ArtsAutosBooksBusinessEducationEntertainmentFamilyFashionFoodGamesGenderHealthHolidaysHomeHubPagesPersonal FinancePetsPoliticsReligionSportsTechnologyTravel

Ragtime Guitar Lessons - Blind Blake - King Of Ragtime Blues Guitar

Updated on July 15, 2016

Blind Arthur Blake

The True King of Ragime Guitar Finger Picking

Blake was born in around 1893,  Jacksonville, in Florida and was presumed to have died  1931 (he actually disappeared). He made over eighty records and was a leading  ragtime blues guitar player. He is sometimes known as "The King of Ragtime ", due to his rapid and precise rhythmic playing technique.

Blake's Characteristic Keys

Blind Blake was a master guitarist in his style and had a very broad repertoire. He's probably most celebrated due to his syncopated guitar picking style that emulated ragtime piano, which was all the rage in the early part of the last century. Someone once said that acoustic blues guitar players tried to sound like a honky-tonk piano, but electric guitarists wanted to sound like a sax.

Blake's performances featured three basic types of songs or instrumentals, and all of these broad categories had small variations.



Key Of C

Blake's very first tracks were West Coast Blues, a bouncy tune without words, and Early Morning Blues on the other side of the disk. Performed in the key of C, W.C.B. is a fantastic masterpiece and laid the groundwork for following instrumentals in C. Rather unfortunately, many of the later pieces had much the same theme, with small differences. He set the standard very high to begin with and it was tough for to improve upon his first offerings.

West Coast Blues features most of Blake's trade mark techniques, like the heavy rhythmic bass strikes utilizing a 'slipping' thumb movement, rapid triplets using two or three fingers and very quick runs on single strings.

Open D Tuning

Possibly his most known piece is a song in open D called Police Dog Blues, played in Open D. Really fast and next to impossible to perform at the same speed as Blake, the song presents the base structure for most of his works in this key. This kind of picking later developed into the 'Travis' technique, after Merle Travis. Doc Watson was a master at this style and any student wishing to play blues should study his techniques.

Jim Plays Blake's 'Police Dog Blues'

The Key Of G

That'll Never Happen No More is a wonderful song by way of introduction to Blake's works in the key of G. It's not too fast and his 'slipping' thumb technique isn't used a lot. It does include other favorite Blake tricks, such as a complicated arpeggio style run down using fingers and thumb in the chord progression G to G7 to C to Eb7 in one of the instrumental breaks.

That'll Never Happen No More Blues Guitar Lesson - Blind Blake

Jim Bruce Guitar Lessons


If you want to do it right...

Click Here To See Details

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You know what to do and how to do it ...

working

This website uses cookies

As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.

For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy

Show Details
Necessary
HubPages Device IDThis is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons.
LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service.
Google RecaptchaThis is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy)
AkismetThis is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Traffic PixelThis is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized.
Amazon Web ServicesThis is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy)
CloudflareThis is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy)
Google Hosted LibrariesJavascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy)
Features
Google Custom SearchThis is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy)
Google MapsSome articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
Google ChartsThis is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy)
Google AdSense Host APIThis service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Google YouTubeSome articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
VimeoSome articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
PaypalThis is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook LoginYou can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
MavenThis supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy)
Marketing
Google AdSenseThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Google DoubleClickGoogle provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Index ExchangeThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
SovrnThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook AdsThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Unified Ad MarketplaceThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
AppNexusThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
OpenxThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Rubicon ProjectThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
TripleLiftThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Say MediaWe partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy)
Remarketing PixelsWe may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites.
Conversion Tracking PixelsWe may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service.
Statistics
Author Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy)
ComscoreComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Tracking PixelSome articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy)
ClickscoThis is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy)