[ktownbrown]

hello. my names brad and i came here after finding a number of dadfad's post via google while searching for info on country blues. i've been playing for 15 years now, without a pick for about 12. i am entirely self taught and am currently teaching myself the likes of 'shuffle rag' and 'saturday night rub' by broonzy, and attempting to assimilate some blind blake stylistic touches before i delve into an entire piece.

i've been on some other net forums and doesn't seem to be alot of discussion about these folks like i was hoping for, so i was hoping to start some sort of dialogue on the subject.

for example, what is it about broonzy's playing that gives it that great drive? after watching woody mann's video i tried strumming on the 2nd alternating bass note and that seems to help. i haven't practiced enough yet to see if i like the syncopation i'm adding or if it seems like a shortcut.

i've also watched some things on blakes thumb style and it's obviously off the freakin charts, or 'sportin' as the reverend would say....but some cut and dry explanation of specific instances would be great. yes, i've checked the archives and taken alot of dadfads lessons (thanks for casey jones!) but i want more! there can never be enough country blues discussion.

=) thanks for any replies.

[dadfad]

Welcome to GTU. I'm glad a few of my posts might have helped a bit. In trying to really get "authentic" (sometimes I hate that word! ) with guys like Broonzy and Blake (especially Blake) it's the thumb that's sort of the key. A lot of guys when they start getting into country-blues (myself included) get heavily into the alternating thumb thing, which is they key of course to playing most of it well. But guys like Blake and sometimes Broonzy went beyond the simple (simple? haha!) alternating-thumb into more of a syncopated thing where the thumb was used in a more free-style way, often brushing or double brushing in a very percussive way. Many times (especially Blake) using a reversed-thumb picking technique as well. John Jackson, my old friend and sort of mentor, was very adept at the reverse-thumb picking thing. (He could play Blake flawlessly, having learned the technique when he was young from Blind Blake's former "leader-boy.") He tried to teach me and emphasised its importance to me for years. I picked it up a bit and use it to a degree, but I'm nowhere near what I would consider competent in using it fluently. (The only contemporary guy I can think of who does it well when he wants to use it is Paul Geremia.)

A lot of guys (again, myself included) sometimes get "locked into" that alternating thumb thing. And it's hard to break out of. After practicing for years to finally get that thumb always going, dead on, with an alternation or double-alternation, it's kind of tough to then in effect say to yourself "Okay, now forget about it. Sometimes."

There really is no "secret" exactly. You just have to practice, but there are a few things that might help. Try using your thumb, alternately picking (and then double-picking) with it in both directions (which is why I gave up thumbpicks for the most part years ago!) doing simple single-note bass-runs, maybe in G or C over and over (and over). The kind of runs you hear in so many Blake, old-Broonzy or Fuller tunes. Just for practice getting your thumb mobility in both directions together. Forget the treble stuff while you're doing it for the most part. It's purely an exercise. As it gets a little easier move into thumb-brushes or "double-thumbing" on several strings in both directions. Try doing a few tunes for practice playing only the thumb-lines. And then try to assimilate it a bit into a few tunes. Just use it where it feels right to do so. Don't get bogged down in a mindset of like "I have to do it here." or anything. And of course just listen to a lot of guys who used their thumb in a more percussive way like that. Try to think sort of that the thumb isn't playing notes so much as that it's playing percussion. As you listen to Blake, Broonzy, et al, you mentally hear the "drive" and the rhythm much more than you do the individual notes.

