We have a brand new Mississippi John Hurt 5-pack of lessons!
Click here for more details
Mississippi John Hurt Lessons Package includes 5 lessons plus tablature and guitar pro files. It is valued at over $70.
Right now we are offering lifetime access to these lessons for a special price of only $37.95.
This video lesson series is expertly taught by Neil Hogan.
Mississippi John Hurt was one of the most popular and influential guitarists in the Country Blues Style.
His playing was graceful and complemented his gentle voice perfectly. Most of his songs featured
Travis-style alternate bass picking, although he was generally not concerned with traditional harmony
or establishing consistent patterns, as much as creating a solid and fascinating accompaniment to his songs.
He commonly played in 4 different keys, and in this package we look at an example of each one, as well as
a very basic instrumental to get started.
We start with Shake That Thing, a simple group of blues licks in the key of G. If you have a bit of experience
with the Travis technique you should have little trouble getting this down and heading into his more complicated
tunes. This is also a good place to start learning the alternating technique if you have not tried it before.
Stagolee is in the key of D and uses the 3 major chords in that key- D, G and A. It is a somewhat unusual form
that is 11 bars long and uses melody notes that are all easy to reach within the chord shapes.
Ain't No Tellin' takes us into the key of C where the technique of using your left thumb to fret the 6^th string for
F chords is introduced. It is in a conventional folk form following a 16-bar progression and presents a challenge to
coordinate the playing with singing.
We take another trip into the key of G with Got The Blues, Cant Be Satisfied. In this tune we add a couple of John's
signature sounds of partial chords up the neck. It is also quite challenging to play and sing as it is quite fast and really
needs some bluesy licks played along with the vocals.
We complete this package with one of his most complex tunes, Candy Man Blues. This is in the key of A and features
quite a few up the neck chords in the solo section. It is also an example of how the steady rhythm of the bass notes is
more important than there harmonic purpose, meaning he frequently uses any available open bass notes regardless of
how they are related to the chord.