Pickin' with Catfish
Catfish Home Page Jitterbug Swing Transcription Page 1 Page 2
The Voice of the Blues
~ by Catfish Keith ~
Article in Fingerstyle Guitar, Issue
19, January-February 1997
This article is from Catfish Keith's Guitar
Gems Tablature Book
Nothing knocked me out more than the first time I heard solo country blues. I was coming up as a teenager, in Davenport, Iowa, and one day I heard my first Son House number, "Death Letter". That was it! Wow! From that moment on, I was hooked on that crying, singing sound that still makes my hair stand up. I couldn't believe how much music was coming from just one person. The combination of stomping feet, deeply felt vocals, and propulsive, from-the-gut, string-popping slide guitar left my jaw dangling to the ground. I was floored by this music. My life was changed forever.
While my high school buddies in the 1970s were into disco and heavy metal, I went deeper and deeper with my mission of discovering the very roots of American music, and found a treasure trove of exciting, obscure musical gems from Mississippi delta blues masters like Charley Patton, Booker White, Mississippi Fred MacDowell, Johnny Shines, Willie Brown, Tommy Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Robert Johnson, and Son House to ragtime blues guitarists like Blind Blake, Blind Boy Fuller, Big Bill Broonzy, to sanctified pickers Blind Willie Johnson, Rev. Gary Davis, and Rev. Robert Wilkins. Often, one guitarist made the sound of two or three guitars, playing bass, rhythm, melody, harmony, and counterpoint at the same time! There were also many other influences and styles working their way into my repertoire, including early jazz of Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, and Bix Beiderbecke, island music of the Caribbean and Hawaii, with Joseph Spence and Sol Hoopii as major heroes. Old-time fiddle tunes, zydeco, and New Orleans R&B were in there too. Needless to say, nobody at school had any idea what I was talking about! But I didn't care. I was just tickled to be soaking up this great music.
Times have changed since those days of years ago. Early recordings of the 1920's and '30s, once almost secretly passed from the hands of one zealot 78 record collector to another, are now available on Compact Disc compilations in chain stores for everyone to enjoy. Hundreds of new and old blues recordings are released every year on major and independent labels. Blues festivals and blues societies have sprung up all over the U.S. and abroad, and a handful of blues-based artists have become certified rock stars. Blues is the soundtrack for beer and soap commercials. You can learn the notes easily from mountains of books, videos, and at guitar workshops. Blues legends are working and touring more than ever. Times have never been better for the blues.
Bottleneck Slide GuitarSLIDE GUITAR SET-UP
To play slide, you must first have your guitar set up properly for the best tone and playability. On my albums and live, I play on my 1930 National steel-bodied Style O resonator guitar. These are great sounding old guitars, especially for slide and delta blues. Many blues, jazz, hillbilly, and Hawaiian guitarists played Nationals, and before the electric guitar caught on, were the loudest, shiniest, funkiest guitars available.
You can set up any steel-string acoustic guitar for slide. The nut of the guitar must be slightly higher (around the thickness of a matchbook cover), so the strings are higher over the fretboard than for regular guitar playing. You should still be able to fret the strings as well as slide comfortably without clonking the frets with the slide. A qualified guitar repair person should be able to set you up right.
Note: BE CAREFUL choosing a repair person. Try to get a couple of (or lots of) recommendations from respected players before taking your dear guitar into the shop.
SLIDING STRINGS
For the best slide tone for your guitar, heavier gauged strings are generally better. I use these gauges, in Phosphor Bronze:
Low to High: .056 .045 .035 .026 .019(plain) .017(plain)
CAUTION: Many acoustic guitars are not made for heavy string tension. Be careful not to put strings on your guitar that are heavier than the recommended gauges.
IMPORTANT: Don't tune your guitar too high! It could pull your guitar apart! Tune no higher than a D or G-tuning, and if you notice the bridge area raising, use lighter gauge strings.
OPEN TUNINGS FOR SLIDE PLAYING
Although there are dozens of variations, I use these two traditional open chord tunings for slide:
FINGERPICKS OR NAKED FINGERS?Open-D, Vestapol or Louisiana Tuning. Low to High: DADF#AD Open G, Spanish or Hawaiian Tuning. Low to High: DGDGBD I use a large plastic thumbpick on the right hand thumb, and two metal fingerpicks for the index and middle fingers, but for me, especially on the steel guitar, picks help make a sharper, louder tone and help save your fingers.
GET A GOOD SLIDE
There are many kinds of slides to choose from; everybody has a different preference. Some use a metal tube or pipe (Son House used a piece of copper tubing), or a spark-plug socket. These have a brasher, more metallic tone, but have the advantage of being shatterproof (and multi-purpose).
Some of the old-time slide guitarists used a knife. Cedell Davis uses a better knife. Legend has it that Blind Willie Johnson used a straight razor for a slide. Makes for a sharper tone, but sounds mighty dangerous!
My preference is a glass slide, made from a wine bottle. Glass has a weepier, richer sound than metal. You can make your own or buy commercially made slides in the music stores, and remember the thicker the glass, the thicker your tone will be. The glass in many wine bottles (the kind with corks, not screw-on tops) is nice, thick, and smooth, and makes for the best sound.
PUT IT ON YOUR PINKIE!
Putting your slide on your left hand pinkie finger leaves your other left hand fingers free to fret notes and make chords without the slide, and also to damp the strings behind the slide. Some guitarists like Son House and Bonnie Raitt use the slide on the ring or middle finger, but generally, having the slide on your pinkie is the best bet.
SLIDE PLAYGROUND
Unlike fretting the strings, playing with the bottleneck involves setting the slide directly above a fret, with light pressure on the string with the slide when plucked. Try it on the high D (first) string in Open-D tuning, with the slide angled slightly away from the neck, so you are only resting the slide on the high string. Then, pluck the string with your right hand index finger, and slide up the neck slowly from the third fret to the fourth fret. Ahhh!! Vibrate the slide slightly (left & right) along the string at the end of the phrase to give it that vibrato like a gospel singer. That's it!
The difference between playing slide and regular guitar is like the difference between a violin and a ukulele. Think of the slide as a woman's voice. Some of the notes will be bent or "blue" notes that are 1/4 to 1/2 way above the fret. The ability to bend and vibrate these vocal-sounding notes is what makes slide guitar so haunting.
Jitterbug SwingThis piece comes from the powerful singing and playing of Mississippi slide guitarist Booker White. His driving rhythms and improvisational approach have always knocked me out! He called his approach to music "Sky Songs" because as he said, "I just pull them out of the sky!"
A crucial technique in "Jitterbug Swing", as in all of my solo blues playing, is right hand thumb damping. This involves using the pad, or "meat" of your thumb to dampen the bass strings while they are being played. The pad of the thumb must be placed near the bridge, over the bass strings to dampen the bass note being struck by the thumb. So, in an Open-D alternating bass pattern:
Instead of a "boom-ding boom-ding boom-ding" sound, with damping, you get a "Boop-DANK Boop-DANK Boop-DANK" sound, with that funky accent on the second beat. So put that slide on your pinkie and have at it!
Catfish Home Page Jitterbug Swing Transcription - Next