And of course just the syncopation in the playing in general, as opposed to the more... (trying to think of a better word but can't)... structured placement of treble notes against the bass. To where it's no longer a "one-and-two-and-three-and four" or even a "one-and-a-two-and-a-three-and-a-four" kind of thing. It sounds like you've been playing this kind of stuff long enough to probably have moved past that, but when most guys start out playing alternating-thumb or Piedmont-style or whatever they tend to place the treble notes either on a bass-beat or exactly between them. And just doing that sounds pretty good a lot of the time. But it's best to work on more of a true separation between the thumb and finger(s) to where there's almost like a total independence between them. Almost as if your guitar neck is split roughly in half (long-way down the neck) and one guy is playing the bass-strings and another is playing the treble side. There might be one note treble note between bass-beats, or two, or four or none or whatever. The two sides are no longer really tied together rhythmically. Much in the same way as say in electric blues with a band where the lead player has the freedom to play his notes how he wants to, fitting as many or as few as he chooses to within a given beat time-space. Of course both he and the rhythm and bass player must fit together within the overall time framework of the tune but they aren't restricted to playing exactly on or between each others beats. (I hope that makes some sense!) And that same freedom within the structure also can then be applied to the thumb and what it does as well. The rock-steady "one-and-two-and-three-and-four" is something inside your head, the thumb and fingers doing what they want separately but when done together fits perfectly within that mental one-and-two-and-three-and-four.

In any case, don't sweat it. Maybe make a conscious effort to practice and use the thumb with more dynamics and more syncopation with the treble, but don't worry about it. Just begin adding things in as you play. Never become bogged down with a mindset that you have to play something exactly like the original artist or it isn't "right." Even guys like Woody (I know Woody) don't play it perfectly. They just play it well. Remember that these guys spent years perfecting their style and, even more importantly remember that the only style they played was their own. One time many years ago an old bluesman named Pink Anderson said to me at his house during a whiskey-break (Pink was big on whiskey-breaks, ) "You young guys comin' up now... Y'all wanna play everything. Y'all wanna play Robert jes' like Robert an' Lemon jes' like Lemon an' Blake jes' like Blake an' my stuff jes' like me. You gotta remember, all we did back then was our own stuff. That's all we ever practiced and that's all we ever played, and so we got real good at it. We wasn't all spread out all over a dozen bluesmen an' a dozen styles. Nobody is ever gonna be able to play it all jes' like each of us old-school boys did jes' playin' our own an' nothin' but our own. It can't be done. So jes' do the best you can."

And so do it like that. Just do it the best you can, maybe always making that "best" better but don't get bogged down by some kind of note-for-note thing. Their stuff wasn't written in stone even for themselves when they played it. We just happened to have a recorded copy of what they played one time in front of a mic, and they probably played it differently every other time they did the tune.

Here's a LINK to a page of some stuff I d/l'ed. Some of it is just crap where someone asked me to explain something or give an example or play it slower or over and over or whatever so you can ignore that stuff, but the first group of tunes (which I titled PG1, PG2, etc) are by Paul Geremia who I mentioned above. (He comes about as close as possible to contradicting Pink's words that "It can't be done.") If you haven't heard his stuff already, I hope you like them.

Anyway again, welcome to GTU.

[ktownbrown]

Even guys like Woody (I know Woody) don't play it perfectly. They just play it well.

i learned 'saturday night rub' from woody's video. now i'm trying to, make it sound more like broonzy and less like woody. haha. i found two versions of saturday night rub, one is obviously older than the other and sounds better to me as its played just a touch slower. practicing along with that one helps with a little of bills natural syncopation. i have a soundclick up, if anyone might want to critique my playing. LINK

as far as the thumb runs go, theres one in saturday night rub that i'm trying to fancy up and sound different (woody's version is, again, stuck in my fingers and trying to funk-ify it a little more, add some grease, you know? ) its working to a point but, again its that practice i need.

Here's a LINK to a page of some stuff I d/l'ed. Some of it is just crap where someone asked me to explain something or give an example or play it slower or over and over or whatever so you can ignore that stuff, but the first group of tunes (which I titled PG1, PG2, etc) are by Paul Geremia who I mentioned above. (He comes about as close as possible to contradicting Pink's words that "It can't be done.") If you haven't heard his stuff already, I hope you like them.

