Essentials

When I bought my first harmonica and decided to self-teach, I bought a simple little guide to blues harp, and then went to the library every week, and checked out the maximum number of CDs allowed, all blues. I absorbed all I could until rifs started becoming more natural than purposeful. Guides are indeed helpful, but immersion is, I think, the most effective learning tool. So what to use for immersion? What are the Essential Blues? Who’s list is best? I wouldn’t call any list of blues essentials the best. Sorry, but any such list is already beginning with some type of premise, i.e. popularity, originality, intensity of genuine feeling, … on and on. However, you have to start somewhere.

Some hate and avoid Wikipedia (mostly professors, I assume), some love and over-use it without discretion, and some reference it with caution. In this case, I decided to take a look at what the collective, on-line universe had to say about Blues Standards on Wikipedia. I like it. Not only do I like the list, but I like the format: Title/First Recorded (artist) / Year (first recorded) / and Single By (artist), with references. List_of_blues_standards

That said, of course it’s missing stuff, which is where it becomes personal, so here are my two cents.

Cent One: Junior Wells isn’t listed in any of those Single By samples. Needs to be, at least for Little School Girl. Among what I consider my essential albums, Hoodoo Man Blues is at the top of the list.

Cent Two:

No Jimi, either? Hendrix immersed himself in blues, and then, in my opinion, transformed it in a way that was honest and true to both essential blues and the psychedelic culture of the 60s. Jimi’s Blues album is another at the top of my essentials list.