Over 50 delta blues, bottleneck blues , ragtime blues, and Texas blues guitar solos are packed into this amazing 2 CD set. Each song is written in both standard notation and guitar tab. This set is definitely recommended for anyone that loves playing blues guitar.
Amazon User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Excellent Blues Guitar Course
I haven’t played guitar for about ten years and I got this book as a re-introduction. It’s brilliant and I can’t put it down. I’m actually learning the pieces! This set is highly recommended, but it is not for a complete beginner.
5 Stars Huge collection of great blues guitar music
This is a great book for learning blues guitar style, which up until now was almost totally unknown to me . Most of the songs in this set are pre-war acoustic “country” (as opposed to “city”) blues. All of the songs are very cool and very playable if you have any experience playing blues guitar. Recommended.
5 Stars A Treasure Trove of Country Blues Guitar Styles
Stefan Grossman has been the world authority on finger style blues guitar for years and this book is the biggest compendium of his work as a blues guitar teacher. He tabs out fifty-seven great blues songs in a variety of styles and tunings. The sheer volume of songs in this book is enough to keep any student busy for a year or more.
This isn’t so much a method book, though I taught myself to play country blues from it, as a large tab compendium with helpful tips about each song. Each song has at least one fully-transcribed verse. Many have intros and outros, and some are complete arrangements.
Most of the songs come from the alternating bass and ragtime traditions of the Memphis and Piedmont blues, but there are 7 Delta Blues tunes. There is also an excellent seven-song chapter on Texas blues and even some bottleneck tunes.
Most of the songs are old standards (“Crow Jane”,”Vestapol”,”Hard Time Killin’ Floor”) taken from the original recordings by artists like Reverend Gary Davis, Mance Liscomb, and Blind Blake. The “handwritten” tab is large and easy to read–you’ll never be able to go back to that tiny Hal Leonard/Guitar Player tab after this.
There are a lot of photos of the old bluesmen, as well as atmospheric old-South pictures from the Library of Congress collection.
The CD’s feature Grossman playing the arrangements from the set, as well as original Blind Lemon Jefferson tracks. They’re listenable in their own right, even if you aren’t learning the blues guitar!
If you’re interested in pre-war blues guitar, and you already known how to play five or six chords (remember, this book teaches country blues, not guitar), this is easily the best bang for your music buying buck.
4 Stars Overall, a Great Blues Guitar Book
The Complete Country Blues Guitar Book has tabs for a wide variety of blues styles, including Delta, Rag, Texas, and bottleneck. The one point that keeps me from rating it 5 stars is the CD’s, one of which was defective. I contacted Mel Bay Publishing by e-mail, advised them of the problem, and they promptly sent me a replacement along with a nice apology. That issue aside, I am very pleased with the overall collection. Get this if blues is your thing…