To further complicate matters, Don Law, who supervised the sessions, stated that Johnson used a borrowed guitar for the San Antonio sessions (1936) at the Gunter Hotel. Johnson arrived on Sunday to record, but was arrested that night and had to be bailed out of jail. Apparently, during the arrest the guitar was not available any more (broken, confiscated, or lost), and when recording was started on Monday, November 23, the studio obtained a guitar for Johnson to use. It could be anything. Stephen LeVere, who oversaw the mastering of the Complete Recordings, postulates that the San Antonio sessions sound like a flattop whereas the Dallas sessions sound like an archtop. Johnson probably used his own guitar for the Dallas sessions. It is known that Johnson liked the Kalamazoo archtop guitars, so this is plausible, and it does sound like an archtop to my ears as well. Johnny Shines stated that Johnson liked Kalamazoo and Stella guitars, and also mentioned that both he and Johnson had Kalamazoos with f-holes (archtop) and liked archtops, so the theory holds water (Johnny Shines interview).

Johnson had some of the best acoustic guitar sounds on record, for my money, in addition to being one of the greatest players of acoustic blues, but there are 3 distinct guitar sounds among the various recordings. The only thing this proves is that Johnson's sound came from his fingers, and the guitar he used is not important. This page lists his songs, recording dates, and master numbers, among other things and is a work in progress: Robert Johnson songs. Johnson recorded 59 takes of 29 songs, of which 42 takes still remain. Maybe someday others will be found, but it's likely many of the masters were destroyed during the war for the metal. Update: Among the 17 missing songs are 2nd takes of Terraplane Blues, Walkin Blues, Preachin' blues, and Hellhound on my Trail, and a third take of Milkcow's Calf Blues.

One thing I will say about the guitar sound, I think the Gibson L1 shape and size is perfect for blues. Every guitar I've played in this configuration, including my own Martin CEO7 and my Kalamazoo KG14, sound amazing. The best sounding guitars I've heard have been old 1920's and 1930's Gibson L1 guitars. Whether or not he used something like this is open to speculation.

Update:The other question is, what sounds more like a Robert Johnson recording today, an 80 year old guitar with 80 year old wood (which was brand-spanking new when Robert Johnson recorded) or a brand new guitar built in a similar style to the old 30's guitars?

Update: Here is "Kind Hearted Woman Blues" from the San Antonio sessions: Kind Hearted Woman Blues. "Me and the Devil Blues", recorded in Dallas, uses the same tune, but you can here the difference in guitar tone. It has a more "ringing" tone, and the bass is more percussive sounding: Me and the Devil Blues. Below is my Kalamazoo KG31, which may or may not be the type used by Robert on the Dallas sessions (or was it a KG21?):. The KG 31 is bigger, with a 16" lower bout, whereas the KG21 has a 14 3/4" lower bout, similar to a Gibson L1.

Update 6/20/2019: Changed the information about Johnson's San Antonio sessions based on information in the new Johnson biography by Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Warlow. Johnson recorded all of the sessions with a borrowed studio guitar.

Update 11/21/2020: Finally obtained a Kalamazoo KG-21 archtop , which is likely the type of guitar that Johnson used on the Dallas recordings. He and Johnny Shines carried Kalamazoo archtops (either a KG-31 or KG-21) with them until around December 1937 when they were lost in a fire. After that, Johnson likely obtained his Kalamazoo KG-14 that is seen in the famous cigarette photo in Steele, Missouri.

Update 8/17/2021: Annye Anderson's book about her step-brother Robert is a must-read: Brother Robert. The cover is the most recently discovered picture of Robert with his Kalamazoo KG-14 guitar. In this more recent interview with Annye Anderson, interview, she describes obtaining Robert's guitar. Apparently Robert's sister Carrie sent her son Louis to Greenwood to obtain it, and it was transported to Anapolis and then Churchton, MD. It was subsequently lost.