i have listened to some of them. his playing is damned good and he doesn't get all crazy fancy like some people seem to think is necessary. i actually got the balls to go through youtube and listen to folks doing 'hey hey' and 'saturday night rub' to pick up some pointers and, well, they didn't play the song as well as i think i play it so, it really is gonna just be practice. does paul do saturday night rub? (sensing a theme here? god i love that piece. ) i want to dive right into 'black dog blues' but woody's lesson is gonna have to be watched over and over and over again, just like for the 'rub. right now i have two pieces on my soundclick, one is sort of a sugarbabe/hurt's lazy blues amalgam lick i put up for my friend to play harmonica over and the other is a week old version of saturday night rub. its good, but i'm better now. later today once i put some coffee and food in me i'll post up some more; like my halfassed version of big bills 'shuffle rag' and 'stove pipe stomp'.

as far as knowing the piedmont style, i have been doing that for years and just learned recently it was also called piedmont! haha. i started learning paul simon tunes, then had a little overture into learning steve howe instrumental stuff but then, found his early stuff was similar to big bill, and went back from there and now i'm stuck in the 30s. mississippi john hurt is another favorite, most of his pieces come relatively easy to me as i've played that way for so long. you're right, noone said i was going to have to 'break' my hard earned solid thumb technique to play blake or broonzy...at least i've only been playing for 15 years and not 30 so it's maybe a little easier to bend the habit. authentically is one thing, but just making it sound like you aren't stressing through the piece and adding some groove would be nice. thats what drives me crazy is that, i know all these chords but these guys just won't stop syncopating them and making them raggy and bluesy. incredible, the endless variations.

thanks for the welcome, and all the info!

[dadfad]

Sounds like you have all or most of the licks and changes down pretty well. Everything else is mostly just a matter of gaining familiarity with playing the tune. I used to do that tune more or less. (I never really dug into it deeply for the nuances, etc though.) "Long Tall Mama" was a Broonzy tune I concentrated on for awhile. It was a real bear to put together into something I was (semi) satisfied with. I'd put it together fairly accurately by listening to his recording slowed down on the turntable with my guitar down-tuned to match. (This was back before a computer could do the same thing and keep the original key!) Woody does a pretty nice version, but I have a problem with how he begins it. Hard to explain... "problem" isn't the right word really, but there seems to be (to my way of hearing him play it compared to the original) some kind of a timing discrepencey or something. The "flow" seems to be off. (Paul Geremia's late 60s cover is probably the best cover I've heard.) I used to do "Hey Hey" but pretty much quit doing it when Clapton recorded and released it. (Nothing wrong with Clapton doing it or his arrangement, etc, but that sort of kicked the tune out of the "relatively obscure" area and into more of the mainstream and I try to do tunes that are a little less well known as much as possible.) Big Bill did some great stuff, especially his earlier tunes. Being able to do "Rub" authentically is a noble goal!

[ktownbrown]

Woody does a pretty nice version, but I have a problem with how he begins it. Hard to explain... "problem" isn't the right word really, but there seems to be (to my way of hearing him play it compared to the original) some kind of a timing discrepencey or something. The "flow" seems to be off. (Paul Geremia's late 60s cover is probably the best cover I've heard.) I used to do "Hey Hey" but pretty much quit doing it when Clapton recorded and released it. (Nothing wrong with Clapton doing it or his arrangement, etc, but that sort of kicked the tune out of the "relatively obscure" area and into more of the mainstream and I try to do tunes that are a little less well known as much as possible.) Big Bill did some great stuff, especially his earlier tunes. Being able to do "Rub" authentically is a noble goal!

i'm watching woody right now and i know what you mean. his blake is a little better than his broonzy, oddly enough. i also know exactly what you mean by hey hey. so many people on youtube seemed like they had only heard claptons version; like you said, its not bad, but you can tell they haven't heard broonzy. hey hey was the reason i picked up guitar so many years ago, and once i picked it up and tried i said 'well, someday!'. i'd also like to mention that the first thing i said upon hearing hey hey by clapton is 'i gotta check the liner notes and see who did this originally'. like you said, nothing wrong with clapton's arrangement, but to me nowdays its kinda like stefans singing; eh, naaah. =) =)

does this paul geremia give lessons? does he play out? i know all he does is practice but i'd love to see him. i'd also like to see honeyboy before he passes on but last i checked he didn't have any shows planned. i have to assume noone around here knows much old timey blues, whenever i go into the guitar store i get a bunch of old men asking me how i did this, what song was that, etc. they should be telling me! hahaha. one exchange was after i played hey hey.

