Product Description
It's fair to say that we wouldn't have songs like Kindhearted Woman Blues, Traveling Riverside Blues, Preaching Blues or Hellhound On My Trail without Blue Day Blues (Scrapper Blackwell), Roll and Tumble Blues (Hambone Willie Newburn),Preaching the Blues (Son House) or Devil Got my Woman (Skip James). And in Roots of Robert Johnson Tom Feldmann takes you verse-by-verse through those songs, and many others, that played such an integral role in Robert Johnson'sown recordings.Covering a wide range of styles, techniques, keys, and tunings, this lesson will expand your range as a player and take you on the musical journal that created one of history's most lauded blues guitarists.A detailed tab/music booklet is included as a PDF file on the DVD. In addition the original recordings of all the tunes are included.Titles include: Standard Tuning: Lead Pencil Blues (Johnnie Temple), Blue Day Blues (Scrapper Blackwell), Life Saver Blues (Lonnie Johnson) Open G Tuning:Police Station Blues (Peetie Wheestraw), My Black Mama (Son House), Roll and Tumble Blues(Hambone Willie Newburn) Open D Tuning: Preaching the Blues (Son House) Crossnote Tuning:Devil Got my Woman (Skip James) DVD is region 0, playable worldwide.
Review
Among his legion of disciples are bona fide guitar heroes bluesmen like Muddy and Elmore, rockers such as Eric and Keith. But who were his heroes, the idol's idols? And which of their songs were irresistible to his formative ear? In other words, what are the roots of the root: The Roots of Robert Johnson? Fresh from having just taught The Guitar of Robert Johnson through a three-DVD set, Tom Feldmann now loops back to teach eight of the catalysts which helped instigate Johnson's repertoire. A most interesting roomful of characters gathers in the process, from hardened Delta bottleneckers (Son House) to urban string dazzlers (Scrapper Blackwell) to the High Sheriff of Hell himself (Peetie Wheatstraw). Lonnie Johnson who, along with Eddie Lang and Charlie Christian, invented single-note soloing floats 1927's Life Saver Blues. Johnnie Temple's bummed-out Lead Pencil Blues is inversely earthen in its ramrod shuffle. Since misery loves misery, Skip James goes the extra mile to seal the doom of Devil Got My Woman inside the gloom of Crossnote tuning: perfectly spooky fodder for Johnson's eventual hellhounds. Guided by Feldmann's technical expertise, this cool game of Spot the Inspiration keeps racking up everything from Terraplanes and judgment days to those shards of Walking Blues flickering within My Black Mama. Besides all the step-by-step how-to, all the original historic sides reside as bonus material. So you can hear why 1929's Roll and Tumble Blues became as ubiquitous as oxygen throughout Mississippi before you learn how to play its quintessential killer slide lick. --Dennis Rozanski/Blues Rag
- MPAA rating : G (General Audience)
- Product Dimensions : 7.48 x 5.31 x 0.59 inches; 3.53 ounces
- Director : Tom Feldmann
- Media Format : NTSC, Import, Multiple Formats, Color
- Run time : 1 hour and 54 minutes
- Release date : May 19, 2015
- Actors : Tom Feldmann
- Studio : IMPORTS
- Number of discs : 1
