I've been working on Blind Blake's Police Dog Blues since... well, it feels like forever. And man, it's been pretty tough. I'm finally at the point where my ear (and thumb ) is good enough to pick up most of the song: I've managed to piece together the turn-arounds, the main lick (the descending e/d/c#/b thing on the high E and B string) and what he's doing over the I and IV in the verses... but the V sort of leaves me stumped. I have a hard time separating his playing from his vocals, especially when slowing down recordings, and while slowdown methods have worked for most of the song, I've resorted to playing a simple picking pattern over the V. But I can hear that he's doing something more complicated (to me, that is - it's Blind Blake, it's all complicated to me ).

Any takers? I'm not asking for tabs here, I think I can probably get it together if someone gives me a bit of a push in the right general direction. Thanks in advance.

Pascal, I worked on that tune off and on for a few years before I... mastered it... got it together well enough to play it in front of people. (It is an excellent tune, probably my favorite Blind Blake tune.) When I first tried to learn this tune (with the help of John Jackson), even he said it was a tough one, but that all of a sudden it would just fall into place for me. (And he was right.) (Although nowhere near the level Blake or he played it.)

The tune is done in open-D DADF#AD (although I think Blake capoed it on the second fret to open-E if I remember correctly). The basic V-chord he uses in that tuning is x02100 (actually an A7sus4) quickly adding the individual notes 1st-string/2nd-fret and 2nd-string/3rd-fret and 2nd-string/open (which sort of begins his movement back to the IV). (His IV being 020100 Gadd9). And of course there are other notes being played as well.

When I play the tune I don't do it exactly like his recording anymore (and probably couldn't if I tried), but I try to use all of his main licks, runs, phrases, harmonics, etc in it. And then a few things of my own (like a run of about... fifteen or so notes from the treble to the bass, a few hammered notes, often a kind of two-string slide as I work through the V-to-IV area at the end of a verse, etc.

It's sort of hard to specify exact chords for the positions of course because he is so rapidly and fluidly moving "through" the positions with so many multi-note runs, etc. A while back (Gee, probably three or four years ago) someone on the site wanted an example of some of the licks done as just an instrumental and so I just grabbed a crappy mic put it on SoundClick. It's still there, I'll find it. It's probably three or four minutes long and gets sort of repetitious and redundant but the repitition was done purposely. And since I can't play it as fast as Blake or Jackson it's a little easier to hear some of the changes. I was going to do a partial tab, but he said the recording was enough to work with. Anyway, here's the LINK. (I apologize for the poor recording quality, in both sound and skill! )

It really is a great tune. One of the finest fingerstyle pieces ever done in open-D (i/m/o). To be able to play that tune even reasonably well is sort of a "Badge of Accomplishment" in the fingerstyle country-blues genre!

Oh, and good to see you back.

Thanks, John - that soundclick is extremely helpful! It's great to have a better quality, vocal-less recording to work from. I'm at work right now - and contrary to you, I don't have a guitar stored at work; perks of being the boss I guess? - but I actually think I can fill in a lot of the "holes" this evening.

A minor question I'd wanted to ask in the opening post and then forgot about until I heard your soundclick... For the "chromatic" bass run (the 0-2-3-4-0 on the low D alternating with the open A string - I hope you know which run I'm talking about without having to bother to tab it), you seem to be using your thumb (judging from the sound at least). Is that the authentic way of playing it? One thing I'll occasionally do is ignore several few years of "one finger, one string" advice and do that bass run with the thumb on the low D and the index finger on the low A. It's pretty different sound-wise, but I've noticed that I tend to miss the open A if I "roll" through it with my thumb at higher tempos. I'm not sure which technique is closer to how Blake played it. I remember you saying that a lot of the old country-blues masters didn't bother to adhere to the "thumb on the E, A D; index/middle/ring on G/B/e"-idea.

One thing I also noticed just now, listening to your version, is that I'm a bit too strict in the bass-section, I think. I spend a lot of time playing pretty strict picking patterns (the kind of thing you'd hear on a Van Zandt or Steve Earle record), which has gotten me into a habit of always thumping that bass on the 1 and the 3 (or maybe playing an alternating bass on every beat). Listening to your recording and Blake's original, it just now becomes clear to me that that sort of strict playing doesn't suit Blake's style all that much. It sounds too... studied. Something I ought to work on, for sure.

