Blues Mandolin Blog.....

[Chinn]

I started a blues mandolin blog. I did it for a few different reasons:
Want to keep track of great blues mandolin things I find
Want to share those things with others
I know I'll keep focused in learning if others are 'watching'.

FWIW, I grew up in the home of the blues, Memphis, TN and live here to this day. I work 10 mins from Beale St and Elvis Presley's home. I was lucky enough to learn both blues harmonica and blues bottleneck guitar from players who were part of the music in and earlier time. I won't say I learned well or got good at it, but I learned from good people and could definitely make some bluesy sounding noise!

When I started playing mandolin a year ago, I was surprised somewhat to learn what part the mandolin had played in the growth of the blues and jug bands.

I'm not by any stretch an expert or even any good. I do hope however to become a better player over time and share what gets me there.....

Check it out... I hope you enjoy it.

http://mandolinblues.blogspot.com/

[Danny]

Cool idea Jeremy. I'm an ol' Blues hound, multi instrumentalist myself. I've yet to join any of the blog world, but who knows, maybe I'll get involved. Later.

[Chinn]

Thanks Danny. Glad to know someone took a peek!

[bmac]

Glad you started this.... We'll see what happens... Like you my interest is in early blues. I use a 1934 Stradolin as my main instrument but also have a few others, banjo mandolins, a resonater, and a bunch of non-working bowlbacks. My most interesting historicly is my Harmony bat-wing (as in Yank Rachel) under restoration but almost finished. Most of my purchases have been instruments desperately needing repair, which I enjoy doing.

Bart

[bluesmandolinman]

so Bart that would be a perfect topic for Chinn´s blog like " how a blues mandolin came back to live "
doesn´t sound too bad does it ?

[bmac]

Not a bad idea... I have photographed the stages of rebuilding fairly well. It truly was junk when I got it, but it clearly had almost no wear on it. Someone must have sat on it within a few weeks of buying it new. The front was literally crushed (pushed in all the way to the back) and the back and sides had severe cracks as well. If I recall I repaired 13 cracks and replaced a few missing chunks of the front. I don't expect much from it tone-wise but what a neat looking instrument. I am working on the binding right now but after that all I have to do is try to restore the original body color as most of the paint is missing due to repairs. The only parts missing are the electronics and that doesn't bother me much because I have no sound system for it, but I may be able to find something cheap on ebay for appearance sake.

Bart

[Chinn]

Sounds like a really neat idea. Write something up and send some pics and I'll post it (full credit to you of course)