"Descriptive analysis and musical transcriptions, in standard notation and tablature" of the works of various blues guitarists.

When John Hurt was rediscovered in 1963, he was presented with a very rare opportunity to expand and re-write his musical legacy, late in life. And he did just that, recording over seventy songs previously unrecorded by him, adding to the repertoire of thirteen titles he had recorded in 1928. In The Guitar of Mississippi John Hurt - The Rediscovery Years, John Miller focuses on performances that John Hurt recorded in between 1963 and his death in 1966, presenting transcriptions of 24 of those performances. The richness and variety of John Hurts music is showcased in these songs, with everything from low-down blues in E to raggy numbers in C to waltzes in D featured. Transcriptions are provided in TAB and standard notation, lyrics for all of the songs are provided, and where verse accompaniments are provided in the transcriptions, indications are given to show where the vocal sits relative to the accompaniment. Audio clips of Mississippi John Hurt playing each transcribed song are available via a download link. If youre a fan of Mississippi John Hurts music, The Guitar of Mississippi John Hurt - The Rediscovery Years will give you the most complete collection of his later performances available anywhere.

The Early Masters of American Blues series provides the unique opportunity to study the true roots of modern blues. Stefan Grossman, noted roots-blues guitarist and musicologist, has compiled this fascinating collection of 26 songs legendary blues guitarist Mississippi John Hurt. In addition to Stefan's expert transcriptions, the book includes online audio containing the John Hurt's original recordings so you can hear the music as it was originally performed. Mississippi John Hurt had a fascinating career, originally recording a handful of songs in the late 1920s, and, after disappearing for nearly 30 years, being rediscovered by a new generation of musicians that included Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Stephen Sills. Found in 1963 living in a small town in Mississippi, by an admirer who tracked him down through the lyrics of his 1928 single Avalon Blues," Mississippi John Hurt was persuaded to go to Washington, D.C. and start a new career. He spent the next three years performing and recording for a whole new group of fans. In addition to transcribing all the songs in this collection, Stefan Grossman was also a student of John Hurt."

Winner, Best History, 2012 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research When Mississippi John Hurt (1892-1966) was "rediscovered" by blues revivalists in 1963, his musicianship and recordings transformed popular notions of prewar country blues. At seventy-one he moved to Washington, D.C., from Avalon, Mississippi, and became a live-wire connection to a powerful, authentic past. His intricate and lively style made him the most sought after musician among the many talents the revival brought to light. Mississippi John Hurt provides this legendary creator's life story for the first time. Biographer Philip Ratcliffe traces Hurt's roots to the moment his mother Mary Jane McCain and his father Isom Hurt were freed from slavery. Anecdotes from Hurt's childhood and teenage years include the destiny-making moment when his mother purchased his first guitar for $1.50 when he was only nine years old. Stories from his neighbors and friends, from both of his wives, and from his extended family round out the community picture of Avalon. US census records, Hurt's first marriage record in 1916, images of his first autographed LP record, and excerpts from personal letters written in his own hand provide treasures for fans. Ratcliffe details Hurt's musical influences and the origins of his style and repertoire. The author also relates numerous stories from the time of his success, drawing on published sources and many hours of interviews with people who knew Hurt well, including the late Jerry Ricks, Pat Sky, Stefan Grossman and Max Ochs, Dick Spottswood, and the late Mike Stewart. In addition, some of the last photographs taken of the legendary musician are featured for the first time in Mississippi John Hurt.

In Segregating Sound, Karl Hagstrom Miller argues that the categories that we have inherited to think and talk about southern music bear little relation to the ways that southerners long played and heard music. Focusing on the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth, Miller chronicles how southern music—a fluid complex of sounds and styles in practice—was reduced to a series of distinct genres linked to particular racial and ethnic identities. The blues were African American. Rural white southerners played country music. By the 1920s, these depictions were touted in folk song collections and the catalogs of “race” and “hillbilly” records produced by the phonograph industry. Such links among race, region, and music were new. Black and white artists alike had played not only blues, ballads, ragtime, and string band music, but also nationally popular sentimental ballads, minstrel songs, Tin Pan Alley tunes, and Broadway hits. In a cultural history filled with musicians, listeners, scholars, and business people, Miller describes how folklore studies and the music industry helped to create a “musical color line,” a cultural parallel to the physical color line that came to define the Jim Crow South. Segregated sound emerged slowly through the interactions of southern and northern musicians, record companies that sought to penetrate new markets across the South and the globe, and academic folklorists who attempted to tap southern music for evidence about the history of human civilization. Contending that people’s musical worlds were defined less by who they were than by the music that they heard, Miller challenges assumptions about the relation of race, music, and the market.

