Early Country Blues Guitar Solos

Looking to spice up your repertoire? Or maybe you’d just like to add to your toolbox of licks and turnarounds? The best way to do either is to turn to the greats!

In this lesson Ben Gateno guides you through several jaw-dropping instrumentals originally performed and recorded by three of the most legendary acoustic blues and ragtime guitarists: Lonnie Johnson, Blind Blake, and Big Bill Broonzy. Combined, all tunes featured present wildly varying textures, rhythms, techniques, and harmonic language. By the end of the lesson no part of your fretboard will go unexplored. Along the way, Ben offers crucial insights and practice tips that will help you learn not only these numbers faster and better, but are sure to ramp up everything you play.

All tunes are performed by Ben at speed and slowed down, with clear, detailed views of both hands. A detailed tab/music PDF file is included on the DVD with note for note transcriptions of the tunes taught. The original recordings are included in the Bonus Audio section.

Titles include: LONNIE JOHNSON Blues in G BIG BILL BROONZY House Rent Stomp BLIND BLAKE breaks from Hometown Skiffle.

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

Review: Very good tutorial, from all points of view, Ben Gateno respects the 'Grossman style' teaching approach. These remarks apply to the two other DVDs, Volume 1 and Volume 2. The 3 DVDs flights are a must for fans of blues and rag guitar. Very big “big names” are visited in these 3 DVDs. Ben Gateno is as remarkable as the artists he presents! – Amazon Customer Review

Review: Blind Blake and Big Bill Broonzy are no longer with us, but Rochester guitarist Ben Gateno has been reviving their music. He’s spent a lot of quality time with the scratchy recordings 1920s-era guitarists like these have left behind.

Gateno has also produced two books of country blues and ragtime instrumental transcriptions and three full-length video lessons to help other musicians learn how to play like these lost masters.

“There is a lot of mystique surrounding acoustic blues,” says Gateno. “It's old music. Most of the recordings only exist on very scratchy 78s. Many of its greatest practitioners died or otherwise faded away before they could appear on film or make higher quality recordings.”

Gateno says that for anyone interested in this music it is important that people are willing to put in the work to decipher how these master musicians were playing. “It … helps to keep the music alive,” he says.

The focus of Gateno’s transcription work has been centered on virtuoso guitar instrumentals. Gateno says that film of guitarists like Lonnie Johnson, who played these songs, doesn’t exist. “I get great satisfaction from being one of a small number of people who have tried to figure it out and show others what it might have looked like when he performed these numbers.” – John Sievers/Post Bulletin