St Louis Blues Guitar DVD

Product Description The city of St. Louis played host, in the 1920s and 1930s, to one of the most distinctive and vital blues scenes ever documented on record. Like Memphis and Atlanta, St. Louis served as a sort of magnet, attracting musicians from the surrounding hinterlands and providing performance opportunities that were not available out in the country. Many of the St. Louis musicians were transplanted Mississippians, like Charley Jordan, while others, like Clifford Gibson and Teddy Darby, originally hailed from Kentucky. The various early influences that the music of these players displayed ended up coalescing into something that might be called the St. Louis sound. Included on this DVD are transcriptions and teaching of the songs of Teddy Darby, where the guitar and voice track each other closely, Clifford Gibson, with his distinctive approach to playing in Spanish tuning and the mysterious low cross-note sound, Charley Jordan, with his acrobatic thumbwork and occasionally raggy sound, and the enigmatic Lane Hardin, who only recorded two titles under his own name. The songs selected for inclusion in the lesson have been chosen to introduce you to a variety of different tunings and playing positions, and employ different right hand approaches that will expand your ability to utilize techniques like thumb lead and brush strokes. A PDF file is included on the DVD which can be printed out into an easily readable, 8.5'' by 11'' booklet, including not only detailed transcriptions of the songs, but the songs lyrics, as well. As well, all of the original recordings from which the transcriptions were made are included on the DVD. Titles include: TEDDY DARBY Lawdy Lawdy Worried Blues CLIFFORD GIBSON Don't Put That Thing On Me CLIFFORD GIBSON Brooklyn Blues CHARLEY JORDAN Big Four Blues CHARLEY JORDAN Just A Spoonful LANE HARDIN Hard Time Blues 95 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.