Jeff Shucard’s Practice Tape Notes
Dear Friends, Until the pandemic hit, it never occurred to me to listen to the practice audio cassette tapes made at my kitchen table in Connemara, Ireland, forty or more years ago. But then, again, I never imagined I’d be in a lockdown for months with endless time to fill either. All this free time on my hands has led to much reading and writing and the opening of boxes and files long ago stored away and forgotten. One such box I opened contained dozens of homemade audio tapes that I’d accumulated over the years, some of the tapes titled, some not. I decided to sit down and listen to these tapes and see if there was anything there worth saving. While listening to one of the untitled tapes, I heard someone playing a Scott Joplin rag on guitar. This was a very old tape and I had no…
Blind Blake – Mr. Diddy Wa Diddy (ENG)
The blues recording artist Blind Blake defies categorization. Although he is usually called a ragtime bluesman, that description does little to define the diversity of his music. The fact is, no other blues recording artist of his time sounded quite like him. His jazzy, highly syncopated guitar, his phrasing and speed on the fret board, the sly ironic songs he composed were not only a unique synthesis of styles, but technically beyond the reach of all his contemporaries, much as they remain to this day. Many have tried but few have succeeded in capturing Blake’s feel. He sets the bar for all finger pickers to aspire to. Blake is also unique in that he is the most mysterious of all blues artists. Where he came from, where and when he died, almost all the facts of his life are largely unknown or a source of great speculation. It is as…