With a good tube amp, you can set the amp for a good crunchy tone when pushed hard, then just back off the volume control on the guitar to play clean tones. For blues players who don't have the amp overdriven as much as rock players, the overdriven sound is much more subtle. A good tube amp is like an extension of the guitar--it's like playing another instrument at the same time and trying to get the best music out of both.

Every tube amp I've played has a "sweet spot" where it sounds best. Some amps have a great sound in several places. An old Marshall head was always best with everything on 10. For smaller venues when you can't reach the sweet spot, a pedal can boost the signal going into the amp to give it a slightly overdriven sound even though the volume is low. It's not quite the same as cranking the amp, though, but sometimes you don't have a choice.

Different output tubes (aka amplifier tubes, power amp tubes) have different tonal characteristics. The 6V6 tubes were used in Fender amps in the 60's and have a clean tone until pushed hard, then have a nice breakup. Depending on the amp and the circuit used, they can sound "mushy" when pushed too hard, like in an old Princeton, but I've recently heard a Swart Spacetone that sounds pretty darned good even when pushed to 10. One 6V6 puts out roughly 5 watts or so, and some amps have two in a push-pull circuit putting out about 10-14 watts. Fender Deluxe "blackface" had 2, and is one of the Holy Grail amps for guitar players.

A 6L6 is like a big brother to the 6V6, and puts out about double the output. Some amps that use the 6L6 are the old Fender Bassman, and newer EVH amps. Loud American amps mostly had 6L6 tubes in the old days.

EL84 tubes have a more glassy sound (some say it sounds like an ice pick) but produces a more definite mid-range "crunch" when pushed hard. It puts out about 6-7 watts, but a push-pull pair can put out 14-20 watts or more, depending on the circuit. The Fender Blues Junior uses EL84 tubes.

EL34 tubes are the EL84's bigger brother, and used in Marshall amps and clones. They have that great rock "crunch" when pushed hard, and glassy clean tones when the volume is backed off. Marshall amps were essentially clones of the Fender Bassman, only using EL34 tubes instead of 6L6 tubes, and utilizing closed back cabinets.

One tube you don't see very often is a 6973, used in some old Supro and Gretsch amps. I think this tube might have the best sound of all, but I don't own one of these amps. Yet. It sounds somewhat like a cross between the 6V6 and EL34, getting a pretty nice clean sound, but a moderate overdrive when cranked to 10, not as crunchy as an EL34, but not as mushy as a 6V6.

These days I have different tube amps for different venues.

For small gigs I bring my VHT Special 6; hand-wired point-to-point like the old days, but made in China. It might be the most well-made mass-produced amp out there without going to a boutique amp builder. The VHT takes a 6V6, but it can be swapped out for a 6L6, EL34, or with an adapter, an EL84. I keep an EL34 in mine, and it sounds great. It's a simple amp with no reverb or effects of any kind.

For slightly larger gigs I use a Bugera V22, which I picked up ridiculously cheap. It has a great natural sound, somewhere between and old Vox and a blackface Fender. It uses EL84 tubes, but sounds much less ice-picky than other EL84 amps I've played through, and more like an old-school amp.

Next is my Sligo Surfman, built by a local guy Steve Clark. It uses 6L6 tubes and puts out about 40 watts, but has a master volume for getting some breakup at lower volumes.

For larger blues gigs I usually bring out my Sonny Jr. "Super Sonny", which is essentially a hand-wired clone of an old tweed Fender Bassman, but modified for harmonica. It sounds great with guitar too, especially with a pedal boosting the signal slightly in front of it.

I also usually carry with me a backup amp, which is a hand-build Bogen clone. Bogen built PA amplifiers in the 50s and 60s. This one has 2 6V6 tubes and sounds pretty great with guitar, even though it's not a guitar amp.

I also have a small practice amp, which is a Magnasync Moviola amp, taken from an old 50's/60's film editing machine, utilizing a 6AQ5 output tube. The power of the amp is not enough for a gig with other musicians, but it sounds pretty nice for recording or as a bedroom practice amp.

