On the Nature of Things | Forum

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hey Mr.P,

how familiar are you with 19th century parlor guitar music?

If we are talking about blues based guitar-- this is maybe where it starts.

The parlor guitar stuff somehow reached the deep south where it's open G/D tunings and song structures are all over the Delta Blues.

The early bluesmen apparently called D tuning "Vetapol" tuning. Which would be nonsense until you link with the popular 1855 Liverpool penned "Sebastopol" for parlor guitar in honor of the Crimean War.

Same thing with G, or "Spanish tuning"-- the Spanish Fandango...same Liverpool author, by the by.

Here's John Hurt playing it in 1963 (as far as I can find) roughly a century after it's initial popularity:

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And here's Mike Seeger's Smithsonian Recording of Early Southern Guitar Styles

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Who knows about the accuracy but this is probably close to what Hurt would've heard as a boy in the 1890s.

Here's a re-enactment of a 1890s parlor concert with the Siege of Sebastopol:

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I'm not familiar at all. Looking forward to digging in.

You can see the bros cave in this video.

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NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:Here's a re-enactment of a 1890s parlor concert with the Siege of Sebastopol:

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This is quite incredible. A+.

From Stefan Grossman's "Book on Guitar Tunings"

Total joy.

This is the best guitar thread I've ever been in.

I was quite ignorant of all the parlor guitar side of things - I knew blues had grown around "various folk traditions" from europe and africa but never looked into the specific ones.

My understanding was that Robert Johnson blues came from the negro spirituals, but that doesn't explain his guitar arrangements. The parlor guitar sure does. That is a miracle. That guitar would explode if properly miced up.

Here is a sample of a handwritten copy of Sebastopol from Worrall himself:



I have somewhere around here Sebastopol from a late 19th century manuscript- if I find it, I'll post it 'cause I'm curious to compare it to the above as well as the 'Vestapol' Nonc posted.

Worrall is ground zero for American guitar music of the 20th century.

There are other pieces besides Spanish Fandango and Sebastopol that point to pre-blues...but also pre-country, bluegrass/cowboy western stuff and you can definitely hear that Celtic sound, too.

Magical.

Worrall was born in Liverpool and his family moved to New York City when he was around 10 years old and then Ohio sometime after that.

He taught guitar at a Women's College in Ohio for a period of time; then he and his wife moved to Topeka, Kansas around 1868 where he continued to teach privately. Worrall is probably more famous for being an illustrator [among other things-- this guy did a lot in his life].

That is probably the inflection point into the south. What made it really take off in popularity is that the Peters Bros. of Cincinnati and Ditson in Boston published his sheet music, as they were two of the biggest music publishing houses in America.

It also helped that Worrall was also an organist, and extensively documented his pieces as well as writing in clean notation. My limited understandinf is that this was unusual for "guitarists" at the time and sort of made him the only game in town. According to the Kansas Historical Society, almost immediately after his death (around 1900) the guitar "lapsed again into being thought of as solely a folk instrument".

Now, Parlor Guitar was an upperclass/upper-middle class hobby; one thought genteel enough for women.

It peaked among high-society and middle class women in the 1890s.

Or, another way of looking at it, it would've peaked around the time all these very early blues (and country) musicians born in the South were children, and would have probably heard or been aware of it as part of the cultural atmosphere.

Take the arrangements of tunings and apply it to Negro spirituals and the already developing folkways, and I think we have a key source in tracing the formation of blues based guitar.

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:Worrall is ground zero for American guitar music of the 20th century.

There are other pieces besides Spanish Fandango and Sebastopol that point to pre-blues...but also pre-country, bluegrass/cowboy western stuff and you can definitely hear that Celtic sound, too.

Alan Lomax traced cowboy songs back to the Cajuns and French folksong roots. I'm not sure the sound you are hearing is Celtic.

The early western musical frontier was Montreal moving south and Acadia moving north along the river towards Missouri.

Nonc Hilaire wrote:I'm not sure the sound you are hearing is Celtic.

In the parlor guitar pieces? I definitely hear it in some of these songs, with 6/8& 9/8 passages- they're practically jigging.

nifty. will have to have a dig through it all.

Colonel Sun wrote:Open Culture | Alan Lomax’s Massive Music Archive Is Online: Features 17,000 Historic Blues & Folk Recordings

Wow.

I have to throw in this gem. It's an authorized live version but man it shows he was tapped into something not of this earth. Dropped down a whole step.

I also think this was the authentic 68-69' Marshall Plexi sound. It roars.

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the list of plexi guitarists is quite notable for being some of the best guitar tones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_1959

John Frusciante
Angus Young[15]
Eddie Van Halen[16]
Billie Joe Armstrong
Jason White
Jimi Hendrix
Graham Coxon
Jimmy Page
Johnny Ramone
Pete Townshend
Ace Frehley
Billy Gibbons
J Mascis
Matt Bellamy
Randy Rhoads
Yngwie Malmsteen
George Lynch
Uli Jon Roth
Richie Kotzen
Slash
Richie Blackmore

(some outright wallies on that list aswell)

neck pickup strat or bridge pickup humbucker with the treble rolled back to make it a mid range monster , run through an overloaded plexi is rock guitar heaven.

the thing I really like bout most of them, from that 70's era , is the ultra dry sound (hendrix excepted) in which you can hear every finger movement, every bit of fret noise and pick attack, the modern guitar thing which starts with compressors and slapback as defaults really sucks alot of the raw vitality from the sound.