{"id":1429,"date":"2009-03-11T00:10:08","date_gmt":"2009-03-11T07:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2009\/03\/john-cephas-gone\/"},"modified":"2009-03-12T07:35:39","modified_gmt":"2009-03-12T14:35:39","slug":"john-cephas-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2009\/03\/11\/john-cephas-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"John Cephas Gone"},"content":{"rendered":"

from the NY Times<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/em>Sweetness and the Blues<\/span> <\/nyt_byline><\/span><\/p>\n

By LAWRENCE DOWNES\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

John Cephas, the blues guitarist who died last week at age 78, planted sounds and emotions in my head that I never got over, not in the nearly 20 years since I saw him at a concert in Chicago with a touring group of steel-string guitar masters. I\u2019d say there was a sweetness in his music, if \u201csweet\u201d weren\u2019t such a devalued word. The sweetness I\u2019m thinking of is closer to whatever it is that provokes and prolongs happiness.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

It was there in his smile and his voice, a honeyed baritone that was the opposite of the stereotypical bluesman\u2019s growl. In songs like \u201cDarkness on the Delta,\u201d \u201cJohn Henry\u201d and \u201cHard Time Killing Floor Blues,\u201d Mr. Cephas beckoned the listener. He opened an emotional door that you could find yourself aching to walk through.<\/p>\n

It was only later that I, a total guitar nonexpert, learned how much of that appeal was rooted in technique. Mr. Cephas, a Virginian, played the Piedmont blues, an old East Coast style of finger picking, where the thumb plays the rhythm, the fingers take the melody and the syncopation is irresistible.<\/p>\n

Mr. Cephas learned the style from a cousin and spent decades teaching it to others. He was well aware of its power. His obituary in The Times included this from a Washington Post interview: \u201cYou hear that wonderfully melodic, alternating thumb and finger, you just stop and say, \u2018I want to go hear more of that!\u2019 It\u2019s instant emotional appeal, and people all over, wherever they heard it, they\u2019re just drawn to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked the guitarist and music scholar Ry Cooder about it. Finger-picking \u201cdone really well\u201d has universal appeal, he said, no matter what the style. So that would explain my weakness not only for Mr. Cephas but also Joseph Spence, the great and strange Bahamian, and Gabby Pahinui, the Hawaiian slack key master, who I think could bring anyone to happy tears.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s sweetness matched with swing. \u201cIt happens when you get this rolling thing going,\u201d Mr. Cooder said. \u201cPeople feel comfortable. They like to hear the thumb-and-finger, thumb-and-finger. It\u2019s buoyant. It suggests happiness, that all is well. Life is good, for a time. But only for a time. Why do you think they invented bars with music?\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0click to continue reading at NYTimes.com<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from the NY Times Sweetness and the Blues By LAWRENCE DOWNES\u00a0 John Cephas, the blues guitarist who died last week at age 78, planted sounds and emotions in my head that I never got over, not in the nearly 20 years since I saw him at a concert in Chicago with a touring group of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}