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Women
in Blues
Q
All
the blues history I read focuses on male guitar players. Were there
any notable women guitarists in early blues?
Felicia
Ramirez,
Tacoma, Washington
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A
Most of
the classic blues singers were women, and early blues guitar
style was largely a man's game. The idiom did have its queen
though. Lizzie Douglas started her musical career long before
she recorded her 1929 hit "Bumble Bee" under the name Memphis
Minnie, but when this gold-toothed Louisiana country girl
chanted, "He got all the stinger I need" and backed up the
image with some of the toughest blues guitar to date, she
made a place for herself among Chicago's blues elite. She
"played like a man," opined Big Bill Broonzy, one of many
who felt the heat in guitar throw-downs with Ms. Douglas.
Memphis Minnie's career as a soloist and session player continued
into the '50s. She was one of the pioneers of electric blues
guitar and is recognized as an early architect of the postwar
Chicago sound.
Isolated appearances
on record by guitar-playing blueswomen like Geechie Wiley
and the bluesy guitar licks of Rosetta Tharpe and other female
gospel singers suggest that more women have played blues guitar
than recorded it. There's further evidence that women who
never made it to the studio were influential in the development
of early blues guitar styles. Savannah Weaver was the mother
of James "Curley" Weaver, whose solo re-cordings and duets
with Blind Willie McTell are definitive (see "Southern Blues,"
October 2002). Curley's primary guitar influence was his mom.
Savannah also taught the neighbor kids, Barbecue Bob Hicks
and his brother Laughing Charley Lincoln, who, along with
McTell and Weaver, were the apogee of early recorded Georgia
country blues.
The real mystery
girl is Delta singer/guitarist Josie Bush. She was remembered
well by area musicians like Mott Willis, who described her
playing in superlative terms. Bush played with (and has been
romantically linked to) Willie Brown, who was touted as the
"best guitar player in the Delta." At least one of her themes,
"Riverside Blues," was adapted by a number of players, becoming
something of a Delta standard.
—Steve
James
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Memphis
Minnie— Queen of the Blues.
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Finger
Assignment
Q
When
I fingerpick, I always use my index finger on the G, middle finger
on the B, and ring finger on the high E string. The thumb, of course,
takes care of the low E, A, and D strings. However, some methods
recommend using whichever finger is convenient. Is there a disadvantage
to the one finger/one string approach?
Bernard
O'Donnell
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
A
Most players begin
learning fingerstyle or classical technique by assigning the thumb
to the bass strings and the index, middle, and ring finger to the
third, second, and first strings, respectively. Organizing your
right hand like this is a good way to avoid ambiguity, but a lot
of music requires you to eventually move beyond this basic framework.
The first time many guitarists diverge from strict finger assignment
is when they're comping chords (grabbing a group of three or four
strings at once). In this case, one or more fingers will often need
to move over a string or two to reach the guitar's middle voices.
Classical tremolo provides a different example. That technique is
achieved by playing the same string in a repeated pattern using
three fingers.
I usually revert to
basic finger assignment, but I also frequently use my fingers to
play bass notes and my thumb to play trebles, particularly when
playing single-note lines. It helps to consciously think about right-hand
fingering when working out arrangements, but it's equally important
to get your technique to a point where you don't have to think about
which fingers to use every time you play a new phrase.
—Teja
Gerken
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Replacing
Tuners
Q I
want to replace the stock Gibson tuners on my 1998 Chet Atkins SST
with Grover Rotomatics. Will this involve drilling or plugging the
existing peg holes? Also, will the original Rotomatics fit or should
I use the minis?
Brad
MacDonald
Englewood, Florida
A The
original tuners on this guitar were gold Schallers, which may have
been engraved with the Gibson logo. You can replace them with either
Schallers or Grover Rotomatics (both regulars and minis will work)
without significant modification since the shaft (which goes through
the peghead) on both is 3/8 inches. The difficulty lies in the cosmetics.
Both Schallers and Grovers have a small tab with a hole for the
screw, which helps keep the tuner from rotating. The tab on the
Schallers protrudes from the side of the casing, and the Grovers'
tab protrudes from the bottom. Thus, if you replace Schallers with
Grovers, a new hole for this screw will have to be drilled and the
hole from the original tuner will show. As I said, this is a purely
cosmetic issue but one that leads many to replace tuners with an
identical model. Another tuner worth considering is Gotoh, although
you will likely encounter the screw hole problem with this tuner
as well.
—Charles
Hoffman
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Excerpted from
Acoustic Guitar magazine,
February
2003, No. 122.
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