Beyond Robert Johnson: Master the Early Delta Blues Style

Traced back far enough, many genres celebrated today are rooted in the blues, specifically the early acoustic blues that was luckily recorded before WWII. It was a poverty-stricken, racist time when these artists struggled through day-to-day life, sometimes as sharecroppers,  other times as bootleggers, and by night as musicians. Some were never known, almost faceless, with no existing photographs or anecdotes, only a ghost-like presence through fuzzy, low quality recordings.

A meandering path, music slowly took on its various evolutions, moving forward with Robert Johnson's rock & roll connection, Muddy Waters' migration north to revolutionize with Chicago Blues, and other music like jazz adopting the feel driven style. Flipping faster through the chronology, that music, originating in the American South, turned out to be a seed that informed Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Clapton, Led Zeppelin, and can even be traced to later bands like Black Sabbath, and Van Halen.

Knowing where and how these later styles originated is a deep-dive that this course is focused on, even more so than the detailed fret by fret exploration of these achetypal songs that are covered. Yes, by the end you will be able to play these songs with great accuracy and ease, but most of all you will experience sounds and early techniques the way these great past players experienced them. Many know of Robert Johnson, but he was in some ways the last of a historic lineage of folk musicians. Exploring several of these musicians, I hope you leave with a greater understanding of this original music.