A Brief History
Over ninety years ago , W.C. Handy wrote in his autobiography, Father Of The Blues, of being awakened in the Tutwiler ,Mississippi, train station by the sound of a guitarist: "As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularised by the Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable. His song too, struck me instantly: 'Goin' where the Southern cross the Dog'. The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard."

This description of a slide player is one of the earliest references to blues music on record. Blues slide guitar originated in the Mississippi Delta region in the early 1900's where it was popularised by players such Willy Brown, Son House, Johnny Shines and the legendary Robert Johnson. Mostly unrecorded, playing on street corners and at House parties, these early players evolved slide guitar into a highly-polished art form of many rhythmically differing styles, which reached it's zenith in the late 1930's.

In the 1940's three things happened which had a profound effect on blues guitar playing.

Firstly, the invention of the mechanised cotton picker and increasingly sophisticated farm machinery added greatly to the already bad unemployment problem in the Delta area.

Secondly, up north in Chicago, World War II was creating plenty of jobs in the industrial sector. This lead to an exodus of unemployed black people from the Mississippi area to Chicago.

Thirdly, an event happened that changed not only blues music, but all popular music. In the late 40's the electric guitar was born. Blues musicians took to the new instrument with a vengeance. Players such as Elmore James, Hound Dog Taylor, Robert Nighthawk, Muddy Waters and others created whole new styles of playing slide guitar, adapting and transcending the Mississippi Delta style and creating the roots of Rock and Roll using fat, distorted tones and aggressive, rhythmic playing styles. The music created during this time is still being mimicked by many bands today.

Today slide guitar is represented by a whole new crop of talented players. People such as Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt, Roy Rogers, George Thorogood, Jeff Healey, Keb' Mo' and too many others to name in America have kept traditional blues slide guitar alive and vibrant. On the Australian blues scene we are blessed to have such excellent players as Dave Hole, Kevin Borich, Matt Taylor, Phil Manning and many others.

Slide guitar, like the blues itself, is still alive and well! The object of this course is to give you the basic skills needed to express yourself musically using a piece of metal (or glass) moved across some strings, not to teach you to be a great slide guitar player. Only you can teach yourself that.

"Slide guitar playing is comprised of one tenth technique and nine tenths emotion."

From http://web.one.net.au/~gighire/slide.html

Also at this site: Choosing a guitar for playing slide

see also:

Slide Guitar Ring
http://www.thatllteachyou.com/sgwr.htm

More on Muddy:
http://www.guitarsite.com/newsletters/990719/3.shtml

Bonny Raitt "one hell of a blues lady"
http://www.guitarsite.com/bands5.htm#raitt

GNW Review of Blues Sites:
http://www.GuitarSite.com/newsletters/990621/5.shtml

More Blues Sites:
http://www.guitarsite.com/newsletters/990719/4.shtml

SLIDE GUITAR FOR BEGINNERS
By Gerd Klaassen

I'm not a expert on slide guitar, so the following stuff is just for beginners. Slide guitar is an essential part of the Blues, I had to start with it. Duane Allman's playing on "Layla and other assorted love songs" just blew me away, the same did EC unplugged.

Most slide guitar instructions start like "and now we use the open xyz tuning". That means you can forget what you know about the fretboard and forget both your left and right hand techniques. You have to learn everything new. To avoid this, I'll explain slide guitar on standard tuning, so all you need is a slide. Open tunings give a different sound and have their advantages, but they are not better in every case. The late Muddy Waters for example played in standard tuning, also Duane on some songs.

You can use both acoustic and electric guitars, as long as they don't have nylon strings. If you want to play much slide guitar, prepare a guitar just for this job. That means using heavier strings (no "super slinky"...) and a high action (distance of the strings to the fretboard). If you have an extra guitar only for slide, you can also try out the open tunings. If you have only one and play sometimes slide or want to switch between slide and normal playing, use the standard tuning.

Resonator guitars (i.e. a Dobro) are great for acoustic slide guitar, they give a loud, metallic "Delta Blues" tone due to the metal cones build in.

The advantage of slide guitar is that you can play it on old guitars with worn-out fretboards or even cheap guitars with bad adjusted frets. You don't need the frets!

Read more at this site:
http://spot.fho-emden.de/guitar/slide.htm

Make sure you read this previous Guitar News Weekly Slide Guitar article:
http://www.guitarsite.com/newsletters/990906/10.shtml

And this GNW article reviews all the best slide & steel sites & artists:
http://www.GuitarSite.com/newsletters/990719/7.shtml

And finally...
Melobar Guitars Inc. http://www.melobar.com/

Melobar has been making custom Steel/Slide guitars for over 30 years with endorsements from David Lindley to Ron Woods to Jeff Peterson with Clint Black.