Guitar of Robert Johnson

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Robert Johnson is the most important blues musician who ever lived. I have never found anything more deeply soulful. His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice. - Eric ClaptonRobert Johnson is arguably the most well known figure in the history of the blues. In this 3 DVD set, with over 5 hours and 52 minutes of instruction, Tom Feldmann covers every aspect of Johnson's playing. Each song is performed by Feldmann before he dissects the arrangement verse-by-verse and ends with a split screen segment where the song is played slowly with close up s of both the left and right hands. This is the most expansive look into the guitar playing of Robert Johnson produced in video form.DVD One: STANDARD TUNING: Kind Hearted Woman, Phonograph Blues, 32-20 Blues, A Blues Variations (Dead Shrimp Blues, Little Queen of Spades, Honeymoon Blues), I'm a Steady Rolling Man, Sweet Home Chicago, Love In Vain, From Four 'Til Late DROP D TUNING: Malted Milk CROSS NOTE TUNING: Hellhound on my TrailDVD Two: SPANISH TUNING: Stop Breakin' Down Blues, Variations for Terrane Blues and Milkcow Blues, Walking Blues, Come On In My Kitchen, Last Fair Deal Gone Down, Stones In My Passway, Cross Road Blues, Traveling Riverside BluesDVD Three: SPANISH TUNING: If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day, VESTAPOL TUNING (OPEN E TUNING): Rambling on my Mind, I Believe I'll Dust My Broom, Preaching Blues, STANDARD TUNING: They're Red Hot. DVD is region 0, playable worldwide. Review ------ Over the intervening decades since Robert Johnson cut his 29 monolithic sides in 1936 and 1937, countless manhours have been spent by countless guitarists hunched over spinning 78s, then LPs, then CDs, and now spinless MP3s, desperately trying to latch onto the mystical powers inherent in those songs - in that sound - which launched as many legions of rockers as of bluesmen. With Johnson's direct apostles below ground - Robert Lockwood, Honeyboy Edwards, Johnny Shines (who thrice returns, via bonus performance footage) - Tom Feldmann is your best possible instructor. The country blues junkie has put in those countless hours intensively detailing everything from the lemon squeezing Traveling Riverside Blues to the tamale-peddling They're Red Hot - so that you don't have to. He's got the complete canon down cold (come on, both takes of Cross Road Blues get dissected here). Right down to that spine-tingling 'howling wind' slide lick dripping down Come On in My Kitchen. Even down to that momentary flash of wickedness in the fourth verse of Walking Blues when string bends actually snap. With calm coaching, you'll run the existential table from the Son House knockoff of Preaching Blues to Hellhound on My Trail, with a Malted Milk break in between. Besides using the slo-mo split-screen, Feldmann makes learning easier by wisely corralling similar pieces, as when taking advantage of the structural relationship between Terrane Blues and Milkcow's Calf Blues with Stones in My Passway. Tremendous clout resides within three how-to DVDs, for herein lie both the kindling and the spark which lit the firestorm of modern blues and rock. So the calculus is simple: Six hours of one-on-one Robert Johnson instruction equals essential. --Dennis Rozanski/Blues Rag