Country Blues Guitar in Vestapol Spanish Tunings

Product Description The use of open tunings on the guitar to accompany singing is one of the hallmark sounds of the Country Blues. Unquestionably, the two open tunings that have been used most commonly in the Country Blues have been Spanish tuning, often called Open G tuning and Vestapol tuning, quite often called Open D tuning. In this double DVD lesson John Miller teaches tunes by legendary country blues artists. DVD is region 0, playable worldwide. Review Poll the old masters with this six-string inquiry: What's the lifeblood tuning for your country-blues guitar? Answering back from ancient everywhere - the dusty plains of Texas, Beale Street, Delta cotton fields, metro St. Louis, Georgia watermelon patches, Carolina tobacco - would come a flood of commonly shared responses: Spanish and Vestapol, often translated to lay audiences as Open G and Open D tuning, respectively. Twelve of those respondents even show off their wares here. Actually, John Miller shows off their wares. Patiently picking apart intriguing examples of what greatness those tunings are capable of, he then reassembles each song right before your eyes with slo-mo split-screen ease. Miller beams down through layers of bedrock blues with his x-ray specs singling out such greatness as Elizabeth Cotten's When I Get Home, a hymn which magically slides without a slide. And its moral opposite in Jimmy Lee Williams' Have You Ever Seen Peaches?, a rhythmically mesmerizing tongue twister of questionable purity. Without a single word, Bill Monroe Bluegrass Boy, Kenny Baker, and a D minor seventh chord haunt Legend of the Whistling Brakeman. Mance Lipscomb loads up his Willie Poor Boy groove with eclectic verses about troublesome gals and wives, possums and mules. Yet the real poor boy is capo kingpin Clifford Gibson, rolling Bad Luck Dice in spite of goldenly ringing treble runs. Flush with fantastic material drawn as much from relative unknowns (like Tarheel Slim and John Thunder Byrd) as marquis headliners (John Hurt to Blind Boy Fuller), these how-to lessons instructively sprawl over two DVDs, one per tuning. But can Miller teach all their ancient rituals? Devilishly getting greasy... yeah, grungy over Memphis Willie B.'s eerie pitch-bending apparition, "Brownsville Blues," alone confirms he's the perfect man for the job. --Dennis Rozanski/Blues Rag