I also recently obtained a Bugera 6262, essentially a 100 watt clone of a British style (Marshall) amp that is low budget but sounds great. I will use this for rock gigs.

The quest for the best guitar tone continues every day. Even though I have enough amps for a lifetime, I'm always looking for the ultimate guitar sound.

Bigger news is that through these blues jams I've joined a couple of local bands -- The Alpha Dog Blues Band and the Southside Georgetown Bluesbreakers. Alpha Dog plays regularly at the Cowboy Cafe, JVs, and 219 Restaurant. The Bluesbreakers have played one gig at the DC Blues Society fish fry this past month.

Through the jams I've met a lot of great people and fine musicians. Some cool local DC bands to check out if you can are Idle Americans, Big Boy Little Band, Swampkeepers, Hot Rods and Old Gas, and the Andy Poxon Band.

Alpha Dog Blues Band is playing the following dates:

For those of us in local bands, Talas was a band that we all looked up to and wanted to be like. As an aspiring guitar player, I would go to Talas shows 2 or 3 nights every week, and eventually saw them over 300 times. They never disappointed and had hundreds of songs in their repertoire. Talas consisted of Dave Constantino on guitar, Billy Sheehan on bass, and Paul Varga on drums. The music was hard rock, but with a melodic edge to it, or pop with a hard rock edge...take your pick. Dave's original band -- The Tweeds -- was around the area in the 60's and had a regional hit single called "Thing of the Past", which was a Beatle-esque ballad. When Talas broke up in the early 80's, Dave re-formed The Tweeds with Paul Varga and played smaller clubs with small amps for that 60's sound, and sometimes even a box to beat on instead of a drum to get that early Elvis sound.

[画像:Dave Constantino jamming at Stage One on a Sunday night around 1981]Talas had a few regular gigs, including Monday nights at Harvey and Corky's Stage One, a small local bar that was also the place to be on any given night. They would have free drinks until 10PM, and Talas would get on about midnight and play until 3AM or later. Harvey Weinstein eventually went on to become a big name movie distributor, but back then he was a concert promoter in Western NY. Talas would also allow other bands to open up for them, including touring bands promoting records. One night, I was fortunate enough to see U2 opening for Talas at Stage One on a tour promoting one of their early albums. At the time I remember thinking they were one of the cooler bands who came through, but they have since gone onto bigger things. I was at Stage One on a Monday night seeing Talas the night John Lennon was shot, and Talas did a set of Lennon tunes to close the night.

Talas had a few reunion shows after many years of being apart -- in 1997 they played Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo, which was later released as a live CD called If We Only Knew Then What We Know Now. I didn't know about that show, unfortunately. Then in 2001 they did a reunion show on the waterfront in June in Buffalo, which was later released as a live DVD. I was there that night, along with about 18,000 people. What an amazing night that was. They did all the old Talas classics like "Thickhead" and "Sink Your Teeth" and some of the most popular cover tunes they used to do back in the 70's/80's like "Battlescar", "Stealin'", and "Helter Skelter".

[画像:Talas opening for Aerosmith around 1980]The highlight of my years seeing Talas -- and one of my own personal musical highlights -- was one New Year's Eve at a club called the Lone Star, when Dave called me up on stage to do a song with them. That was an amazing experience I'll never forget. During the first set he stuck his guitar neck out into the crowd and let me finger the chords as he strummed the guitar. Then in the next set, he called me up. A couple of my band mates were there, along with most of my friends. We did the old Sammy Hagar tune "One Way to Rock", and it sounded great from where I stood. It was very cool to be on stage jamming with Billy, Dave, and Paul. They didn't know me, as I didn't talk much, but still they took a chance and let me do a song. I'm grateful for that.[画像:Billy Sheehan at Buffalo Memorial Auditorim opening for Aerosmith]

The new CD is more bluesy than the songs that Dave did in Talas, but has a much more prominent guitar. I highly recommend it. Dave's guitar is always tasteful, and reminiscent of Montrose, Page, Clapton, and other rock guitarists of that era. He also had the best sound I've heard, with a Les Paul plugged straight into a Marshall. On the Talas albums, he never seemed to cut loose in the studio the way he did in live shows and played in a very restrained way, but on this CD he has more of an opportunity to showcase his playing. As Dave was the guitar player that I saw the most when I was first starting out, I developed a similar style myself, although I also had many other influences. The CD also features the Rinehart brothers on bass and drums, who coincidentally lived directly behind me when I was growing up in Tonawanda, NY, although at the time I didn't know they were musicians. It's a small world.

