Topic: Blind Lemon Jefferson's Guitar Style--Queries and Tips

[Baird]

Thanks for all the help on this everyone.
Does anyone have any thoughts about what position he's playing out of for the higher parts? When he chops some lines between the vocals hitting the C on the 8th fret of the first string?
I think it's either an E shaped C chord at the 8th fret or an G shaped C chord at the 5th fret.
Best Regards,
Baird

[uncle bud]

Hi Baird,

Can you give some examples of vocal lines that the high part you're referring to follows?

cheers,
UB

[Baird]

for example - between 'take a trip down south' high part 'well my mind lead me to take a trip down south'

[banjochris]

Except for the tag at the very end of the song Lemon never goes above the 4th fret (he does slide up to the 8th-fret C then, though). Johnm above describes what's going on between the first and second lines. The left hand for this song's pretty simple; it's the right hand that's the pain.  Plus, the recording quality's not the best, maybe that's why you're hearing the high C.
Chris

[SpikeDriver]

I was listening to ""Black Snake Moan" and I started to picture that Lemon was playing this song with a flatpick. Just the attack on the strings and the runs sounded more like the work of a pick. I then listened to what was the 'flipside' "Match Box Blues" (Okeh 8455 03-14-27)
and it seemed like this could be a possibility as well. I noticed on YouTube that Frankie plays BLJ with finger picks and Ari uses bare fingers (and of course they both sound great!)
Obviously, there are many BLJ cuts where the two voice counterpoint has to be finger picked - but with such a large output, I thought he may have used a few other approaches.
Then I began looking at the Lemon photo and could almost convince myself that he has a white thumb pick on.
I'm just a 'sit on the couch' type guitar player and I'm not putting any of this forth as fact - but as a question for feedback from the great 'ears' here at WC. 

[uncle bud]

Hi SpikeDriver - I've thought about this a bit myself in the past. Aside from the fact that Lemon does seem to be pictured wearing a thumbpick in the Paramount photo, I think there are a couple musical details that point to him using a thumbpick in the tunes in C that follow the Black Snake Moan format (there are quite a few of those songs). The first thing I'd point to is the section in "Chock House Blues" that uses the guitar part from "Black Horse Blues". The ascending chord partials played on the inner strings sound like they're plucked simultaneously, not strummed. Much of the rest of the song might actually lead you to think it's being flatpicked and one could certainly play it that way. Chock House was recorded before Black Snake Moan but the guitar parts, if not the exact licks, are very similar. The other thing is Lemon could perhaps be using a hybrid picking style, playing with a flatpick and grabbing other strings with middle or ring fingers (think Craig Ventresco, or some jazz players). But given that many of his other songs seem to be fingerpicked, I don't see why he'd use a completely different and unusual technique here - though it's Lemon, so who knows!

He could be using the thumbpick like a flatpick in places: perhaps in the bass runs. Frankie and I have bandied that about and he thinks otherwise as I recall, feeling Lemon just has a real fast thumb doing downstrokes - correct me if I'm wrong, Frank  . Also in some of the tremolos on the high strings, again like one gets in Chock House Blues, the thumbpick used as a flatpick technique seems possible, though it could be a finger tremolo, I suppose.

FWIW, I play Chock House, in my modest way attempting a somewhat faithful version, and it is fairly straightforward with a thumbpick, though I confess to playing many of the bass runs by alternating thumb and index.

Would be curious to hear other opinions, as I don't have definitive views or answers on this.

[Johnm]

Hi all,
I agree with Andrew that Lemon almost certainly played with a thumbpick, which you can see in the photo of him.  Apart from the tremolo and boogie bass passages that Andrew cited, one lick Lemon loved that has the sound of a thumb "drag-through" lick is Lemon's way of articulating the E flat at the fourth fret of the B string going to the open E string.  He does this on many of his songs in C, and the crispness that he gets with the lick is hard to duplicate without a thumbpick.  I don't believe Lemon flat-picked or hybrid picked.  I think it was more thumb with a thumbpick and index finger.
All best,
Johnm

[frankie]

I hate to sound like a broken rekkid, but I agree with Andrew, too:  Lemon was photographed with a thumb-pick and it sounds to me like he used one most, if not all the time, and that he was essentially a thumb+index player.  My own preference for a thumb-pick and a finger-pick has more to do with my own limitations as a player, rather than any specific attempt to reproduce any player's sound.  Regarding Ari, I'm sure he could play Lemon any way he wanted and still make it sound great.

That having been said, I think it'd be unfortunate if this discussion were to dissuade players from working out Lemon's sound with a flatpick or with bare fingers, as long as the core elements of Lemon's sound were preserved...  over-use of hammer-ons and pull-offs is what bugs me most when I hear it...  that has a tendency to smooth out the lines in a way that's over-pretty.  Lemon's attack is pretty hard - I think a guy with a flatpick could get pretty close if they put their mind to it, and come up with a sound that was nuanced, to boot.  Seems like cheapfeet has come pretty far in that regard.

