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Delta blues also goes by the moniker Mississippi blues, but either term refers to the blues style of playing that came out of the Delta region of Mississippi, the fertile cotton-producing area of the state (not to be confused with the Mississippi River delta). Most Delta blues is played acoustically, in the manner of the original recordings of the 1920s and 1930s, with hollow-bodied guitars that were made before the electric guitar was introduced to the blues in the late 1940s. This brand of blues stands as the first guitar-based blues to be recorded.
This page contains a collection of the finest fingerstyle acoustic guitar blues songs selected for their beauty and musicality. The difficulty of the songs increase from top to bottom. Through these tabs you'll improve your technique by learning many beautiful blues compositions. Simple chords version of an old classic. DELTA BLUES LESSONS. In Delta Blues Lessons you will study the most used chords in the Delta blues and the most common rhythmic variations. You will put them into practice in full E and A blues.
- Delta blues giant Robert Johnson (May 8, 1911 - August 16, 1938) is one of the most fascinating and mysterious performers in music history. He created an essential body of blues guitar music, recording 29 songs in 1936 and 1937 that would exert a powerful influence on the likes of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, Johnny Winter and many others.
- Okay folks, time to put down that pick because today we’re focusing on acoustic fingerstyle blues. Obviously there’s a large body of music that falls into this category, which can be further broken down into such sub-styles as Delta blues, Texas blues, ragtime, Piedmont, and boogie-woogie.
In the Delta style, performers typically work solo and are usually self-accompanied on an acoustic six-string guitar. In the Delta style, you can also hear the first flowerings of the small combo format — sometimes called a string band combo — that would reach its zenith with the Chicago and modern electric blues styles.
The Delta blues style features plenty of great guitar playing with elaborate finger-picking, slashing slide work, and deep boogie rhythms, and all of it delivered with an emotional depth that oozes from each recording.
In the slide guitar style of playing, the guitarist depresses the strings of the guitar with a cylindrical slider worn over a finger of the left hand, rather than using his or her fingertips. This style is also called bottleneck guitar because early sliders were fashioned from glass bottlenecks that were fired to create a smooth surface. Slider material has included everything from bones to knives to various metals, such as brass.
Notable early blues artists who played in the Delta style include some of the very greatest:
- Son House
- Robert Johnson
- Mississippi Fred McDowell
- Charlie Patton
Here are a few recordings to check out:
- Various Artists — Deep Blues (Atlantic). This collection contains modern-day Delta blues (recorded in 1992) played with a passion that’s seldom heard on today’s records. Features great performances by R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Big Jack Johnson, Booba Barnes, and others.
- Various Artists — The Friends of Charlie Patton (Yazoo). This superb collection contains original Delta-Mississippi blues recordings by some of the all-time greats, including performances by Tommy Johnson, Son House, Willie Brown, Kid Bailey, Bukka White, and Ishmon Bracey.
- Searching For Robert Johnson by Peter Guralnick (E.P. Dutton). A small (83 pages) biography of the life, times, and music of the most famous (and mysterious) Delta bluesman of all time. While hard-and-fast facts about Robert Johnson are in short supply, Guralnick assembles as many of them as possible, and his quotes from legendary blues players Johnny Shines and Robert Jr. Lockwood are so provocative that they alone are worth the cover price. Guralnick carefully speculates — and sheds new light — on how Johnson created the timeless music he did during his short and tragic life.
- King of the Delta Blues: The Life and Music of Charlie Patton by Stephen Calt and Gayle Wardlow (Rock Chapel Press). Patton ruled the Delta blues circuit during the 1920s and early 1930s, packing the barrelhouses and selling loads of records to prove it. An essential read in finding out about the early history of the Delta blues, it includes an appendix featuring examples of Patton’s songs and a glossary of expressions used in his lyrics.
Delta blues giant Robert Johnson (May 8, 1911 - August 16, 1938) is one of the most fascinating and mysterious performers in music history.
He created an essential body of blues guitar music, recording 29 songs in 1936 and 1937 that would exert a powerful influence on the likes of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, Johnny Winter and many others.