'isn't that a clapton tune you were playing?'
'well, its actually big bill broonzy claptons is a little...'
(cuts me off) 'oh yeah yeah broonzy yeah i like clapton'
sheeeesh. =)

long tall mama....when i can sing i'll try that one. i'm thinking of trying to teach myself singing and playing with either a hurt piece or sugarbabe by mance. sugarbabe seems simple enough (relatively) and mance himself said it was the first one he learned. its kinda interesting to me cause the album cuts i've heard are pretty slow, but on the video stefan shows on one of his fingerpicking videos, he plays it real fast (with a cast on his right hand!).

[dadfad]

I'm not a super big fan of Clapton, not that he isn't good. I'm just not a big fan. But I do give him a lot of credit for exposing a lot of people to blues and especially with his "un-plugged" MTV and album things exposing them to acoustic country-blues as well as pretty much starting the popularity of acoustic guitar again which has continued to this day. (Within a few weeks after Clapton started it, every band around was doing "un-plugged" stuff.) And he does it okay. Not great, every acoustic fingerstyle country-blues guitarist worth his salt can play "Hey Hey" or "Walkin' Blues" or whatever as good as he can, and often better. But I do give him a lot of credit. Like you mentioned about the liner-notes for "Hey Hey," many years ago the liner-notes on Fresh Cream for his cover of "I'm So Glad" (and a lot of digging at the the library in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature in those pre-internet days!) was instrumental in making me take my first trip down to Mississippi to try to find old acoustic bluesmen to learn from.) (I didn't know that Skip James had died a few months earlier.) And so a guy listens to Clapton's "Hey Hey" or "Walkin' Blues" and thinks "That's a great tune!" and then looks at the liner-notes and says to himself "Hmmm... I wonder who this Broonzy guy (or Johnson, or James, or whoever) is?" and then finds the original tune is even better. So I do give him a lot of credit.

Yeah, Paul Geremia plays out. Almost continually. If he isn't criss-crossing the country playing little dive-clubs he's back home in Newport practicing. Every once in awhile he'll do a European blues festival. He'd probably give lessons when he was around for someone in his area (Newport, RI). (He has taught at Jorma's "FurPeace Ranch" and The Augusta Heritage Arts and a few other workshops in the past.)

Funny about how the guy said "Isn't that a Clapton tune...?" when you played "Hey Hey." Same thing happened to me more than once at a small gig after his un-plugged album was released. That was when I decided to take it off my set-list pretty much. (I hardly ever gig anymore though anyway!)

Yeah, I also had a rough time when I first started singing while I played. When I first started playing I never had any intention of being a singer. But as what I wanted to play changed into mostly solo acoustic stuff, I struggled to get it together. I'm okay at it now (terrible voice, but I can croak-and-play at the same time ). That's another thing about Paul's playing. Most guitarists, even most really good ones, start to "simplify" when it comes time for the vocals, sort of switching from complex picking to "rhythm-mode" while they sing. But not Paul. He doesn't miss a beat and just keeps on playing the same tremendous fingerstyle as he sings. I'm working on it, and can do pretty well now. Not as good as him of course!

Mance stuff is a pretty decent place to work on vocals. It's pretty steady beat-wise and so the vocals can follow the rhythm pretty well. (Listen to that Geremia-tune "The Monkey and the Baboon." (or any of them really). It's amazing how he can talk and sing at the same time he's playing all over the board like that. Ahhh... Someday! (Like maybe if I live to be a hundred and practice six hours a day for twenty years! ) ( )

[ninjato]

I don't care....all I know is, I really enjoyed Clapton version of HEY HEY being that I have never heard another version LOL

nother thing about Clapton doing HEY HEY on acoustic unplugged was that he still had a back up rhythm guy. I don't think he would have pulled it off as well by himself. He just knows to surround himself w/ great musicians.

That said, I'm a Clapton fan. I like his music and my lead playing is pretty much based on listening to him the most.

