Bird the quintessential blues player

Bird was the quintessential blues player...any questions?

Rearrange these words into a well known phrase or saying:

'you glutton for pubishment must be'



NJ

Regardless of what people's IDEA of 'the blues' is, if the form is 12 bars, and the tonality loosely spends, the first 4 bars on the tonic, the next 4 bars on the subdominant, and the last 4 bars moving to some kind of dominant area to set the top of the form back up: IT'S BLUES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It doesn't really matter if you THINK it sounds BLUESY or not. It doesn't matter what they guy wears, what color he is, his income bracket, or whether or not he bends notes. It's still blues.

Not only that, but there are even simpler versions. 'Delta blues' oesn't really move around. (see the long version of Voodoo Child on Electric Ladyland. Every once in a while there's a choru thrown in, but other than that, its' one chord. Lots of Muddy Waters and Bo Diddly tunes don't move around.

The dorian modal tunes that the Coltrane quartet did were blues as well. So what if they didn't have pre-set structural chord changes? The rhythmic phrasing was in multiples of 2s, 4s, 8s, and 16s, and they based the harmonic structure on the minor tonality, but left it open so that they could improvise the harmic movement so that it could move away from the tonic and back to it at will: usually cadencing at the ends of phrases along with the rhythm.

If you don't think Bird played blues, then what do you call 'Parker's Mood'? I could list a dozen others.

Was Sonny Rollins 'East Broadway Rundown' blues? It started out with a 12 bar form, you can hear it. The head is 12 bars, but it quickly abandons the form and just becomes modal. Blues or not? (the answer is: who cares?)

Same album, was 'Blessing in Disguise' blues? It's only 2 chords.

I'm tired.