Sfefan Grossman : Bottleneck Serenade 1975 (no vocals)

[alucard]

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I discovered Stefan Grossman together with Happy Traum through their Folkblues Fingerstyle Guitar tablature methods and indirectly a lot of great musicians like John Fahey, Elizabeth Cotten , Mississipi John Hurt and others. Even so I loved the books I never tried out Grossmans records. I had a couple of tracks on a Transatlantic compilation and thats it until I foud recently his 1975 record 'Bottleneck Serenade'.
Compared to other acoustic instrumental fingerstyle records this one has a pedagogical side : "let me show you folks what you can do with a steelstring guitar and a bottleneck".
12 tracks, 10 original compositions , one tracks by Ewan Mc Coll , one traditional and a little help by Mike Cooper on second guitar . All tracks have a different vibe : only fingerpicking, only slide , mix of fingerpicking and slide , open and standard tunings , different guitars (one track with electric guitar , not the best one btw) and a couple of overdubs. Nothing spectular , but a good overview of fingertstyle/ slide folk blues guitar.

[rcarlberg]

Grossman has dozens of albums out, ranging from very good to fabulous. You can't go too far wrong with any of them. Ragtime Cowboy Jew and Yazoo Basin Boogie are two of my favorites.

[alucard]

Grossman has dozens of albums out, ranging from very good to fabulous. You can't go too far wrong with any of them. Ragtime Cowboy Jew and Yazoo Basin Boogie are two of my favorites.

I will check them out.

[rcarlberg]

Of course Grossman was co-founder, with ED Denson, of Kicking Mule Records, the go-to label for fingerpicking guitar.