Learn to Play Guitar by Exploring the Blues

Learning from Guitar Greats

Exploring the blues is one of the best ways to learn to play the guitar. I've been listening a lot to the great blues guitar players, seeing how they got started and what a life of the blues can look like.

I'm listening right now. The lyrics are so raw. "You know you can't loose what you don't have..." "What you're doing to me, you should never do." Bobby Rush says he must be crazy to be playing 47 years with 6 weeks of vacation. That's a whole life of the blues. And man, can he can blow that harmonica. He says, "Memphis Tennessee,look out, here we come again."

He was a field hand when he was a child - workin' in the cotton, singing, "Somebody's knocking on my door." He wanted to learn to play the guitar and finally he did. In 1956 they played for 2 pieces of chicken. If they weren't any good, they didn't get any chicken.

BB King is probably the best blues singer in the world. I don't think anybody's going to argue with that. When you ask him what he wants with his music, what he hopes for, he'll tell you that he wants the whole world to know the sound of BB King. He wants every nook and cranny of the globe to know his sound. That's pretty far-reaching, makes me wonder how close he's come to making that happen.

BB says that in the old days, they didn't play that loud. "I don't know why it's so loud now. You can't even hear yourself think." I think it was easier then to learn to play the guitar because there was more room to be real. Now the beginner guitar player stands intimidated by all the glitz of music videos and MTV. Music in the old day was not so professional and uppity.

Now I'm watching a video of Roscoe Gordon in the record store looking for his own records. He can't even find them, but finally, there they are. He says he's playing at Cooper Young Deli tonight. Beetle Street was a haven for the blues. The black people came up from the fields and played their hearts out.

He said, "If you were black for just one Saturday night on Beetle Street, you'd never want to be anything but black from that day on. It was like magic." I'm glad I can explore it on videos and CDs. I can get into the minds of the players a bit for perspective on my playing.