The blues has always been spiced with suggestive metaphors. This collection of bawdy blues songs celebrates the off-color blues repertoire: Bessie Smith is wild about her kitchen man's turnip tops, but Bo Carter's pencil won't write no more! There's lots of variety, with songs from the 1930s, 40s and 50s; some are simple three-chord blues tunes and others have beautiful, ragtime chord changes.

Fred shows you how to play accompaniment and solos for all the songs. The evocative titles include Ain't Got Nobody to Grind My Coffee (Clara Smith), She's Your Cook But She Burns My Bread Sometimes and My Pencil Won't Write No More (Bo Carter), Kitchen Man (Bessie Smith), Big Ten Inch (Bull Moose Jackson), You Can't Tell the Difference After Dark (Alberta Hunter), and the holiday perennial Let's Make Christmas Merry, Baby (Amos Milburn).

You'll learn to accompany yourself singing the songs, and how to play a fingerstyle instrumental version of each one. Fred's easy-going instructional style, his tips on playing the arrangements, and his slowed-down, split-screen performances of each tune make learning easy. All the arrangements are written out in tab and music as well...both the backup and solos.

76 minutes • Level 2 • Detailed tab/music PDF file on the DVD