Acoustic Blues Guitar Lessons www.play-blues-guitar.eu/menu-36-lessons-review.php Online blues lessons with Jim Bruce (aka Reverend Jim Bavery) Hi, This is a song I wrote for Carol, a friend of Urban (Kicking Mule), who lives in Washington. She is Elizabeth Cotton's niece ( yes, for-real). It's in the style of Reverend Gary Davis. Hope you like it Carol - enjoy. The last lines "I'm going to talk to you all one by one, I'm Jesus and I'm taking you home" is a reference to a book and the life experience of Julie Chimes. The book is called "Stranger in Paradise. Read it - you won't be sorry. My voice is a bit knackered due to singing in the street, but here it is nonetheless... Best to all out there. Jim Picking blues guitar in a modern world is a strange thing to do. Even the least well off in countries in the West are so much more well off than the classic blues men who eventually created the soundthat was the basis of all jazz, rock and pop music of today. Even with the help of blues guitar tabs, it's tough for us to grab that spirit. The fundamental rhythms descended from African roots, but present day African music is broader in rhythmic variety and complexity, so how did that happen? It seems that the first 'guitars' were elementary single stringed instruments made with a cigar box, or similar. It wasn't feasible to make music of a really intricate nature, and probably produced a musical 'thunk', with hardly any variation in tonal pattern. For a long time in the Southern states of America, drums were made illegal, as was anything else that lifted the hopes of the negro slaves and encouraged thoughts of bravery or liberty. Maybe the pulsating sound of early blues guitar became more drum like, which may explain why the monotonic thumb strike way of playingwas popular. In that style of picking guitar, the beat was simpler and the thumb strike sounded like a drum beat. In those difficult times, a proficient player would pick a monotonous bass line which was at the same rhythm as a man's heart. This meant that the music would have an emotional impact and didn't have to be intellectually understood, or be musically intricate. Another possibility relates to the labor that negro slaves were made to do. Many types of hard labor implied rhythmic repetitive movements, like scything down hay, digging the soil with a hoe, hitting with a hammer or pushing over steel train rail. We can watch examples of the latter in old film archives, where a group of men with long pinch bars sing a rhythmic work song and plan their movements so that the heavy rail is nudged over a fraction of an inch at the end of each line or chorus. Often the work song or field holler was split into a request and a response performed by several groups in the gang. This phenomenon of call and answer was employed in later blues songs when sung by a duo, and was also really prominent in gospel music. Although modern music has developed complex patterns and danceable variations, the elemental rhythms can still be heard - the basic guitar boogie is evident in a great number of rock standards during the past 60 years. The more complex rhythms of ragtime blues guitar was the foundation of modern jazz. Deep River Blues Lesson www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4lMZxM5AFQ More guitar blues music here www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWGIiuAHveI

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