Pick up the CD at Dave Constantino's web site.

A couple of weeks ago I decided on a whim to share some of my accumulated knowledge of the harp. So I figured out how to transfer footage from my digital videocam to my MacBook and compress it for export, and then I filmed and uploaded a couple of free-form harp lessons to YouTube entitled "Blues Harmonica Secrets Revealed."

One thing led to another. Now, two weeks later, I seem to have created my own channel at YouTube, with 20+ lessons in the can, 250 subscribers, and more than 35,000 combined hits. Just yesterday I decided to supplement the lessons by uploading a bunch of Satan and Adam videos, since there wasn't a single bit of footage of my duo on the web. I dug deep into the archives and found some stuff from the days when we were playing the Harlem street, plus our appearance at the 1993 Philadelphia Folk Festival. Later today I'm going to upload some stuff from a 1992 gig in Syracuse that will hopefully convince people that I'm NOT lying when I call Sterling the greatest one-man blues band in the history of the blues. It's late-night, end-of-set stuff where he's throwing down the way he used to on 125th Street in Harlem--stuff we never really got onto our CDs. But I've got the videotape to prove it.

I also found a video of outtakes featuring my harp teacher, the late (and legendary) Nat Riddles in a Richmond-area cable show called "Blues TV."

Here's my YouTube URL, for anybody interested in checking out all this stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=KudzuRunner

If you have any interest at all in learning harmonica or brushing up on techniques, or just hearing some good music, check out the videos and subscribe to the series.

Update 6/23/2007: More on Adam Gussow...

"Everyone keeps telling me they know someone, or they can help me, but nothing ever happens. I'm going to play 320 nights this year for a few hundred dollars a night. I'm getting really tired of it. I don't think it's ever going to happen."

His playing is a revelation, and at times seems beyond human capacity, hitting notes that few other players can find. Sometimes he stretches out impossibly long blue notes. Then he fires off a machine-gun-fast, perfectly precise volley to get people dancing.

At one point, he does a tribute to great harmonica players, including Little Walter and Magic Dick, wrapping their hardest riffs inside even harder ones of his own, orchestrating a solo symphony of five songs simultaneously.

And he doesn't just do it for an hour or two, like most performers. He runs at top speed for four hours a night, playing and singing, with barely a break between songs.

"He is to the harmonica what Eddie Van Halen was to the guitar," said Robert Bonfiglio, one of the world's most respected classical harmonica players, who saw Ricci play for the first time in Denver last month at the 43rd annual convention of the Society for the Preservation and Advancement of the Harmonica. "He has changed the instrument. It will never be seen the same way again. Players after him will want to sound like that."

I finally saw Jason a couple months ago locally and was blown away, not only by the amazing virtuosity of his playing, but also by his willingness to hang out with the fans and talk shop. His band is hot, and the music is original and catchy. Hopefully the word will get out on Jason Ricci and New Blood. The times seem right:

At a time when harmonicas have been getting the most recognition in years -- from "American Idol" winner Taylor Hicks to "America's Got Talent" runner-up L.D. Miller -- Ricci has been packing blues clubs across the country. He's played more than 300 shows each of the past five years.

I've been focusing more and more recently on my own harmonica playing, but I do it strictly for fun and love of music. I have come to the realization a long time ago that I have neither the drive nor the talent to ever become a full-time musician. Still, listening to Jason's playing has only made my own playing stronger.

Jason's site is at http://www.jasonricci.com. Stop by and buy a CD, or check out the tour schedule for a show near you.

