TEXAS BLUES, THE ART OF. Wine. CD TABLATURE
Series: Guitar Method
Publisher: Cherry Lane Music
Softcover with CD - TAB
Composer: Toby Wine
Another highly influential player to emerge in the 1950s was the immortal Albert Collins.
Born in Leona, Texas, Collins was raised in Houston and spent his teenage years hanging out
with and absorbing the music of T-Bone Walker, John Lee Hooker, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown,
and others. By the late 1950s, he had become a popular local performer and cut his first singles
for the Kangaroo label. Collins' 1962 recording of "Frosty," which would become his trademark
tune, was a smash-hit and helped propel him to wider recognition. He remained in Texas, however,
for the bulk of the 1960s, working day jobs, hitting the club circuit in the evenings, and
recording for small, regional labels. It wasn't until the end of the decade that Albert landed a contract
with Imperial Records and took to the national stage, opening for bands like the Allman
Brothers and reaching the young, white audiences who went crazy for his slashing guitar work
and patented strolls through the crowd. Collins was a true road warrior, touring relentlessly
throughout the 1970s, but did little recording until 1978 when he released Ice Pickin', the first of
seven strong albums for Alligator Records. Albert (along with the Vaughan brothers, Jimmie and
Stevie Ray) helped spearhead the Texas blues revival during the 1980s, but his career was cut
tragically short. Collins fell victim to liver cancer and succumbed in 1993, less than two months
after his 61st birthday.
The great black players of the 1950s helped drive the Texas sound to new heights of
swaggering, head-shaking toughness. Their bravura playing and gunslinger attitudes only served
to strengthen their image as the new cowboys of the Wild West. But the music was changing and
growing all over America. A young white man from Mississippi named Elvis Presley was gaining
national prominence, playing and singing the music of the black masters and, for better or for
worse, introducing it to an entirely new and different audience. The owner of Sun Records, Sam
Phillips, had been working from a rather cynical, if familiar, ideology: A white performer who sang
and moved like the best of the black performers would, potentially, be a huge seller. Phillips of
course was dead-on in his assumption, as Elvis's place in American popular culture is virtually
unmatched, but his impact may have been even wider than Phillips could have dreamed. By playing
the music of the black masters on the national stage, Elvis introduced the world of the blues
to many whites who had never before heard anything like it. There is great controversy over the
value of his contribution, its authenticity, and whether this music was "stolen," appropriated, or
merely re-interpreted, but his enormous success was one major factor in the widening of the
blues audience during the 1950s and 1960s. At the same time, black audiences across the country
continued to embrace the blues and its new, more urban sound. Though the struggle for
equality and civil rights was a still a fledgling movement, blacks did find themselves with relatively
more leisure time and disposable income. Nightclubs and juke joints that featured blues artists
or played blues albums were doing better than ever, and, in Texas, the music was thriving in both
small ensembles and larger, horn-driven groups alike.
The 1960s were years of great tumult in America, and the changes that affected society
as a whole were also felt in the world of the blues. For the first time, the music ceased to grow in
popularity; record sales suffered, or remained, at best, at a status quo. Rock began to capture
the attention and imagination of young audiences, but despite its obvious roots in the blues, did
not cause many younger fans to look further to its source. Two diametrically opposed groups of
blacks-those who sought political upheaval and revolution and those who hoped to achieve
assimilation and financial success in the "white" world-both began to view the blues with scorn.
In the simplest terms, the former group felt that the music was a remnant of slavery and of a time
when the liberty of their people had been trampled and their opportunities denied. The latter
group looked at the blues as something more of an embarrassment, as a representation of their
people as a mostly rural, illiterate, and unskilled group of day laborers and itinerant drunks. This
is not to say that black people had abandoned the blues altogether, but rather that many had
begun to subject the music and its meanings to greater scrutiny than ever before. Some left the
music behind, favoring the infectious sounds of rock and R & B, or caught on to the new movement
in jazz, spearheaded by revolutionary young musicians keenly aware of the struggles for
civil rights and an equal piece of the American pie. Amidst all of this turmoil, the music never
ceased, and a wealth of great blues musicians forged on, spotlight or no. Players like Freddie ...
Learn to play the blues Texas-style! This book/CD pack contains a complete history of the Texas blues style, common blues techniques and ideas for both lead and rhythm guitar, solos by the masters, recorded demos of every example, a suggested reading and listening list, and more! Also includes 10 songs that personify this unique genre:
Be Careful With A Fool
Change It
Dirty Pool
Hide Away
Long Way From Home
(They Call It) Stormy Monday (Stormy Monday Blues)
T-Bone Shuffle
Telephone Song
Tightrope
Wall Of Denial
64 pages
Italiano
English
