Bluesman?

I hear this nonsense a lot, it usually goes like this: John Mayer is awesome at guitar (indisputable), John Mayer plays blues songs and they sound good (also somewhat indisputable), therefore, John Mayer is a bluesman!

Errr, no. At the risk of sounding like a “cut off your nose to spite your face” hard assed purist (which I am really not), you can’t be a bluesman when over 90% of your recorded music is bubblegum poppish acoustic/electric mishmash.

Now don’t you take away from this rant that I dislike Mr. Mayer, I really do like a lot of his stuff. Continuum was pretty good. I’ve even listened to Room for Squares and thought generally positive things. But playing blues live on occasion and on a live album, back to back to Your Body Is a Wonderland (which he wrote) does NOT make you a candidate to share the esteemed title of bluesman with B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Muddy Waters, Lead Belly, and Robert Johnson.

He is a pop-guitarist who can play a mean blues lick and idolizes SRV (you clever bastard!). Well, more power to him. Just expect to see me cringe when you say John Mayer and bluesman in the same sentence (unless there are an odd number of negations in there).