete

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