Country Slide Blues
Located in 1 route
Country Slide Blues is rural acoustic blues built around bottleneck guitar, open tunings, strong thumb rhythm, and vocals rooted in local Southern speech and songster practice. It is more porch, field, and juke than city-band blues, with slide lines answering the voice like a mule in the next row who somehow learned vibrato.
History
The style developed across the rural South before recording, then appeared strongly on race records from the late 1920s through early 1940s. Charley Patton, Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, Bukka White, Robert Johnson, Kokomo Arnold, Blind Willie McTell, and Mississippi Fred McDowell carried country slide through Delta, Texas, Georgia, and North Mississippi traditions. Folk revival rediscovery made the style central to acoustic blues pedagogy, influencing blues-rock unplugged sets, country slide, Americana, and modern roots guitarists.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Samuel Charters, The Country Blues
- Gayle Dean Wardlow, Chasin' That Devil Music
- Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta
- AllMusic