Sometime in high school, I brought home the local library's copy of The Immortal Mississippi John Hurt. After listening to it a handful of times in the family music room, I put it on for my best friend, whose reaction was, "so...does this guy play any, you know, blues licks?"

I knew what he meant, but I didn't want to admit that I kind of was wondering the same thing. Working backwards from albums like Layla or even the copy of B.B. King Live At The Regal an older friend of ours had "liberated" from the Harvard radio station didn't really prepare either of us for what the solo prewar bluesmen had to offer.

And of course, aside from some individual tracks on Vanguard's Blues At Newport collection, also released in the mid-1960s, John Hurt was about all I could rummage up from that era. No Lightnin' Hopkins, no Muddy Waters, no John Lee Hooker, all of whom were admittedly of a slightly later era than John Hurt, Blind Lemon Jefferson or Gary Davis, but any one of which would likely have proved a more accessible bridge from the blues-rock world back to a time when "blues" meant "solo singer with guitar."

Even now, connecting the dots between alternating-thumb pickers like Davis, Hurt and Bind Willie McTell and later blues-rock interpreters can be challenging. The only things that, say, the Allman Brothers' version of "Statesboro Blues" have in common with Blind Willie McTell's original 1928 version are the lyrics and the twelve-bar form, and perhaps the fact that both versions were concocted in the state of Georgia.

Credit for the transformation of "Statesboro Blues" from a twelve-string, drop-D workout to an electrified blues band shuffle goes to Taj Mahal, Jesse Ed Davis & company, but like a lot of people, I didn't know that when side one, track one of Live At Fillmore East came blasting out of my stereo for the first time.

In its own way, McTell's version of "Statesboro Blues" has had just as much staying power as the Allmans'. Almost any solo acoustic picker who takes it on pretty much plays it as closely to the McTell version as they can.

Which makes it, to me, the hardest kind of song to get a grip on. Give me a tune that's been done by dozens of people, at least a half a dozen significantly different ways, and I can pick and choose how I'm going to treat it myself. But something as canonical as "Statesboro Blues," while clearly lending itself to at least one major overhaul so far, seems to have eluded any wider efforts at interpretation.

That said, there is still some wiggle room. For starters, nobody I'm aware of has treated the song as an instrumental springboard. And for another, you can always mess around at the margins: creating an original intro, vamp or outro; tweaking the fills, the bass lines, and even the chord voicings.

I initially moved from introducing a new song every month in the Fingerstyle Five membership to introducing a new song every quarter because so many people said they needed more time to absorb the material. But I've benefited too, because now I have more time to choose and develop each tune I present.

As a result, I've had the time to work out a version of "Statesboro Blues" that feels both accurate and personal, and I'm looking forward to teaching it this April in the Fingerstyle Five membership. More on that soon.

In the meantime, if you'd like to improve your right-hand coordination while learning another classic alternating-thumb blues, Mississippi John Hurt's "Nobody's Dirty Business," join me next Tuesday for my first live stream in this spring's three-part Groove Master Class:

Groove Master Class 1: Learn The Tune

I actually open today's new Youtube video by playing a bit of my new arrangement of "Statesboro Blues" before talking about the 1930's National Trojan I'm playing it on.

You can find it here:

Statesboro Blues On My Vintage National

More soon,

David

P.S. We've still got a few spots left for my live workshop with John Knowles this Sunday, March 15th in Arvada, Colorado. Visit the link below to sign up, or just email me directly.

Evolutions & Substitutions: A Fingerstyle Guitar Master Class