Mandolin Blues with audio access - From Memphis to Maxwell Street Paperback – January 1, 2007

Getting back into mandolin after a three decade layoff. This book shows how to get the blues sound I am looking for. My prior interest was Irish and fiddle tunes. But ya gotta love Yank Rachell. And that jug band stuff is the bomb. Pity this book wasn't available when I first started. There is online access to all transcribed tunes and the tempo can be varied while maintaining pitch. Fun stuff.

This is a fantastic tour of blues music for the mandolin. The book provides a great overview of the blues in general, and especially the blues as played on a mandolin. There's general history and enough theory to get you playing, and some great tunes to keep you playing. In between exercises, ideas and songs, there is background on the jazz/blues scene, short biographies of many key groups and players and even history of the mandolin.The music in the book is written assuming you have some knowledge of how blues works; but if you don't, the CD is there to fill in the gaps. Every song and practice has a corresponding track, and it is really helpful to hear things played out to know how it should sound, as the blues is different than a lot of the bluegrass, country, celtic and classical music that the mandolin is known for. This is highly recommended to help you get some more use out of an already very versatile instrument.

You have to hand it to Rich Delgrosso- he's written a well thought out book on the history of the blues **as played on mandolin** and goes in-depth with historical blues mando players (who knew there were any?), the evolution of the genre, and the application of the blues basics to a more contemporary context. I've seen him on stage and met him at a mando workshop- great guy- and you can tell he strives to carry on the mando blues tradition as seriously as Eric Clapton does for guitar- paying full homage to all of those who came before him (Yank Rochelle is the mando equivalent to Robert Johnson). It's probably safe to say that guitar will always be the dominating instrument of choice for the blues-- and I think it may have an edge over mando because it just sounds better on guitar-- but if you want to expand your mando horizons and be a well rounded player who understands the mandolin in a blues context, you would be hard pressed to find a better book--

After playing folk/finger-picking guitar for 50 years, I started playing the mandolin a couple of years ago. It was a difficult transition (I had never used a pick before, different tuning, etc.), but once it clicked, I began an amazing journey into music I had never before explored. This included the blues and string band music. And that is what led me to this wonderful book by Phil DelGrosso. This book takes you from learning about basic blues structure to chord progressions to interesting blues licks. All songs are written out with chords, notes and tab. The accompanying CD not only lets you hear the songs, but also play along with them. Beginners can pop in the CD and play chords along with Rich, learning fairly easy chord progressions. More advanced players can pick the notes and practice keeping up with the rest of the band. And Rich provides extensive background information about blues variations (rags, stomps and drags), great blues mando players (Howard Armstrong, Yank Rachell, etc.) and a discography. Because of this book, my playing has greatly improved, I have learned tons about "roots" music and the early blues, and have bought several CD's of the original artists playing their own songs. At first, hearing Coley Jones and The Dallas String Band play "The Dallas Rag" was really intimidating to me. Then I worked it through using Rich's notation and somewhat slower recording of of it. Now, I can at least play along with Rich's version, although I'm not sure I'll ever be able to keep up with Coley Jones! If you play mando and want to learn blues, this book can be the beginning of a wonderful journey for you!

I'm a novice mandolin player taking mandolin and guitar lessons. I pulled it out of the mail box on the way to my music lesson. I showed it to my instructor and asked him if it was any good. He paged through it and asked me where I got it. He ordered a copy and the next week he had tabbed out several of the songs for guitar and violin. I've been enjoying learning 12 bar blues for the mandolin and it's helping me with my chord playing. I'm still not up to the first song yet on the mandolin. I've been working it hard on several of the songs for the guitar. This isn't for the novice. There are tabs and a CD included. It includes difficult cords and double stops and slides. A great book overall.

Another home run from the folks at Hal Leonard. This amazing book would be a deal at twice the price. Plenty of material to keep the interest of the dedicated mando player. Not only do you get the music in tab and notation the author has awesome background info on the players and the blues in general. Even more cheers go out to HL for developing the "Playback +" . It allows you to slow down, speed up, loop, etc. the material which makes it much easier to grasp the tricky parts......and it beats fumbling around with CDs but a mile. You can build your HL library as I have with their books featuring the Playback+. Well done.

Good, but not quite what I was expecting. Nice music to learn and play.

I'm a guitarist who has played mando for a while. Along the way, I've realized that any style of music played on any instrument has its own idiomatic stylings and blues on mando is no different. So, I started looking for a book or dvd that could relay those mando blues "tricks" to me and save me from having to figure them out. This book does just that. What a time saver and what a great set of insights this book provides. Rich Delgrosso has winner with this book. If you want to understand mando blues history with great examples to play, get this book.