Book Review: Delta Blues Guitar

Book Review: Delta Blues Guitar
By Stefan Grossman
Alfred Publishing
ISBN- 0-7390-4280-7

The Delta Blues guitar is very close to my heart. I love to listen to the old Delta Blues players and no one has maintained such a historical musical library as Stefan Grossman. I have bought many of Mr. Grossman’s books throughout my guitar playing education and no of them have let me down.

This book and CD set contains Delta Blues classics from Willie Brown, Son House, Skip James, Hambone Willie Newbern, Charlie Patton, Arthur Pettis, and Robert Wilkens. Guitarists should be comfortable playing in open and alternate tunings when learning Delta Blues. Many of the players like to play in Open G tuning or Cross Note tuning as in the case of Skip James.

This book contains a CD of the original recordings of the songs that are transcribed. One of the most difficult aspects of listening to Delta Blues is the quality of the recordings. Some of the recordings on this CD are so difficult to listen to due to the poor recording techniques at the time that I could not listen to it.

Stefan Grossman always provides a background about the musician before presenting transcriptions. He provides a history and discography so the learner can research the artist and music further.

Grossman’s tabs are clearly written. He provides both Tabs and music notation. I sometimes have trouble following Grossman’s style of tab writing though. Grossman has a style of writing the guitar tab first, then on a following page writing the lyrics. This makes the learner learn the guitar lines, and then he has to figure out on his own where the vocal lines fit in. I find it much easier to have the vocal line inserted in with the guitar line.

This is a very good book for anyone wanting to learn Delta Blues. I am going to get some more books in Grossman’s series. When it comes to writing about Delta Blues playing, there is no one else has developed the reputation that Stephan Grossman has.