Innovation and derivation

Bert Jansch

I have had some discussions in the last year that have got me to thinking about art and music. I went out to dinner a while back with three musician friends. A question was posed, "Who is your favorite fingerstyle guitar player?" It was a tough question for me, I have seen so many great players, including Doc Watson in his prime, Jorma, Paul Simon, Joan Baez, Tony Rice and more. Who was better than Chet Atkins or Merle Travis? I even was able to watch Elizabeth Cotton perform and she was incredible.

At the end I sputtered out, "Bert Jansch." The Pentangle guitar player seemed to do things in the sixties that nobody else came close to for me. He took the work of Davy Graham and really pushed it forward and made it more beautiful. Love a lot of the early people, Fahey, Sandy Bull, many of them long forgotten.

Another person said Ralph Towner, a fine selection. The question is so subjective and everybody is, of course, entitled to their personal opinion. He also expressed his admiration for the wonderful Tommy Emmanuel.

Interestingly, I read an interview with Jimmy Page not that long ago where he claimed that Jansch was his favorite fingerstylist too so I guess that I am in good company.

Anyway I mentioned that to my friend and he said that there were dozens of people that could play that well today.

Really?

Who?

Conversely, we were talking about drummers and I mentioned what a huge fan I was of Elvin Jones. I love Elvin and his bands as well as Tony Williams and DeJohnette. There was something there in the days of hard bop and early fusion that I never heard later on. Downhill ever since.

My buddy is also a drummer and told me that similarly, there were a surfeit of players today that could match or surpass Elvin, he might have mentioned Dennis Chambers, I don't remember...

I thought a lot about our discussion these last few months and had another thought.

I don't think so...

Ten Elvin Jones alive today? Blakeys? In my way of thinking, I will always go with the innovator, the person on the original cutting edge who coined the style, seemingly out of thin air and not the people who are the great imitators, the derivative Johnny come late-lies. Hendrix over Frank Marino, Gary Moore and Trower, Billy Cobham and not Neal Peart, McLaughlin over practically everybody. Roy Buchanan instead of Jeff Beck, sorry, at least with the knob twisting. Django and Charlie Christian over their imitators. Listen to how sparing and efficient Muddy Waters played compared to the later blues players. Old school wins everytime.

Of course people do come along with their own style that do match or arguably surpass their predecessors, think Stewart Copeland and Jaco. But innovators are few and far between.

*

I have sold at the modernism shows for about thirty years or more. I try to sell vintage artworks by innovators of the time period while the people next to me are selling current and perfect knockoffs. I suppose that you can make the argument that these latter day Diebenkorn or Pollack imitators are an improvement or on par or as good as the original, but I don't think so. But they sell really well and have made it very hard for me to make a living when a well executed copy is enough for most people to hang in their home.

As for me, I think the true artists are the people who create the original style or movement, the people selling the copycat look or sound are just poachers in my book and rarely rise to the level of the giants.