This post has been edited by ninjato: 27 May 2008 - 06:16 PM

[ktownbrown]

so, been away for a while but here i am back. got a new guitar slightly more suited to my style of playing. breaking it in with some blind blake. i have a few moves down and a few frameworks of songs in C so far. can anyone possibly expand on the 'double thumb' or 'back thumb' technique? i understand what double is, but any sort of real life tragic stories of your own on learning it? haha. i would like to integrate that into my own playing.

is back thumbing just like it sounds, just moving your thumb upwards, or back, as it were? with flesh or nail?

this blind blake guy, what a clown he is. i bet he was a really fun dude to hang out with if you could keep up. i hear gayle dean wardlow has some info on his life, but i wanna know why i know that, and not the info itself! seems like there may be some strangely placed egos in the blues historian world. blake and broonzy are almost total opposites in that respect, broonzy stayed relatively prolific throughout the 50s and such. blake just, up and gone, off the planet, done, thanks for comin out. that, my friends, is truly a tragedy.

my favorite blake cuts as it stands now are 'sea stomp rag i think its called, where he talks about the horn players and imitates their licks. i also like 'that'll never happen no more' and 'i was afraid of that'.

seems like in the folk revival/rediscovery/etc folks forgot to ask about blind blake in their excitement at finding all the rest of them! haha. its truly sad that we don't know more.

[dadfad]

Yes, the "double-thumbing" is kind of self-explanatory, usually two consecutive strings as opposed to alternating. Back-thumb picking is, as it implies, picking backward (as in up) with the thumb, the nail contacting the string(s). Often it's more like just an upward percussive brush/strum than individual notes, but sometimes it is. An exercise that John Jackson used to make me do (or try to make me do anyway!) was to pick bass runs or lines using only up thumb-strokes until you can pick the line with thumb up-strokes just as fluidly as you could if you used normal down-strokes. I found it a difficult technique. Just something that seemed sort of "foreign" to the way guitar is "normally" played.

I practiced it somewhat (especially while he was alive so as not to disappoint him!) and became somewhat adept at it, but I never really "mastered" it like he had. I'll use it a bit, but not to the degree or frequency that he (or Blake, etc) used it. For example in the Blake-tune "West Coast Blues" I might use it at the beginning (and beginning of each "round") where it moves from C to E(E7) to gain a bit of percussiveness, but not often beyond that (whereas John used it in a number of different places in that tune). It's a good technique to have at least a bit of a handle on and be able to use a bit, even if it's not really "mastered" and incorporated in your "normal" playing in the genre. (Back-thumb picking is what finally made me give up using finger-picks. I was playing at a small club, and [forgetting I had on a thumb-pick] did a short back-thumb run. The string pulled off my thumb-pick and shot it out and hit a guy sitting at a front table so hard it put a welt on his cheek just an inch under his eye!)

I've also always liked "That'll Never Happen No More" and it was one of the first Blake-tunes I learned to play reasonably well. Not extremely difficult and a good starting place. When I practiced it at home, I'd generally use no capo and just play it in the open-position, but when I played it out I would capo (as Blake did) fairly high up. I like the tone of that capoed-up sound, which to me (and probably to Blake as well) made the tune sound more like it was played on ragtime piano.

I had always heard (as have most I guess) that Blake was killed by a street-car. Several old-blues-guys told me that, which I assume could easily be true. But then probably no one (no one still living anyway) probably knows for sure. (Not to be confused with the Bahamian Blind Blake (Higgs) who was definitely someone else.) (Who himself had some very nice tunes, for example "Jones Oh Jones" [which I try to do!], etc) (He and his orchestra were the "house-band" at the old Royal Bahamian Hotel [just a ruins now]. In the early '50s, tourists, mostly "honeymooners" from the US, would bring back souvenir recordings by him. They're pretty difficult to find, but I have one Long Playing-78 rpm set, should you or anyone else ever be interested in his stuff.) Anyway... I'm wandering off-topic!