I will be doing the same thing I did last year -- a blues/poker vacation. The Sunflower River Blues and Gospel festival was a great time last year, and I had to do it again.

[画像:Charley Patton]I bring this up because as a lover of the blues, it is exciting that rarities are occasionally turning up. Just 3 years ago, several photos and recordings were found, including a pristine copy of the only known photo of Charley Patton. What is cool about it is that the only previously known copy of the photo was a grainy head-shot. Now we have a full body shot of Charley sitting in a chair holding the guitar. Amazing stuff. Many other photos have recently turned up as well, including a rare shot of Skip James, one of my favorite bluesmen.

Also found in 2002 were copies of 4 previously lost songs from King Solomon Hill and Blind Joe Reynolds, two of the most legendary blues performers of the 20s/30s. King Solomon Hill is a guy who has controversy around him as to who he even is, although most people are now convinced that it is actually a guy named Joe Holmes, as outlined in the book Chasin' That Devil Music. These were long considered among the Holy Grails of blues recordings. So far these songs have turned up on some Yazoo compilations (Times Ain't Like They Used To Be volumes 5-8). They are amazing recordings. Many of the blues records made in 20s and 30s only had a few thousand pressings, and most records over time become lost, damaged, or were simply thrown away. It is only through the efforts of some die-hard fans beginning in the early 60s that many famous blues recordings were found. These students, musicians, and record collectors went door-to-door looking for old 78s, and some even tracked down country records like birth certificates and death certificates. Without these guys, my CD collection would be miniscule. ;-)

Until the mid-80s, nobody knew what Robert Johnson looked like. Two photos were found shortly before the release of the Robert Johnson boxed set. In the late 90s, a new version of a Robert Johnson song was found -- Travelin' Riverside Blues -- and put on the King of the Delta Blues Singers CD. If you have the 41 song compilation Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings, you are missing this rarity. There are still many alternate takes of songs that may or may not have ever existed.

In September 2005 (which I just found out about), the Holy Grail of lost blues records was found -- Son House's "Mississippi County Farm Blues" with the flipside "Clarksdale Moan". Son House is often regarded as the direct lineage between blues and rock and roll, having been one of the main influences of Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. These two previously lost recordings are the only two known lost Son House songs from the 1930 session in Wisconson that produced some of the most classic blues recordings of all time, featuring Son House, Willie Brown, Louise Johnson, and Charley Patton. They have not yet been issued on CD, but I can hardly wait for the Yazoo release of The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of, which will include these two songs.

Update: 4/6/2006: Finally got my copy of the Son House lost takes on "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of", which came out on CD this week. The songs live up to the legend -- "Clarksdale Moan" is an unusual tune, quite unlike other Son House songs, but has the same impassioned delivery of the other songs in the 1930 session. "Mississippi County Farm" is another masterpiece that was also covered in House's 1941 session for the Library of Congress, although this take has somewhat higher, raspier vocals in parts, which makes it an intense listening experience. I haven't listened to the entire CD yet, but what I've heard is great. There is a lot of hillbilly and country music mixed in the the blues, but there is some intricate finger-style guitar in some of those pieces as well.

I'll be a blues traveler for a week -- heading to Mississippi to go on a tour of some of the sites down there -- and ending up at the Sunflower Blues Festival in Clarksdale, Mississippi to see some great blues. Little Milton was scheduled to play, but died this past week. RIP Milton. 92 year old Honey Boy Edwards will be playing. He was one of Robert Johnson's contemporaries in the 30s, and has numerous stories of Johnson. Also in town will be Charlie Musselwhite, Sam Carr, and Pinetop Perkins, who is also in his 90s. Also, there is a documentary filming all week at the Ground Zero blues club in downtown Clarksdale by the guy who did Deep Blues and Last of the Mississippi Jukes. Ground Zero is part owned by the actor Morgan Freeman.

In between blues we'll be playing some poker at the Horseshoe and also in Biloxi upon arrival. Wish me luck. ;-)