Blind Blake: Raggin’ the Blues
The only thing we really know about Blind Blake is that he was a hellish good guitarist. His bass notes are like a rock, steady as a metronome. His melody and grace notes are imaginative, jazzy, and impeccable.
Blake approaches the guitar like a ragtime piano, syncopated, and innovative. If you listen closely, you can hear how he influenced artists as diversified as Hank Williams, Gary Davis, and Keb Mo.
Marked by musical sophistication, a sly sense of humor, and an earthy outlook, Blake’s music echoes vaudeville, minstrel shows, and cakewalks. All we have of him is one picture, and the 79 sides he recorded for Paramount.
Compare Police Dog Blues to Blind Willie McTell’s Statesboro Blues.
The Reverend Gary Davis summed it up best, “Blind Blake was a sportin‘ guitar player.
Yes, he was.
Download Police Dog Blues Tab.
Categories: Artists, Guitar Tabs Tags: Blind Blake, Gary Davis
Son House: The Conduit of the Blues
“Don’t never follow your first mind, cause that’s the one that’s wrong. ‘Cause the Devil beats God to you every time.”
- Son House
In the beginning was the blues, and the blues was with Son House, and Son House was the blues. Son House doesn’t play the blues; he is a conduit for it.
Born Eddie James, he took to preaching at an early age. He became Son House when the blues rained down on him. Without him, the blues wouldn’t exist as we know it.
His playing is stripped down, essential. He sings nothing but the naked truth. A skinny kid named Robert Johnson used to follow him around trying to learn to play.
Schooled in the Baptist Church, juke joints, barbecues, and Parchman Farm, Son House produced a yin-yang tapestry of good and evil, man and woman, darkness and light in his music.
If you want to know the blues, listen to Son House.
Death Letter Blues
Download tab for Death Letter Blues
Son House, splendid in his Mississippi string tie, performs John the Revelator
Son House on Robert Johnson
Categories: Artists, Guitar Tabs Tags: Son House
Robert Johnson: The Ghost of the Blues
The specter of Robert Johnson haunts American music. He is an imp, a hoodoo man. His music slides between the notes; jumps in and out of time. He manages to be gutbucket and ethereal simultaneously.
Johnson is a minstrel and a poet:
When the train, it left the station
with two lights on behind
When the train, it left the station
with two lights on behind
Well, the blue light was my blues
and the red light was my mind
All my love’s in vain
(Download the tab to Love in Vain.)
His music echoes in the playing of Howling Wolf with its lycanthropic hoodoo and and in the playing of Jimi Hendrix with its other-worldly essential sadness. Jimmy Page was obviously influenced.
He is the stuff of legend, the man who sold his soul at the crossroads, than man whose grave is unknown, the man who died young under mysterious circumstances.
No one really knows much about him. Information is sketchy and anecdotal.
All we have is 29 songs and two photographs that invoke him in our minds.
And that is enough.
Categories: Artists, Guitar Tabs Tags: Robert Johnson
