Country Blues Bottleneck Guitar Classics

Country Blues Bottleneck Guitar Classics

      

Downlaod: Country Blues Bottleneck Guitar Classics

The technique of using a hard object against a plucked string goes back to the "diddley bow" derived from a one-stringed African instrument. The "diddley bow" is believed to be one of the ancestors of the bottleneck style. When sailors from Europe introduced the Spanish guitar to Hawaii in the latter nineteenth century, the Hawaiians slackened some of the strings from the standard tuning to make a chord—this became known as "slack-key" guitar, today referred to as an open tuning.^[2] With the "slack-key" the Hawaiians found it easy to play a three-chord song by moving a piece of metal along the fretboard and began to play the instrument across the lap. Near the end of the nineteenth century, a Hawaiian named Joseph Kekuku became proficient in playing this way using a steel bar against the guitar strings. The bar was called the "steel" and was the source of the name "steel guitar". Kekuku popularized the method and some sources claim he originated the technique. He moved to the United States mainland and became a vaudeville performer, later performing in Europe for several years. In the first half of the twentieth century, this so-called "Hawaiian guitar" style of playing spread to the US. Sol Hoopii was an influential Hawaiian guitarist who in 1919, at age 17, came to the US mainland from Hawaii as a stow-away on a ship heading for San Francisco. Hoopii's playing became popular in the late 1920s and he recorded songs like "Hula Blues" and "Farewell Blues". According to author Pete Madsen, "[Hoopii's playing] would influence a legion of players from rural Mississippi.

Most players of blues slide guitar were from the southern US particularly the Mississippi Delta, and their music was likely from an African origin handed down to African-American sharecroppers who sang as they toiled in the fields. The earliest Delta blues musicians were largely solo singer-guitarists.W. C. Handy commented on the first time he heard slide guitar in 1903, when a blues player performed in a local train station: "As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularised by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable.Blues historian Gérard Herzhaft notes that Tampa Red was one of the first black musicians inspired by the Hawaiian guitarists of the beginning of the century, and he managed to adapt their sound to the blues. As an example, Tampa Red, as well as Kokomo Arnold, Casey Bill Weldon and Oscar Woods, adopted the Hawaiian mode of playing longer melodies with the slide instead of playing short riffs as they had done previously.

In the early twentieth century, steel guitar playing divided into two streams: bottleneck-style, performed on a traditional Spanish guitar held flat against the body; and lap-style, performed on an instrument specifically designed or modified for the purpose of being played on the performer's lap.The bottleneck-style was typically associated with blues music and was popularized by African-American blues artists. The Mississippi Delta was the home of Robert Johnson, Son House, Charlie Patton, and other blues pioneers. The first known recording of the bottleneck style was in 1923 by Sylvester Weaver, who recorded two instrumentals, "Guitar Blues" and "Guitar Rag". Some of the blues artists who most prominently used the slide include Robert Johnson (sample above), Charley Patton, Son House, Bukka White, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Kokomo Arnold, Furry Lewis, Big Joe Williams, Tampa Red and Casey Bill Weldon.