I know what you mean about the egos and attitudes of many "bluesicologists." I've met some who were great and really loved the genre, and a few who were truly pompous self-indulgent buffoons (cough-cough...Nick Perls...cough-cough... ) who just luuuvvved to demonstrate their (often ridiculously exaggerated) knowledge of the genre and the artists. ( [Insert pompous self-indulgent voice here] "...and so he cleverly chose to play the third inversion, knowing that its thirteenth would lend itself to the successive diminished chords to follow...blah-blah-blah...") (One old blues-guy I met, when I read him the "description of his work" off a Yazoo compilation's liner-notes for his tune, just stared at me a minute and then said "I don't know what the HELL he's even talkin' about." ).

[ktownbrown]

i have read some liner notes where i am just shaking my head. i shake my head the same way when i read some of the things stefan grossman says, writes, and sings. hearing stefan sing is actually the reason why i want to learn myself, because its gotta sound better than that!

no offense meant to the man, he's done alot for the blues, and can play a reasonable facsimile, but it'd help if he lived them a little rather than vicariously through them.

i haven't listened to keb mo much but he has a video on you tube discussing right hand thumb techniques and he has a little white boy playing and re-explaining what he says. i was completely befuddled but maybe that guy fancies himself stefan! hehe.

ok back to blake. i have an extremely old copy of grossmans 'country blues guitarists' which has some of his ramblings, and bizarre photo diagrams of each hand position, numbered to correspond to numbers in the tab, sometimes these numbers are there instead of chord names, and sometimes they are there with the chords. couple that with his writing in the spaces and not lines and its nearly unreadable by sight as the tab that i'm used to is. anyways he uses his left thumb on the G note of the C major in west coast blues. is this the way it is to be done?

right now i'm learning diddy wah diddy and the break is a little stilted now because of my inability to properly double thumb. am i to rock my left hand ring finger back and forth between the C and G notes on the A and E strings? i definitely don't have fingers big enough to fret both at once and the thumb fingering is possible, but not as fast currently. i probably have to learn both, don't i? haha. west coast blues has THE blake lick in it so i must learn it well. some of it comes pretty easy but then theres some new syncopation that stops me cold for a couple beats. if there is ever a time machine invented, you'll find me in a pic next to blind blake. =)

i got a copy of 'front porch blues' by your friend john jackson and i must say, he is quite a player and performer. i really like his banter and authenticity. give him my best upon your next communion with him. =) hehe. in one of your earlier posts you discussed him having learned from blakes 'lead boy'. could you elaborate on exactly what that is? is that blakes eyes, the person that hands him his guitar, points him towards the bar, passes the jug, etc? and as a side benefit, gets to see the man work up close and personal? WHAT A SWEET GIG. hahaha. i like how john quotes blake in west coast blues, 'i know its good i made it good!' haha. if one could replicate blake and his smack talking he does alot, referring to himself in the third person, etc... they would truly be gifted. haha. i find that blind boy fuller is almost a slightly more mortal version of blake.

also listened to more paul geremia from your soundclick. i like everything about him but his vocal range. his phrasing is good and authentic enough but it doesn't fall into the right range for me sometimes. howbout him doin some falsetto, skip james or robert johnson? or willie mctell, his voice isn't quite so baritone. i should listen to more.

my soundclick has a newer cut of saturday night rub, the other two pieces are just me mangling blake/broonzy licks as a demonstration for my friend across the state. let me know how the rub is coming nearly 6 months later if you get a chance. theres some issues i have to work out still. broonzy sure had a sportin thumb of his own.

This post has been edited by ktownbrown: 04 September 2008 - 02:24 AM

[MnBluesboy]

Welcome to GTU. I'm glad a few of my posts might have helped a bit. In trying to really get "authentic" (sometimes I hate that word! ) with guys like Broonzy and Blake (especially Blake) it's the thumb that's sort of the key. A lot of guys when they start getting into country-blues (myself included) get heavily into the alternating thumb thing, which is they key of course to playing most of it well. But guys like Blake and sometimes Broonzy went beyond the simple (simple? haha!) alternating-thumb into more of a syncopated thing where the thumb was used in a more free-style way, often brushing or double brushing in a very percussive way. Many times (especially Blake) using a reversed-thumb picking technique as well. John Jackson, my old friend and sort of mentor, was very adept at the reverse-thumb picking thing. (He could play Blake flawlessly, having learned the technique when he was young from Blind Blake's former "leader-boy.") He tried to teach me and emphasised its importance to me for years. I picked it up a bit and use it to a degree, but I'm nowhere near what I would consider competent in using it fluently. (The only contemporary guy I can think of who does it well when he wants to use it is Paul Geremia.)

