Driftin' Blues
| "Driftin' Blues" | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Single by Johnny Moore's Three Blazers | |
| B-side | "Groovy" |
| Released | December 1945 |
| Format | 10-inch 78 rpm record |
| Recorded | Los Angeles, September 14, 1945 |
| Genre | Blues |
| Length | 3:12 |
| Label | Philo (no. 112) |
| Songwriter(s) |
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"Driftin' Blues" or "Drifting Blues" is a blues standard, recorded by Johnny Moore's Three Blazers in 1945. The song is a slow blues and features Charles Brown's smooth, soulful vocals and piano. It was one of the biggest blues hits of the 1940s and "helped define the burgeoning postwar West Coast blues style". "Driftin' Blues" has been interpreted and recorded by numerous artists in various styles. The Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame have acknowledged the influence and lasting popularity of the song.
In an interview, Brown recalled that "Driftin' Blues" was "the first song that I wrote down and tried to sing". The music critic Dave Marsh noted that Brown wrote it while still in high school. The rhythm-and-blues singer Johnny Otis, who was in Bardu Ali's band with Brown in Los Angeles in the early 1940s, recalled that Brown was reluctant to record the song. Brown's inspiration for the tune was a gospel song his grandmother had taught him and he felt uneasy about mixing gospel and blues; Otis and others helped convince him to go ahead with it. An earlier blues song, "Walking and Drifting Blues", recorded by Bumble Bee Slim in 1935, includes the lyric "Now I'm driftin', like a ship without a sail". The music writer Bryan Grove noted that Brown's original working title for the song was the same and that, although he was influenced by Slim's lyrics, the songs are otherwise dissimilar.
After his stint with Ali, Brown joined the guitarist Johnny Moore and the bassist Eddie Williams. As Johnny Moore's Three Blazers, they were modeled on the Nat King Cole Trio (Moore's brother, Oscar Moore, was Cole's guitarist). They became a popular attraction at Hollywood-area nightclubs, and their style came to be known as "club blues". In contrast to jump blues, which was popular in dance halls, the style was suited to a more intimate musical setting.
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Wikipedia