John Miller

The Country Blues guitar duet tradition is rich and varied, but it has been relatively unexplored by present day blues players. This is a shame for a couple of reasons – there are a lot of great duets that merit being worked out and played for today’s audiences, preserving the music, but there’s also just the sheer enjoyment and fun involved in playing this music with a kindred spirit, someone who hears and responds to this music as you do yourself.

Atlanta, in the period 1920 -1940, rivaled Memphis, St.Louis, Jackson and Chicago in the strength and vitality of its blues scene. It was home to a unique school of 12-string guitarists that included Blind Willie McTell, Barbecue Bob, Charlie Lincoln, Willie Baker and George Carter. Also on hand were the slick slide guitarist Fred McMullen, the accompaniment king, Curley Weaver and the spectacular up-and-comer, Buddy Moss. The scene was rounded out by an earlier generation of players, Peg Leg Howell foremost among them, who kept alive musical traditions that were in the eclipse.

As the Country Blues began to be recorded, in the mid-1920s, it soon became apparent that the music was being played and appreciated not only by African-American musicians and audiences, but by white musicians and audiences as well. Many of these white musicians played with and learned from black musicians, for even in the Jim Crow Era there was always a good deal of musical interaction and exchange. So it is that the term “Hillbilly Blues” can be used to describe the music made by white musicians of that era in the Country Blues style.

The city of St. Louis played host, in the 1920s and 1930s, to one of the most distinctive and vital blues scenes ever documented on record. Like Memphis and Atlanta, St. Louis served as a sort of magnet, attracting musicians from the surrounding hinterlands and providing performance opportunities that were not available out in the country. Many of the St. Louis musicians were transplanted Mississippians, like Charley Jordan, while others, like Clifford Gibson and Teddy Darby, originally hailed from Kentucky. The various early influences that the music of these players displayed ended up coalescing into something that might be called the “St. Louis sound”.

The state of Texas has had a major presence in the Blues, from the earliest days of the recording era right on up to the present day. So many tremendous Blues musicians have hailed from Texas, i.e. Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lightnin' Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, Freddy King. This DVD focuses on the Country Blues guitarists who first defined the Texas Blues sound and who put Texas on the map as a prime location in Blues Country.