The guitar styles and techniques of Blind Blake, Big Bill Broonzy and Rev. Gary Davis combine blues and ragtime techniques into a style that can best be described as raggin' the blues. This exciting and challenging approach to fingerstyle playing combines complex right hand picking with intricate left hand fingerings, single string runs and rhythmic licks. In this lesson, Stefan Grossman illustrates and explains seven famous ragtime blues instrumentals.

Titles include: Diddie Wa Diddie, Shuffle Rag, Glory Of Love, Buck Dance, Cincinnati Flow Rag, Hot Dogs and Twelve Sticks

74 minutes • Level 3 • Detailed tab/music PDF file on the DVD

Review: Stefan explains these songs are Ragtime Blues, Fiddle tunes and Ragtime and of the N.C. Piedmont style used by the Rev. Gary Davis who taught Stefan himself to play guitar and also of Big Bill Broonzy and Blind Blake.

The first tunes are in the key of C. I believe the use of the word blues in the title is poetic license designed for marketing purposes. Nothing particularly bluesy here in the modern or even Delta sense.

He tunes us up to his guitar in standard tuning and starts off with a Blind Blake tune covered by Ry Cooder among other folk revivalists.

It’s called 'Diddie Wa Diddie' and designed to let us ragtime the blues. Blind Blake syncopates or 'stumbles' the bass which gives a lovely bounce to the tune almost like a 'Charleston'.

Here oddly Stefan teaches us the way he plays an F chord which is not using the bar method, but where his thumb frets the F note on the 6th string. It’s as though Stefan thinks this is going to save us when the real difficulty is in the right hand. He then tells us there are many books he or Woody Mann have written and to refer to them if we want exact transpositions of these tunes. We check and see there is a pamphlet in the DVD case and there is.

'Shuffle Rag' by Big Bill Broonzy is next and a finger twister. Stefan uses only two fingers and no attached picks. He also dampens the bass strings to get a percussive sound rather than to sound the notes which aren't in the key of C. He discusses Big Bills style and the differences between him and other greats. – guitar-dvd-reviews.com