I grew up reading about Stefan Grossman's experiences learning to play from the Reverend Gary Davis and, later, heard firsthand from Roy Book Binder about his adventures with the Rev and Pink Anderson, and from Steve James about tracking down and hanging out with Furry Lewis in Memphis. It was clearly an important part of the process to go to the source, and I felt like I had missed that window by a good decade or two.

Then, in the mid-90s, the source began to show up on my doorstep, or rather, the National Guitar Workshop's doorstep. One by one, an assortment of formidable blues musicians arrived to teach for a day, a few days, or a week, and someone had to host their classes.

So I spent a day watching Gatemouth Brown hold court, and week with Ronnie Earl, then another week, and finally one year Duke Robillard showed up to hang out in a class of less than a dozen people for two straight days. Watching Duke play was like seeing half a century of blues and jazz come alive five feet away. For anyone born too late to hang out with Freddie Green, Charlie Christian or Tiny Grimes, playing backup for Duke Robillard was easily the next best thing, and a thrill in its own right.

It also taught me something I've carried with me ever since: there is nothing like actually seeing how this stuff works, up close, with someone patient enough to take it apart piece by piece, then show you how to put it back together again. Unlike some people whose approach is so intuitive they can't explain it or even slow it down, Duke had a near-encyclopedic recollection of how and when he acquired each aspect of his vocabulary, and generously passed many of those moments along to us in those two days.

Today's Youtube lesson consists of one such moment. Having always been a little mystified by diminished chords, I was all ears when Duke presented this cool little chord sequence for returning from IV to I on a swing-style twelve-bar blues. You can find the lesson at the link below:

Duke Robillard's Blues Chord Melody Move

As I was first learning to play, whenever I came across something like this, my first thought would always be, "That's cool! Where can I find more things like that?"

If that's your reaction to today's lesson, I encourage you to sign up for my upcoming Chord Melody Blues workshop, live streaming this Saturday, June 29. We'll go over all the most important three- and four-note voicings on the upper strings, look at numerous rhythmic and melodic tools for creating riffs and harmonized blues licks, explore blues chord substitutions and chromatic moves, and put it all together in a series of complete twelve-bar choruses.

The two-hour workshop will be available for on-demand viewing for an entire year afterwards, and comes with a downloadable PDF with every exercise, example and complete chorus written out in notation and tab.

Register now at the link below:

Chord Melody Blues Workshop Registration

More soon,

David