Hillbilly Blues Guitar DVD

Product Description As the Country Blues began to be recorded, in the mid-1920s, it soon became apparent that the music was being played and appreciated not only by African-American musicians and audiences, but by white musicians and audiences as well. Many of these white musicians played with and learned from black musicians, for even in the Jim Crow Era there was always a good deal of musical interaction and exchange. So it is that the term Hillbilly Blues can be used to describe the music made by white musicians of that era in the Country Blues style.Included on this DVD are songs from Clarence Greene, known mostly as a fiddler, but an ace guitarist, Dick Justice, who in his one day in the recording studio waxed ten masterful performances, Frank Hutchison who excelled at lap slide, harmonica on a rack and conventional blues picking, Sam McGee, a banjo and guitar master who went on to star on the Grand Ole Opry, Hobart Smith, a musical powerhouse, Maybelle Carter, a rocksteady and beautifully lyrical player who may have been the most influential of the bunch and Emry Arthur, a soulful singer and player who recorded one of the earliest versions of Man Of Constant Sorrow. The songs selected for inclusion on the DVD have been chosen to introduce you to a variety of different keys and playing positions, as well as a host of different right hand techniques. A PDF included on the DVD offers not only detailed transcriptions of the songs, but the songs' lyrics, too. All of the original performances by the musicians are included on the DVD as bonus tracks, both as references and for your listening enjoyment.Titles include: CLARENCE GREENE Johnson City Blues DICK JUSTICE Brown Skin Blues FRANK HUTCHISON Cumberland Gap SAM McGEE Franklin Blues HOBART SMITH Graveyard Blues CARTER FAMILY The Cannon Ball EMRY ARTHUR Reuben, Oh Reuben90 minutes Level 2/3 Detailed tab/music PDF file on the DVD DVD is region 0, playable worldwide. About the Actor At the age of 12, John Miller was inspired to play the guitar after seeing Mississippi John Hurt perform at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. he bought his first guitar at the age of 16 and launched into an intensive period of study of Country Blues guitar, learning the music of John Hurt, Mance Lipscomb, Bo Carter, Blind Blake, and other greats. By the time he was twenty-seven, John had released five solo albums to international critical acclaim. Those albums ranged from Country blues and Old Time country music to the songs of George Gershwin. For the next 15 years, John focused on teaching, founding two music camps, composing, and building a vocabulary in Jazz and Latin music. In the last seven years, John has released CDs with a Jazz trio, Catwalk, duos with mandolinist John Reischman, violinist Ruthie Dornfeld, singer Becky Kilgore, and French cabaret music with the ensemble Rouge. Says Miller of his musical travels, I ve played many many different styles of music in recent years, but I ve come to realize that everything I ve done has been informed by my early involvement with Country Blues and the lessons I learned from that music: the primacy of rhythm and the need to communicate with clarity and strength of purpose. I strive for those qualities in the music I play, and I hope that what I do honors the memory of my heroes, like John Hurt, who have passed on.