Virtually every country blues recording made prior to World War II that has been recovered by the collectors is commercially available. No one could have anticipated how much of the recorded legacy of country blues would become available to be heard. It really is a treasure trove of musical history, and in listening to the incredible breadth and variety in the country blues that this re-issuing movement has made possible, I stand in awe of the magnitude and scope of what the people who played in this style expressed in their music. There really is something for everyone in this music, whether you like your blues smooth and sophisticated or down and dirty. - John Miller. Includes access to online audio.

Based on scores of interviews with the artist's relatives, friends, lovers, producers, accompanists, managers, and fans, this brilliant biography reveals a man of many layers and contradictions. Following the journey of a musician who left his family's poor cotton farm at age eight carrying only a guitar, the book chronicles his life on the open road playing blues music and doing odd jobs. It debunks the myths surrounding his meetings with Blind Lemon Jefferson and Texas Alexander, his time on a chain gang, his relationships with women, and his lifelong appetite for gambling and drinking. This volume also discusses his hard-to-read personality; whether playing for black audiences in Houston's Third Ward, for white crowds at the Matrix in San Francisco, or in the concert halls of Europe, Sam Hopkins was a musician who poured out his feelings in his songs and knew how to endear himself to his audience--yet it was hard to tell if he was truly sincere, and he appeared to trust no one. Finally, this book moves beyond exploring his personal life and details his entire musical career, from his first recording session in 1946--when he was dubbed Lightnin'--to his appearance on the national charts and his rediscovery by Mack McCormick and Sam Charters in 1959, when his popularity had begun to wane and a second career emerged, playing to white audiences rather than black ones. Overall, this narrative tells the story of an important blues musician who became immensely successful by singing with a searing emotive power about his country roots and the injustices that informed the civil rights era.

In these lessons for the intermediate fingerstyle guitarist Dave Van Ronk presents his arrangements of blues and a classic rag. The book includes a conversation with Dave, a discography, 6 tunes in notation and tablature, and 3 CDs teaching each tune phrase by phrase. LESSON ONE: A blues in 12/8 with Leroy Carr's Midnight Hour Blues. Blood Red Moon follows played in a dropped D tuning. The lesson ends with Blind Lemon Jefferson's One Kind Favor. LESSON TWO: Sunday Street is an original Dave Van Ronk song and is an excellent example of Dave's arranging skills. Four choruses are taught demonstrating how this tune can develop. Bessie Smith's classic blues You've Been A Good Old Wagon is taught in the key of E. LESSON THREE: Dave's arrangement of St. Louis Tickle was the first great challenge for fingerpickers interested in classic ragtime. This four sectioned rag is played in the keys of C and F. It is an excellent example of contemporary ragtime guitar.

This comprehensive book has 260 pages and over 50 fingerpicking guitar solos in notation and tablature in country blues, Delta blues, ragtime blues, Texas blues and bottleneck styles. An extremely comprehensive blues solo collection.Includes access to online audio

The blues have been a major focus of music in Texas, from the earliest days of commercial recordings right up to the present. And there has been an impressive lineage of great Texas fingerstyle blues guitarists, from Blind Lemon Jefferson, the first country blues recording star, to the impassioned singing and unearthly slide guitar of Blind Willie Johnson, on up to the genre-defining sound of Lightnin' Hopkins and the late-in-life instrumental mastery of Mance Lipscomb. With such a dazzling array of Texas Blues players to choose from, a book devoted to Texas fingerstyle blues guitarists was a natural project to undertake. The artist featured in this book are: Blind Lemon Jefferson, Willie Reed, Blind Willie Johnson, Little Hat Jones, J. T. "Funny Papa" Smith, Smith Casey, Wallace Chains, Willie Lane, Lightnin' Hopkins, Lil' Son Jackson, Frankie Lee Sims and Mance Lipscomb.