Texas Blues Guitar Guitar Workshop

Product Description The state of Texas has had a major presence in the Blues, from the earliest days of the recording era right on up to the present day. So many tremendous Blues musicians have hailed from Texas, i.e. Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lightnin' Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, Freddy King. This DVD focuses on the Country Blues guitarists who first defined the Texas Blues sound and who put Texas on the map as a prime location in Blues Country. In this DVD lesson you'll have an opportunity to learn from the music of the greatest of the early Country Blues singer/guitarists, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Texas sharecropper and songster Mance Lipscomb, the almost forgotten Otis Harris, ace lyricist Funny Papa Smith, the spectacular and under recorded Willie Reed, and the Post-War master Lil' Son Jackson. This is powerful and challenging guitar music, and the technique building that will result from learning to play these songs will take your blues playing to a new level. A detailed tab/music booklet is included as a PDF file on the DVD. This includes all the lyrics to the songs as well as transcriptions of the guitar playing. The original old recordings of all the tunes is also included. 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.