Songwriter U: Measure for Measure—Fusion Power

“At least I could do it and say I tried.” And with that, 16-year-old drummer Michael Shrieve borrowed the keys to his dad’s car and journeyed north to San Francisco to “pull on the pants leg” of Super Session guitarist Michael Bloomfield. His objective? Jamming with the band.

That night he played the Fillmore. More importantly, he caught the eye of Santana’s manager, Stan Marcum. A year later, Santana invited him to join his band. Woodstock happened, and in 1998, Shrieve found himself addressing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at Santana’s induction ceremony. But let’s take a closer look at 1966 when Shrieve was sleeping on a couch in the Mission District.

“So here I was, a little white boy from the suburbs,” he says. “I was living with a militant black, a Nicaraguan, a Puerto Rican, and a Mexican. Now, this was during the hippie movement, but I soon found out that this was no hippie love thing. This was like a street gang, and their weapon was music.”

It was an ideal setting for a fusion of cultural influences. As Carlos Santana recalls in an interview with David P. Szatmary: “If I would go to some cat’s room, he’d be listening to Sly [Stone] and Jimi Hendrix; another guy to the Stones and the Beatles. Another guy would be listening to Tito Puente and Mongo Santamaría. Another guy would be listening to Miles [Davis] and [John] Coltrane… to me, it was like being at a university.”

Carlos soon began combining elements of Latin, jazz, rock, and blues into his signature sound. Fusion is not a new thing. In 1903, for example, W.C. Handy heard an unknown black guitarist playing slide guitar at a train station in Mississippi and published “The Memphis Blues” a few years later. He didn’t invent the blues, but thanks to his ability to fuse Western harmony with the songs of an unknown guitarist, he laid the groundwork for Santana and countless others.

Not all fusion experiments work, but Carlos got it right, inventing a style that is as vibrant today as it was at Woodstock. Preparing for this column, I asked some under-30 folks if they knew Carlos Santana. Astonishingly, all of them answered, “Yes.” Some said they liked Latin rhythms, but almost all cited his spirituality and “down-to-earth personality” as major reasons for liking his music.

Carlos’ voice is his guitar, in itself a fusion of spirit and matter. As he explains in the trailer for The Art and Soul of the Guitar (masterclass.com), “Some people will say, ‘What kind of pedal is that, or what kind of strings, or what kind of guitar, or what kind of amplifier?’ No, it was soul, heart, mind, body, and your vitals—one note. And with that note, people go, ‘Whoa!’”

If you seek to fuse elements of Carlos’ voice into your own music, check out Ed Adair’s rig rundown (John Bohlinger’s 2014 Premier Guitar interview). If you can’t afford a PRS signature model, be of good cheer, as there are many low-cost alternatives. But keep Carlos’ words in mind: It’s the soul that counts.

Fusion Challenge

“Black Magic Woman” was written by British blues guitarist Peter Green and released as a single by Fleetwood Mac in 1968, two years prior to Santana’s version, which surprises some people since Santana made the song his own.

Green acknowledges that he was influenced by Otis Rush’s “All Your Love” (1959). His version strips Rush’s beat to the bare essentials and pounds it hard. By the time we get to Santana, however, we hear a blend of jazz, Hungarian folk, and Latin rhythms behind the melody.In an interview with John Stix, Carlos says, “The descending Wes Montgomery kind of melody [in the beginning] is just basically ‘All Your Love’ by Otis Rush. If you take the line got a black magic woman and put in the words ‘all your lovin’ is lovin,’ you can hear that he [Green] changed the chords and made it so it’s not ripping anybody off. It’s like taking a seed and making a different tree with it.”

That’s how fusion works. Your challenge is to take a minor blues, fuse it with a Latin beat, and reinvent the song. Here are a few suggestions:

1) Listen to “All Your Love,” and “Black Magic Woman” by Fleetwood Mac and Santana many times, tracing the evolution.

2) Immerse yourself in Santana’s influences (see above). Also check out B.B. King and Gábor Szabó.

3) Saturate your ears in Latin rhythms. Sometimes the beat can be hard to find, but clave is the “key.” Check out Andrei Vazhnov’s “Understanding Salsa Rhythm for Absolute Beginners.”

4) Find a minor blues you can master. Shortlist: “The Thrill Is Gone,” “As The Years Go Passing By,” “Born Under A Bad Sign,” “St. James Infirmary” (Louis Armstrong and Jon Batiste), “Who Do You Love,” and “Double Trouble.”

5) Mutate the melody, change the lyrics, and fuse in rhythm. Use a black-magic lover from your past for inspiration. Note: In salsa dancing, the woman often moves as if the man is unworthy or can’t afford her. Apply tension like this to Latinize your lyrics.

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Photo by Roberto Finizio.