A lot of guys (again, myself included) sometimes get "locked into" that alternating thumb thing. And it's hard to break out of. After practicing for years to finally get that thumb always going, dead on, with an alternation or double-alternation, it's kind of tough to then in effect say to yourself "Okay, now forget about it. Sometimes."

There really is no "secret" exactly. You just have to practice, but there are a few things that might help. Try using your thumb, alternately picking (and then double-picking) with it in both directions (which is why I gave up thumbpicks for the most part years ago!) doing simple single-note bass-runs, maybe in G or C over and over (and over). The kind of runs you hear in so many Blake, old-Broonzy or Fuller tunes. Just for practice getting your thumb mobility in both directions together. Forget the treble stuff while you're doing it for the most part. It's purely an exercise. As it gets a little easier move into thumb-brushes or "double-thumbing" on several strings in both directions. Try doing a few tunes for practice playing only the thumb-lines. And then try to assimilate it a bit into a few tunes. Just use it where it feels right to do so. Don't get bogged down in a mindset of like "I have to do it here." or anything. And of course just listen to a lot of guys who used their thumb in a more percussive way like that. Try to think sort of that the thumb isn't playing notes so much as that it's playing percussion. As you listen to Blake, Broonzy, et al, you mentally hear the "drive" and the rhythm much more than you do the individual notes.

And of course just the syncopation in the playing in general, as opposed to the more... (trying to think of a better word but can't)... structured placement of treble notes against the bass. To where it's no longer a "one-and-two-and-three-and four" or even a "one-and-a-two-and-a-three-and-a-four" kind of thing. It sounds like you've been playing this kind of stuff long enough to probably have moved past that, but when most guys start out playing alternating-thumb or Piedmont-style or whatever they tend to place the treble notes either on a bass-beat or exactly between them. And just doing that sounds pretty good a lot of the time. But it's best to work on more of a true separation between the thumb and finger(s) to where there's almost like a total independence between them. Almost as if your guitar neck is split roughly in half (long-way down the neck) and one guy is playing the bass-strings and another is playing the treble side. There might be one note treble note between bass-beats, or two, or four or none or whatever. The two sides are no longer really tied together rhythmically. Much in the same way as say in electric blues with a band where the lead player has the freedom to play his notes how he wants to, fitting as many or as few as he chooses to within a given beat time-space. Of course both he and the rhythm and bass player must fit together within the overall time framework of the tune but they aren't restricted to playing exactly on or between each others beats. (I hope that makes some sense!) And that same freedom within the structure also can then be applied to the thumb and what it does as well. The rock-steady "one-and-two-and-three-and-four" is something inside your head, the thumb and fingers doing what they want separately but when done together fits perfectly within that mental one-and-two-and-three-and-four.

In any case, don't sweat it. Maybe make a conscious effort to practice and use the thumb with more dynamics and more syncopation with the treble, but don't worry about it. Just begin adding things in as you play. Never become bogged down with a mindset that you have to play something exactly like the original artist or it isn't "right." Even guys like Woody (I know Woody) don't play it perfectly. They just play it well. Remember that these guys spent years perfecting their style and, even more importantly remember that the only style they played was their own. One time many years ago an old bluesman named Pink Anderson said to me at his house during a whiskey-break (Pink was big on whiskey-breaks, ) "You young guys comin' up now... Y'all wanna play everything. Y'all wanna play Robert jes' like Robert an' Lemon jes' like Lemon an' Blake jes' like Blake an' my stuff jes' like me. You gotta remember, all we did back then was our own stuff. That's all we ever practiced and that's all we ever played, and so we got real good at it. We wasn't all spread out all over a dozen bluesmen an' a dozen styles. Nobody is ever gonna be able to play it all jes' like each of us old-school boys did jes' playin' our own an' nothin' but our own. It can't be done. So jes' do the best you can."

