A question: What exactly is a blues ballad? Can anyone out there help me with this? I first heard the term some years ago during the terrific video that Donald Fagen did about the influence of blues on his songwriting, when he compared his use of major seven chords in a blues form to "blues ballads done by Bobby 'Blue' Bland". I'll have to find the video (that's right - I have it on VHS) before I can double-check the accuracy of the quotation I just gave or provide the correct title of the video, but I think that was the gist of it. And the Wikipedia entry was OK, but not entirely convincing. However it did hip me to an amazing Fats Domino song that I hadn't heard before, called "Every Night About This Time", which you have to check out (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZpJmHldX0s).

And the quandary also got me thinking about other possible examples, such as the hugely under-appreciated Stones tune, "I Got the Blues" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgF-PRY96Is&playnext=1&list=PLFCC93639C9A06912). The song is also a good example of what happens when Jagger and Richards really get down to working together. Here's hoping they do it again soon.

In retrospect, much as I enjoyed Keith's autobiography (Life), certain things about his thinking keep on bugging me, particularly the way he sort of treats Mick as if he was a by-stander while they were making their great albums of the early seventies. Of course, you know that there's an underlying respect there, but for whatever reason he does slag him pretty hard throughout the book. My point in this post is this: what Keith was to rock and roll guitar, Mick was to rock and roll singing, no more or less. And people that don't think that his contribution to the band (and music, in general) was the equivalent of Keith's (or Charlie's) are not hearing things accurately. Try singing along with "Ventilator Blues" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l0X1w8a7D8) or "Let It Loose" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrCiKD-cBvo) if you don't believe me. Mick's experience as a serious blues student and instrumentalist (Keith does give credit to his harmonica playing - but he's an excellent guitarist as well) allowed him to find melodic material and phrasings that were much more sophisticated than most people (including Keith, apparently) realize. Here are the lyrics to the album, arguably the greatest in rock 'n' roll history, that contains the classic tracks mentioned above: http://dougscripts.com/itunes/pdf/examplepdf.pdf. (You'll need them to sing along. Try it. Seriously.)

Another very cool thing about the Keith Richards' book, Life (2010), is the credit that he gives to other musicians for inspiring/helping him and the Stones. The sections that treat the early years of the band and their blues purist attitude are great, as are the tributes that he gives to Chuck Berry and Gram Parsons. The former name has been associated with the Stones since their inception. Not only did they record a whole whack of his songs, but Keith, by his own admission, stole (or is it borrowed?) virtually every lick that he played. Here's "Bye Bye Johnny", the first song on their first EP (from January, 1964): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdBKH4-6q1w. But Parsons' influence on the band wasn't as well known (before this book, to me, anyway), but now I hear it loud and clear. I hope that his charismatic style and true love of country music will inspire other rockers to keep that door to the past (and future) open as well. Here's "Dead Flowers" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YRdxHHFKvQ) and "Juanita" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvquxLSW64M&feature=related) for your consideration and enjoyment.

Finished Keith's book (Life), and even though I got a little bogged down in the heavy drug years, found it to be a remarkable read. I guess that, for me, honesty is the most important attribute for an autobiography, and this book has plenty of it. And it's also really well written, and both surprising and insightful, particularly about music. Speaking of which, I always find that I hear an artist's music a little more clearly after reading about them, and that was certainly the case here. Specifically, the book got me to give another listen to some of my early Stones LPs and have a better appreciation of the energy they contain. I realize that I've been one to undervalue their early work sometimes, mostly when it's compared to the glory years of 68-72, but that's not really fair for a couple of reasons: One, the glory years wouldn't have happened without the formative ones. Two, the four albums released in that period put almost every other rock and roll act in the rear-view mirror, as well. And don't get me wrong, I've always liked their early stuff, and I do even more now, with images of their early days in mind. Here's their great version of "Under the Boardwalk": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6A9zqRY-ME.

Of course, there's a bit of a downside to the book, and that's the realization that in some ways the group broke up a long time ago, that many of the albums from the late seventies on were not made with the same team spirit that had made them giants in the first place. Oh well. I, for one, am very glad that they stayed together anyway, and that I (and how many others) got the chance to see them a few times and that they kept on making music. Even though we never got another Exile, we did get some other really good stuff. You've also gotta love the fact that they stayed true to their original blues heroes, who also didn't retire, or let anyone tell them what to do. Inspiring. And they certainly were the originators of many more smiles than the dingdongs who spent their careers trying to imprison them. Hope they stay around for as long as they want to. ("Brown Sugar": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59K2kF6o9Tk)

I'm about two thirds of the way through Keith Richards' Life (2010), and I'm finding it to be quite simply terrific. Some of the descriptive bits are so vivid you'd think the guy was a novelist rather than a rock 'n' roller - I nearly wrote "rocker" there, which would have been a mistake, because one of the really big deals to him is the importance of the swing element in music. He comes back to the point several times in fact, and one of the criticisms that he has for a lot of rock is that the roll part has been forgotten (but I don't agree with him in thinking that the charge can be applied to the Beatles - just listen to "Eight Days a Week": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtuybFrq7Rw, in comparison to "Something Happened to Me Yesterday": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=banNjTF6qEI, if you want evidence. However the Stones did learn to swing much harder later on, like on this one for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geQ_SmCZWjE). The book has a lot of very insightful stuff on music from the various perspectives that he's assumed (fan, student, performer, composer, band leader), including some things I'd never seen written about before, really important for musicians and fans to think about. It's not only a great and fun autobiography, it's an essential book on music.

One of the many musicians originally inspired by the Stones, David Johansen, had a similar comment recently about how vital swing rhythms are to rock, pointing out that without it, rock becomes militaristic - which was the case with a lot of punk. It's also the case with techno and any other style of music played (largely) by machines. The human element necessary in trying to figure out how the triplet and the eighth note co-exist (playing swing eighth notes is one of the most difficult things a jazz musician has to learn) is crucial to the excitement generated and will never be replicated or replaced. The best swing music - be it jazz, country, rock, r&b - has the power to draw in the listener in a very subtle and seductive way, and I'm not sure that music that doesn't understand this is destined to last. Which won't be the case with the work of any of the names above.