Percussive Guitar Blues
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Percussive Guitar Blues treats the guitar as drum, bass, and melody instrument at once, using thumped strings, muted strums, open-tuning drones, slide hits, thumbed bass, and foot stomps. The technique is rhythmic first: notes slap, snap, buzz, and knock so the groove can survive even without a drummer.
History
The style reaches across country blues, Piedmont picking, Delta slide, and hill-country groove, but North Mississippi artists made percussive guitar especially central to trance-like blues. Mississippi Fred McDowell’s driving slide, Jessie Mae Hemphill’s guitar-and-tambourine attack, R. L. Burnside’s raw pulse, Junior Kimbrough’s vamping, Robert Belfour’s stomping guitar, and Cedric Burnside’s drum-informed guitar approach define the lane. It influenced solo blues performers, cigar-box-guitar players, garage blues, modern acoustic roots music, and loop-based one-person blues acts.
Defining artists
Essential listening
- Shake 'Em on Down — Mississippi Fred McDowellSpotifyYouTube
- Standing in My Doorway Crying — Jessie Mae HemphillSpotifyYouTube
- Poor Black Mattie — R. L. BurnsideSpotifyYouTube
- Keep Your Hands Off Her — Junior KimbroughSpotifyYouTube
- Hill Stomp — Robert BelfourSpotifyYouTube
- We Made It — Cedric BurnsideSpotifyYouTube
Sources
- Samuel Charters, The Country Blues
- Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began
- AllMusic
- Living Blues