This book presents three of the greatest ragtime blues guitar players from the 1920s-1940s. They all possessed what Rev. Gary Davis called that sportin’ right hand. Each could sing the blues or play a dance instrumental. They favored first position chords but produced incredible textures and rhythms from these easy left hand fingerings. There is years of exciting fingerpicking challenges in these pages. But what fun it will be once you can play these tunes.

Titles and artists included are:

BIG BILL BROONZY Big Bill Blues, At the Break of Day, Friendless Blues, Shuffle Rag, Worrying You Off My Mind, Bull Cow Blues, Five Feet Five

BLIND BLAKE Georgia Bound, Back Biting Bee Blues, Cold Hearted Mama Blues, Ice Man Blues, Righteous Blues, Tootie Blues, Rope Stretchin’ Blues, Sea Board Stomp, Walkin’ Across The Country, What A Lowdown Place The Jailhouse Is

BLIND BOY FULLER Baby, I Don’t Have To Worry, Careless Love, Georgia Ham Mama, Keep Away From My Woman, Somebody’s Been Playing With That Thing, Why Don’t My Baby Write To Me, (I Got A Woman Crazy For Me) She’s Funny That Way, Jivin’ Woman Blues

Level 3 • 119 pages • Direct download link to audio files.

Review: Trapped inside a Chicago room with Blind Blake arched over a restless guitar, “Sea Board Stomp” was born in 1927. Blind Boy Fuller’s fishtailing “(I Got a Woman Crazy For Me) She’s Funny That Way” got bottled up amid the skyscrapers of 1936 New York City. Big Bill Broonzy’s impressively involved “Shuffle Rag”? Holed up in Paris, 1952.

Despite their age, these (plus 23 more) showpieces of Ragtime Blues Guitar still itch to set loose their free-as-a-bird-in-the-blue-sky spirit, delivering all guitarists to wide-open spaces, Piedmont or otherwise. The ever interesting way that “Georgia Bound” scampers on down the trail kicks up a country breeze; “Five Feet Seven” does so with a chug. Learn the syncopated secrets of “Ice Man Blues” or how to navigate the hills and dales within Somebody’s Been Playing With That Thing’s name piece, and you’re flying without wings.

Although honored for their fingerstyle technique, the 26 songs also lyrically grapple with the major tenets of the blues, namely love, sex, violence and that “Georgia Ham Mama.” Lows sink down to “What a Lowdown Place the Jailhouse Is.” Then lower yet with “Rope Stretchin’ Blues.” “Back Biting Bee Blues,” besides bundling “b” words, paints fantastic visions of “raining in my kitchen, lightning on my wall.” But the highs achieved hollering about sweet patootie, thanks to “Tootie Blues,” make the world right again. With Big Bill, Blind Blake and Blind Boy Fuller delivered straight to your device via MP3s, it’s as if the old masters are recruiting you to become a keeper of their flame. – Dennis Rozanski/Blues Rag