West Coast Blues

[NormanKliman]

I’d like to see a few more posts that are commensurate with the experience and skills of the members of this forum. To that end, here are four questions about Blind Blake’s “West Coast Blues.”

1) Do you play it?

2) How did you learn it?

3) Are you satisfied with your rendition?

4) Can you play it up to speed?

Say anything you like. You don’t have to limit your responses to the four questions.

Here (hold my beer), I’ll go first:

1) Do you play it? I try. I haven’t learned the entire recording note for note, just the variations he plays, and I run through them until I wipe out.

2) How did you learn it? I listened to it for a long time before I tried to play it. As usual, I slowed the recording with audio software and wrote out the patterns that caught my ear. I’ve got four or five pages of notation, but it’s all in my head now.

3) Are you satisfied with your rendition? Not entirely. It’s getting better, but I’m playing it on a flamenco guitar and I keep my fretting-hand thumb behind the neck, so I’m never going to play it like Blake. I like what I’m doing, but it’s very difficult.

4) Can you play it up to speed? It comes out right about once a month, when nobody’s around and I’m not looking, ha-ha. The problem for me is stamina, even at the end of some evenings when my playing’s hot and all the juices are flowing. I spent a few years running through all of Blake’s variations, starting slow and increasing speed, but my progress has been minimal. Lately, I’m getting better results from playing a simplified version up to speed and easing into the variations he plays on the G chord.

How about you?

Edited to add: Just came across this video. Looks like he's nailed it!

[Howard Emerson]

Hi Norman,
No, I don’t play it.

I know better than to try.

I actually became aware of that song via Ari Eisinger’s version, which is basically Blake reincarnated, and recorded more clearly. There’s now a video of Ari performing it live, and it is uncanny how it flows from his hands, and mouth!

It’s inspiring no matter whose version you listen to.

Oh....and yes I’m ‘confusing’ West Coast Blues with Southern Rag, but they’re so similar it’s okay.
Regards,
Howard Emerson

[JonPR]

I haven't learned West Coast Blues, but I have transcribed Southern Rag (partially) and Guitar Chimes (complete).

I can kind of play them - not quite up to speed, or not quite accurately. I can do one or the other, but not both!

But I've not really practised them much since working them out. That's my excuse .

I guess West Coast Blues should be my next challenge... (get that transcribed and then fail to practise it, as usual...)

BTW, my instinct is the same as yours - at least with Southern Rag, which is more or less the same thing as West Coast Blues: get the hang of his variations on the basic sequence, and then just play it my way. (I would write the whole thing out note for note first though. I just wouldn't sweat about copying his recording 100% note perfect. I'd bet he would have played it differently every time too.)

[Howard Emerson]

Here’s Ari nailing it, and talking over it.

It makes sense that he’s also a computer programmer.

[NormanKliman]

Thanks for the replies, Jon and Howard.

If you slow down the video linked at the end of my message to one-fourth playing speed (it’s a YouTube setting; click on the symbol that looks like a little cogwheel), you can see all the details of his playing.

First and foremost is a pinching technique that most guitarists don’t pick up initially or ever. For example, if a C major chord falls on beat 1, you start by playing the fifth-string C with your thumb just before beat 1 (beat 4.5, coming from G, for example), and then you pinch a fourth-string E and a second-string C simultaneously with thumb and index on beat 1. That’s just a theoretical example off the top of my head and without a guitar in my hands.

Also, you can see that he sometimes plays a fifth-string B in the variations on the G chord. I’ll have to listen more carefully to the video and Blake’s recording, but I thought I noticed Blake playing that B in the bass when there's an F up top on the first string, which creates some really cool harmonic tension.

These are the kinds of details that I’ve noticed in Blake’s recording and that have kept me busy over the years, and this Andrew Lardner fellow seems to have nailed all of them.

Good playing from Ari Eisinger, too.

[Gitfiddlemann]

Originally Posted by NormanKliman

These are the kinds of details that I’ve noticed in Blake’s recording and that have kept me busy over the years, and this Andrew Lardner fellow seems to have nailed all of them.

If I recall correctly, Andrew is a member here. He's affiliated with the John Stropes fingerstyle program at the University of Wisconsin.
How do I know him? He was a good samaritan to me once. Chimed in to help me out with a few technical aspects of a Michael Hedges piece I was working on and had posted on YouTube. Good guy, and a terrific player.

[NormanKliman]

Originally Posted by AndreF

If I recall correctly, Andrew is a member here...

Hi Andre, thanks for the tip. Looks like he hasn't been on the forum in the last couple of years.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by NormanKliman

First and foremost is a pinching technique that most guitarists don’t pick up initially or ever. For example, if a C major chord falls on beat 1, you start by playing the fifth-string C with your thumb just before beat 1 (beat 4.5, coming from G, for example), and then you pinch a fourth-string E and a second-string C simultaneously with thumb and index on beat 1. That’s just a theoretical example off the top of my head and without a guitar in my hands.