[Johnm]

Hi Frank,
I think if you pick your spots carefully, there's not any reason why playing hammers and pull-offs should be "Lemon-inauthentic", since he was not hammer/pull-off aversive himself, necessarily, as the beginning of "Crawling Baby Blues" shows, where he's playing in G at the base of the neck and indulges in an orgy of pull-offs and hammers around the second and third fret of the third string.  I think if the instrument makes hammers and pull-offs available in a particular place in such a way that the rhythmic crispness and propulsion are not adversely affected, it makes sense to employ them, especially if they make nuances of phrasing and articulation available in ways that picking each note separately would not.
I agree that one need not necessarily employ the very right hand approach that Lemon did for playing his music or music in his style.  There's no way I'm switching to a thumbpick or flatpick--it's bare fingers all the way for me, but I think the other approaches could work very well for other players and have done so in the past.
All best,
Johnm 

[CF]

Absolutely go with what feels right for these tunes. I learned 'Mosquito Moan' by ear & with a flatpick when I was regularly using a flatpick & I arranged a version of 'Right Of Way Blues' with a thumbpick & lately learned 'Black Horse Blues' using bare fingers (by ear & with some ideas from Ari's video on youtube). Switching it up is a lot of fun &, for me, some tunes just work better with the different approaches.

[frankie]

I think if you pick your spots carefully, there's no any reason why playing hammers and pull-offs should be "Lemon-inauthentic", since he was not hammer/pull-off aversive himself

I know what you mean about Crawlin' Baby Blues, and I didn't mean to imply that Lemon *never* used hammer-ons/pull-offs...  if you look at how he played many of his blues in C, though, he really seems to have articulated many of those lines purely by picking.   For example, Corrinna Blues - the triplet riffs that are played primarily on the 1st and second string, drifting down to the 3rd string toward the end:

G - A - G / E-flat - E - G / E-flat - E - C / A  G / C

that, to me sounds way too smooth when articulated with hammer-ons/pull-offs, particularly the E-flat - E movement.  In my opinion, it loses all the crunch, power & interest when played as a hammer-on from the 4th to the 5th fret on the second string.

[Johnm]

Hi all,
Here is the Lemon Jefferson Guitar Style merged thread.
All best,
Johnm

[Johnm]

Hi all,
I was listening to "Peach Orchard Mama" today and realized that I think Lemon pretty much plays the whole performance from beginning to end using only his thumbpick in the right hand.  I think he did this with a fair percentage of his songs, especially later in his recording career.
All best,
Johnm

[ArthurBlake]

Uncle Bud

That's a great tip--the one about hitting the G simultaneously with the word "me".  So is the one about singing louder than the guitar.  If I'm gonna take on BLJ, I might just get Ari's DVD.  He may even have some singing tips, too. 

Jeff

I learned the guitar for it from Ari's video and he doesn't really go into the singing of it but of course he sings it so well and being him, never messes up once. BUT I think you are on the right track. I can play it but I can't sing while doing it but admit I haven't put a huge effort into doing so. If you study Ari doing it, I suggest paying close attention to what note (or double stop) each word falls on. Also maybe play bare fingered until the vocal is nailed. I had great difficulty in trying to do it but I am sure of one thing, if one cannot sing and play Black Horse Blues then Bad Luck Blues will be deadly but there are cues in the riffs of both songs. Best to slow it all down as far as possible too I think.
                                        Ari and Paul Rishell are way way above average when it comes to this stuff. He may not teach the singing parts but he does perform all the tunes and I assure anyone that his Blind Lemon Jefferson video lesson is stunningly good, he is such a great teacher, he teaches every single note to perfection. In fact when I bought it on VHS I never imagined I would succeed in actually learning even one tune, I just bought it because i didn't actually believe it could be done (it was obviously before I knew about Ari). I was amazed when i did put the tape in, it is worth the money just for the performances alone.

[ArthurBlake]

Uncle Bud

That's a great tip--the one about hitting the G simultaneously with the word "me".  So is the one about singing louder than the guitar.  If I'm gonna take on BLJ, I might just get Ari's DVD.  He may even have some singing tips, too. 

Jeff - meant to comment on this but forgot. Ari's video on Lemon is really great, essential for anyone interested in Lemon. It is not yet available in DVD format though. Which is a shame really because I'm sure most of the stuff that Grossman hasn't converted to DVD is just sitting on the shelf at this point. Most people just don't want to buy VHS anymore. At least not for $30. I'm sure a lot of it never sold like hotcakes to begin with and hence the back-of-the-line status, but I wish SGW would just bite the bullet and do it all. Homespun seems to have converted pretty much all of their material.

Anyway, the video is great, worth every penny. I don't recall singing tips on it though.

$30 is very cheap, when I bought it I payed 80 Australian dollars for it but I really had no choice, it was a long time ago and at that time I didn't know anyone could play any of his stuff right. The Grossman Workshop videos were incredibly rare in Australia and they still are rare in the shops but nowadays they can be got by internet unlike when i first got a Grossman VHS, Ari's lesson was just the second one I ever bought. \
                           In my last post I mentioned some difficult tunes to sing while playing, so hard I cant manage them vocally but I should have mentioned the two biggest doozies, Matchbox Blues (on that I cheated and recorded vocal by overdub) and That Crawlin' Baby Blues. I would like tips on those... any takers ?