The Revival of Delta Blues Guitar: Celebrating Rory Block and Timeless Legends

Recently there has been a tremendous new interest in Delta blues guitar and the artists that played that style, which was very new to guitarists of the 1920s & 30s.

Rory Block is a good friend of mine and a tremendous delta blues finger style guitar artist. She gave me a mention in her book called "When a Woman Gets the Blues.

Rory was kind enough to give me a full chapter of our time together as guitarists who both loved Delta blues guitar, which is distinguished by the monotonic base or alternating bass.

I have spent the last 50 years of my life carefully tabbing out many of these Delta blues songs by artists such as Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt and Blind Blake. It is a pleasure to teach this unique style of guitar playing and I hope to keep doing more and more tabs of these songs. I simply listen to the record and write down as much as I can, and as closely as I can to what is being played by the artist on the record.

(Thoughtfully edited by Ellen 😄)