Topic: Tampa Red's bottleneck style

[Jay Bee Rodriguez]

I know Red used mostly Vestapol tuning on his recordings, but I don't know why, I'm almost more confortable playing his stuff with that "slide for sissies" (Ry Cooder dixit) tuning, the usual standard tuning.  You know, when I think "open D" (or open E), I can't help but thinkin' about Fred McDowell or Elmore, and definitively that's another territory.



Greetings from Madrid to all the good blues lovers who contributes to this superb site.

[sustaireblues]

Nice work Jay Bee!
Good camera angle so I can learn from, thanks.

Now you say you can play this with slide in standard tuning also?
I'd like to see it, post it up so we can see how it works.

Joe

[Johnm]

The one that's posted is in standard tuning, Joe.

[Jay Bee Rodriguez]

Thank you. Actually the clip is half in standard and half in Vestapol. I will upload some covers of classic Tampa's instrumentals (Denvers B, BW Dance etc) soon too.

[blueshome]

Nice playing.

Playing in Vasterpol allows the strings to ring out far more than in standard or drop-D and the basic chords that Tampa uses are really accessible at 1st position whilst manipulating the slide. Also, the little runs and rolls that he made on the inside strings come to hand really well. On top of that you just get a fuller sound, taking advantage of the sustain and harmonic characterics of the triplate guitar.

[sustaireblues]

Ok, I'm up to speed now. I thought I was watching std. tuning on the first part but then when you switched to open tuning my mind just canceled the first part.

You're switch was too smooth for me.

Nice piece, and I really like the slide work in std.

I'll try to keep up next time!   

Joe

[Jay Bee Rodriguez]

Nice playing.

Playing in Vasterpol allows the strings to ring out far more than in standard or drop-D and the basic chords that Tampa uses are really accessible at 1st position whilst manipulating the slide. Also, the little runs and rolls that he made on the inside strings come to hand really well. On top of that you just get a fuller sound, taking advantage of the sustain and harmonic characterics of the triplate guitar.

That's 100% true. But the thing is, even if I own enough acoustic guitars at home to keep some of them at different tunings, I'm using Open G for slide most of the time, and since I play piano and some harmonica too, and sometimes DADGAD celtic guitar... my mind sometimes has some problems to get the necessary relaxation when I play, you know. No more "alternates"! 
On the other hand, I would like to think about Tampa Red like some kind of "acoustic Robert Nighthawk", so it's possible try some of his stuff on plain simple standard too.