In this edition of In Deep, we’ll examine the variety of picking techniques and tunings that Johnson used to craft his timeless, deeply emotional music. One of the staples of Johnson’s style is his ability to sound at times like two guitar players, combining driving rhythms on the lower strings with melodic figures on the higher strings. Due to the fact that his recordings were intentionally sped up when first released, definitive analyses of his tunings and capo positions is near impossible.
That said, the interpretations offered here are practical and easily achieved. Johnson’s tunings can be broken down into four categories: standard tuning, open G, open D and drop D. Some of the songs interpreted as open G or open D may have in fact been performed in open A or open E, respectively. Let’s start with standard tuning, which is the tuning Johnson used for the recordings Kind Hearted Woman Blues, I’m a Steady Rollin’ Man, Love in Vain and Sweet Home Chicago. The last song was performed in standard tuning with a capo at the second fret.
The intro is a turnaround, normally found in the last two bars of a 12-bar blues progression. Johnson started many of his songs in this way: through bars 1 and 2, the high E tonic note is used as a pedal tone while other notes descend the D string. At the end of bar 2 into bar 3, he transitions to B7, the five chord. The verse is initiated at bar 3, and at this point Johnson creates the sound of two voices by playing a solid rhythm on the bottom two strings, alternating between root-fifth, root-sixth and root-flatted seventh chords while adding melodic notes on the G and high E strings. In bars 13 and 14, he performs a different turnaround, alternating between descending two-note figures on the G and B strings and the open high E.
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Johnson achieved great definition between the low and high string parts by fingerpicking and using a thumb pick. I perform these licks using hybrid picking, holding a pick between the thumb and index fingers and using the other pick-hand fingers, primarily the middle and ring, to fingerpick. Played in the same tuning and capo position, When You’ve Got a Good Friend features a similar intro, albeit one slightly more complex in the fingerpicking pattern. Here, Johnson incorporates irregular bar lengths, a common practice among country blues guitarists.
FIGURE 1 includes a bar of 3/8 at the end of the intro, which functions as a pick-up for singing. In evidence again is the inclusion of simple melodic additions on the G and high E strings played against the driving rhythm of the low strings.
Love in Vain was performed in standard tuning in the key of G, with the capo at the first fret, as approximated in FIGURE 2. This excerpt starts with a turnaround consisting of chromatically descending double-stops (two-note figures), thirds apart and played on the top two strings.
In the verse section, the strong rhythm is maintained on the bottom strings while harmonic interest is added through subtle changes in chord voicings on the top two strings. While these high notes are allowed to ring, the lower notes should be slightly palm muted and played with staccato accents. Bar 9 offers a twist, with a shift to the II7 (two-dominant seventh) chord, A7, before resolving to the five chord, D7/F#, for which the low F# bass note is thumb-fretted.
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Johnson employed open G tuning (low to high, D G D G B D: see FIGURE 3) for tunes such as Crossroad Blues, Walkin’ Blues and Come on in My Kitchen. He utilized specific chord voicings designed to work with open tunings, as shown in FIGURE 4, akin to Stones in My Passway. The example begins with slide guitar (Johnson wore a metal slide on his pinkie), before switching to chord voicings made up of all open strings combined with notes fretted on the top two strings.
- The verse section (bar 5) features classic Johnson chord voicings for G6 and G7 on the downbeats of beats two, three and four. In bar 5, the four chord, C7, is sounded by barring across the top three strings at the fifth fret, adding and removing a high Bb note at the eighth fret of the first string.
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The final example is played in open D tuning (low to high: D A D F# A D), illustrated in FIGURE 6.
FIGURE 7 offers an example in the style of Ramblin’ on My Mind and features slide guitar extensively. The example begins with slide figures, positioned on the top four strings at the 12th fret and played against the open low-string rhythm part. When playing these slide licks and vibratos, position the slide directly over the fretwire for proper intonation. The verse (bar 6) consists of four bars of the one chord, followed by two bars on the four chord, G7, fretted at the fifth fret.
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Likewise, the five chord, A7 (bar 14) is positioned at the seventh fret. Each Robert Johnson composition offers an invaluable lesson in country blues guitar. Hopefully this column has shed light on his playing style and will inspire you to investigate his music further.