Pascal, for that run I use just my thumb. (I assume you mean that thing at approximately :50 to :58 or so on my SoundClick.)

The notes on my SoundClick thing sound a bit "clipped" which I think is because I used poor quality mic and freeware to record it. They seem to "flow" a little better together live or on analog. I think a few of the subtlties don't make it through in the digital process with the cheap-stuff I'm using.)

Yes, Blake (and Jackson) did it with the thumb. They used what's sometimes called the "dominant finger" approach to playing, an "informal style" where the basic idea is you start with your thumb and index (your dominant fingers) and then just add your middle and ring fingers if and when required (in that order of dominance) to get any notes you can't get with only your thumb and index. (John, and Blake, used the thumb, index and middle to do it, the middle only occasionally in some places. John probably played it very close to Blake as he learned it from Blake's old "leader-boy.") They didn't use the more formal "assigned-finger" used in classical music. The dominant-finger style (focussing more on the stronger fingers) was more appropriate for steel-strings. (Although lots of great stuff is played on steel-strings by guys who were taught and use the classical approach.)

One thing both Blake and John were good at was using the thumb to be able to pick very fluidly in both directions, although it probably wasn't done in this tune. (Not by John anyway, and probably not by Blake.) (John used to always be "on me" about practicing back-picking with my thumb. He said it was a must to be able to play good Blake and "just came in handy" with some other guy's tunes as well. The last thing he ever said to me at the end of a phone conversation a few weeks before his death was "Give your family my love, an' keep workin' on that thumb now, you hear!" I'd practiced using it like that on and off for a long time and have a degree of dexterity with it, but since John's death I've been a slacker practicing with it.

Here's pretty much how I did that bass run. (I'm not tabbing it all exactly off the SoundClick using a guitar, just listening to it, but I know the 6 and 5-string notes are exactly like it's done there.





I might have done this part... -0h3-0h3-0h3-4- ...picking both up and down with my thumb. It's not necessary to do that, but because I'm half-assed okay with thumb back-picking, I sometimes do it that way. (-^0h3-v0h3-^0h3-v4-- etc)


I know what you mean about having too "strict" a bass tendency when playing. I did(do) too sometimes, because after a long time of really trying to get my alternating-bass thumb together perfectly (like in purer Piedmont style tunes, like a lot of Bowling Green John Cephas' stuff and much of John Jackson's) it was hard to then consciously try to break the habit! But yeah, Blake didn't let it define the way he picked. He used the thumb for alternation where and when he felt he needed to and that was it. Most times he used it more for percussion than actual picking-of-notes, except in something like a bass-run where the individual bass-notes are more clearly defined. He followed no picking-pattern, almost like some kind of free-form syncopation or something. He'd use his thumb (or any finger) wherever it worked best, like his thumb picking the note-pairs 0-0, 2-1, 3-2, 4-3 on the 3 and 4 strings, etc.

I was lucky enough to learn a bit about Blake from John, who learned it himself from Blake's actual "leader-boy" (I know I've said it before, but for anyone else reading this, a "leader-boy" was someone a blind musician had back then who in exchange for learning the craft from the blind musician, would lead him around doing things like making sure he didn't get hit by a car or a trolley, played on the best street-corners, didn't get his money stolen, and in general acted like a combination of a companion, a student and a seeing-eye dog all rolled into one!)

Anyway, I hope this helps a little more. Anything else feel free to ask, Pascal.

It helps a lot, John - my honest thanks for the effort of explaining it. Finding a decent country-blues fingerstyle teacher around here is virtually impossible. I remember that back when I was more heavily into jazz manouche ("gypsy jazz") I considered it a blessing to be living in Belgium, close to France... there are plenty of great jazz manouche teachers around here, and a lot of them were more than happy to be passing on their knowledge to a young guy. Now that I'm focusing more on fingerstyle playing, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to find a good teacher. I'm lucky that I have a few years of picking experience by now (meaning I can pick up a lot of stuff just listening to recordings) and that there's a lot of tablature floating around on the net, but that's not much of a substitute for being able to sit down and watch a real fingerstyle master do his thing.

Anyway, I'm rambling - must be the whisky. Thanks again for the very helpfull explanation - I appreciate it.

(Hopefully an aged single-malt. ) No problem. I'm always glad to help with good music!