Topic: Legendary Country Blues Guitar Solos - New Book by Stefan Grossman

[EddieD]

I know many of you aren't too fond of guitar tabs but I just grabbed this new book by Stefan Grossman. It's just the transcriptions and audio. No lessons. But the transcriptions are for the complete song. I have mainly looked at the Blind Blake transcriptions so far and they are great. Here is the info and a link:

http://www.guitarvideos.com/Products/Books/legendary-country-blues-guitar-solos#.Ws5n1tXwYdV

This book was a delight and a challenge to put together. I wanted to highlight the playing of six blues players that have greatly influenced me: Big Bill Broonzy, Lonnie Johnson, Rev. Gary Davis, Blind Blake, Scrapper Blackwell and Tampa Red. Each have recorded wonderful instrumental solos. I have transcribed these from the first note played to the last. These are complete transcriptions. Hopefully they will bring you insight into the playing ideas and techniques of these legendary players.

Titles and artists included are:
? BIG BILL BROONZY Slow Blues, St. Louis Blues

? SCRAPPER BLACKWELL A Blues, D Blues

? BLIND BLAKE Guitar Chimes, Blind Arthur's Breakdown

? REV. GARY DAVIS Bill Bailey, Walkin' Dog Blues

? LONNIE JOHNSON Blues for the West End, Blues in G, Woke Up With The Blues In My Fingers

? TAMPA RED Things 'Bout Coming My Way

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
1) Listen over and over to the recordings available via download for this collection.
2) Get a program that can control audio files. Use this with the transcriptions and the recordings.
3) Be patient!! Practice and practice!! These are blues masterpieces and can take weeks or month or years to get under your fingers. But what fun it will be once you can play one of these instrumental.

Level 3 ? 116 pages

[Stuart]

I saw it this morning. It's nice collection of songs, IMHO, and although some of us prefer to learn by ear, the tablature will certainly be helpful as it provides information about how a song is played for those prefer that route. The songs don't TAB out themselves, so compliments to Stefan for putting this together.

[EddieD]

It really is a great selection of songs. I'm always up for anything with Rev. Gary Davis or Blind Blake. Having all the rest is just icing on the cake. I had already learned some of Guitar Chimes from Ari Eisinger's lesson and some by ear. Now I have the complete transcription to fill in the blanks. There has been two different attempts at Blind Arthur's Break Down by Woody Mann. The one on his DVD is not accurate to the original song and the one on his audio lesson isn't complete but is still a good transcription for the parts he did transcribe. I lost that lesson somewhere along the way. I'm quite glad to have this new book.

[Stuart]

Yeah, Woody also incorporated some of the elements from "Blind Arthur's Breakdown" into his "10th Street Scratch" back in the 70s. (Where do the decades go??!!) Here they are on YT:

[EddieD]

Very cool!