Right - that's Blake's distinctive "rolling bass" technique.
More discussion here:
https://weeniecampbell.com/yabbse/in...p?topic=1028.0

[NormanKliman]

It’s kind of amazing that it was recorded 94 years ago and is still kicking everyone’s behind. I like to imagine Blake reacting to that fact with that laugh of his.

The thread you linked, Jon, is a good example of how it’s baffled guitarists until very recently. I feel kind of sorry for those guys who invested all that time trying to do it with thumbed upstrokes. Well, not if they’re happy... You know what I mean.

I suppose I get a pretty serious look on my face when I listen to it, but I have to grin like a fool when he says, “I got somethin’ gonna make you feel good!” right before the “solo.”

[joe paul]

'Rolling bass', 'stumbling bass'.... it's what gives Blind Blake's music its swing. Ari Eisinger goes further than anyone else in the world to really making it flow, as the video above showed. His tuition video on Blake's style is essential.
I'm pretty sure the idea of upstrokes with the thumb is something else, as a close read of parts of that thread at Weenie Campbell and a close listen to the Blake tunes mentioned will show.
For the record, yes, I play West Coast Blues, or at least I'm learning it, by listening to it, playing, practising. Blake is an inspiration.

[ARockmon]

I really enjoyed reading this thread. I’ve been thinking of trying to learn Blind Blake’s West Coast Blues.
I have an online lesson I bought from Stefan Grossman. He calls it Blake’s Rag, but I think it’s just his rendition of West Coast Blues. Stefan warns that it is difficult.
I also have an online lesson that I bought of Jorma Kaukonen. Jorma calls it West Coast Blues, but acts like it’s just a warm up to his rendition of Hesitation Blues and ultimately his Embryonic Journey.
Maybe I should try to learn Jorma’s version of West Coast Blues, since he doesn’t say it’s difficult, ha ha.

[NormanKliman]

Well, everyone upthread said they play it their own way, or try to play it, or know better than to try, so it doesn’t seem a bad idea to start with a simplified version. Drive with your thumb on beats two and four; work out the rolling bass with the right combination of fingers, strings and timing; and remember to downshift once in a while with the clipped pattern heard at 0:38 in the video I posted upthread.

In Blake’s recording, I hear pretty much the same patterns in the C, E and A chords. The D chord is used a couple of ways to get to the G, and there are at least three variations in the G chord.

And then there’s that “solo” part!

[NormanKliman]

If anyone’s interested, I’ve written out the three variations I hear on the G chord in Blake’s recording. Last night, I noticed that they make a nice loop: variations 1-2-3-2 and repeat. You can string them together any way you like, though.

I think I can’t upload here as a user, so I’ve put it on my website: http://canteytoque.es/WCB_G_variations.png

Just to be clear, these are variations on the G chord only, so Blake doesn’t actually play them consecutively. I haven’t indicated the triplet feel, because I don’t know how to do that yet with MuseScore. Also, notice that the third variation is almost the same as the first, the only difference being that it has an extra note and starts on beat "4-and" of the preceding variation, so add that first note to the end of whatever variation you play before number 3.

[pegleghowell]

I play it.
I learned it off my old biograph lp many moons ago.
99% satisfied with my rendition.
Sometimes not always..depends on the day.
I find Blake`s West Coast Blues one of his"easier"pieces to get down.Southern rag and Blind Arthur`s Breakdown etc.are far more taxing.
The stumble bass becomes second nature after a while.
I think no matter who you are or how well you play you`re never gonna play Blake`s tunes as good as Blake.

[ARockmon]

I’ve been working on West Coast Blues all of the month of April 2021. I’m using Stefan Grossman’s lesson and tab.
It took me about a week of just getting the stumble bass down for the first two measures.

Then the alternating bass for the A7 took a few days.

Then the D7 part really gave me trouble. I finally got a version down that I can play of the D7 part that isn’t exactly like the tablature, but to me sounds pretty close to how Stefan plays it.

On the two measures of G, I’m pretty much just playing the high (thin strings) melody, leaving out some of the bass notes. I’m hoping that’s not too lame.

The last few days I’ve been working on the lead break, bending the D (2nd string, 3rd fret) with the C chord and the F chord. And then working on the stumble bass part to get back to the alternating bass A chord part.

I’ve also put some practice time in on the end tag (C?), and the “counter point line” that Stefan has on the video. I think he doesn’t have the “counter point line” tabbed out, but I tabbed it out from his description.

It hard to put all this together and make it smooth. I’m playing it quite slow for now, with some uncomfortable long pauses, especially when I’m coming out of the bending break into the stumble bass.

I haven’t listened to Blind Blake’s version that much. I’ve pretty much just concentrated on Stefan Grossman’s version. I hope you guys think that Stefan’s version is acceptable. In his lesson he says if you want a real note for note Blind Blake version, to check out the lesson by Woody Mann that he sells. I haven’t.
Anyway April has two more days left for me to master West Coast Blues, ha ha.

Since January 2020 I’ve been trying to learn a fingerstyle blues song a month.
A few months ago I got on a Big Bill Broonzy kick, and learned two of his songs during Black history month and the month after.
Then I found West Coast Blues, and the greatness of Blind Blake.
Love this forum. -ARockmon.