And so do it like that. Just do it the best you can, maybe always making that "best" better but don't get bogged down by some kind of note-for-note thing. Their stuff wasn't written in stone even for themselves when they played it. We just happened to have a recorded copy of what they played one time in front of a mic, and they probably played it differently every other time they did the tune.

Here's a LINK to a page of some stuff I d/l'ed. Some of it is just crap where someone asked me to explain something or give an example or play it slower or over and over or whatever so you can ignore that stuff, but the first group of tunes (which I titled PG1, PG2, etc) are by Paul Geremia who I mentioned above. (He comes about as close as possible to contradicting Pink's words that "It can't be done.") If you haven't heard his stuff already, I hope you like them.

Anyway again, welcome to GTU.

Wow dadfad, thank you for this. I just found it on a search around the site!! This post means a lot to a guy who has many questions and concerns over exactly what you covered. Timely find for me! Greatly appreciated.

New guy here, having oodles less experience than many I'm sure. At 58 I'm"juust" beginning to explore. And I'm loving this newfound toy, this acoustic!

Thanks. Nice forum. I hope I eventually add a little for all the help I'm likely to get!

And...I read on another of your posts regarding todays language currently in use. I totally agree "wid ya's" (sorry 'bout that one) and believe it all begins on the homefront. My two guys in college have been schooled bigtime...before they left the home!

Anyway, nice site here. It's quite appreciated. I'll check in often, I'm sure.

Jeremy.

[dadfad]

Welcome to GTU, Jeremy. I'm glad my posts might have helped a bit. I'm fifty-eight too, and one's never too old to get into something new. I probably have several things I've done in the past here that you might want to look at. Old-time blues stuff for the most part, with differring skill-levels. Some are sort of like introductions into maybe a certain fingerstyle direction (like an alternating-bass sort of in the Piedmont style) or non-alternating (like maybe Robert Johnson, etc). Anyway, I've posted several here in the past (there were more before the site took down its tabs). Let me try to find a few of them (generally posted in the Acoustic Forum but not always)...

Link 1 Elizebeth Cotten

Link 2 Blind Willie Walker

Link 3 Rev. Gary Davis

Anyway, there are a few. And I have other stuff, from complete tunes'n'tab to little bits and pieces... phrases, licks, etc... tabbed out that can be used for different styles or to mix into your own stuff or improv's. Hope this helps a little. And again, welcome to GTU.

[MnBluesboy]

dadfad,

Thanks very much for those links. I'll give them a look over even though I have trouble geting into the format given on a system. I certainly do appreciate your work in getting this out here. My trouble is constantly running out of printer paper....*G*

I've gotten hold of some of Homespuns stuff and I"m digging into S. Grossmans work now. It just never ends. You begin work on something and another song comes along that "does it" for you...

I have this thing for the acoustic blues. It's what has brought me back to music after over a decade of absence.

Again, thank you for sharing your work. I'll try to give it fair try. I do really need the more simplistic stuff, other than "Michael Row Your Boat" etc. This is a wonderful journey that....shows my lack of musicanship in an almost embarrassing way!

Jeremy.

[ibionika]

just signed up, am in brizzy on the bayside and have a dad, brother and brother-in-law all blues born and bred.

What age are you lads?

Where ya born/from?

[dadfad]

just signed up, am in brizzy on the bayside and have a dad, brother and brother-in-law all blues born and bred.

What age are you lads?

Where ya born/from?

Welcome to GTU.

I'm fifty-eight; been into blues a little over forty years (playing guitar about forty-three years); and from the US.

[eulogy]

I missed this thread the first time it popped up (2008), just now saw it. Because it's bound to come up when people search for "ragtime" with the search-function of the website, I figured this would be a good spot to promote Richard Saslow's "ragtime guitar" book. It's available online, and can be a pretty good introduction for people trying to get into the style.