Oh! Susanna

I picked up guitar slides a few months ago. I really enjoy the sound of Delta Blues and slide guitar. I listen to Bukka White - one of the giants of Delta Blues - pretty much every day. I wanted to see if I could teach myself a few things. At least enough to sound like I might know what I’m doing.

Making a slide sound okay is definitely not easy. If you are using a standard slide (whether glass, steel, brass, or ceramic) then you have to pick a finger to use for the slide. That finger becomes unavailable for regular chording. It messes you up and its something you have to get past. You need to find a new way of playing an instrument you may have played for a while.

One innovation in slide guitar is the slide ring. This is a slide that is like a larger ring. It fits inbetween the knuckles of your middle finger but doesn’t impede using that finger for regular chords. It does take a while to get used to the feeling of it though. I bought a slide ring from Black Mountain Picks. They sell slide rings, regular sized slides and innovative thumb picks that have a spring. This makes the thumb pick fit well and stay in place. It also reduces the wear on the pick since the spring absorbs some of the shock.

There are some great modern slide players. One of my favorites is Joey Landreth. I listened to him on a podcast (I can’t recall off-hand what podcast it was) and he talked about learning slide. He said one of the best things to do when you are starting out is to take simple songs and practice them using the slide. “Amazing Grace” is a good one. Its a straightforward and fairly slow song and it sounds wonderful with a slide in open-D tuning.

In open-D tuning you change your strings by taking the low E and tuning it to D. The next two strings stay the same. The G string is tuned down a 1/2 step to F#. The B string is tuned down to A. The high E is tuned to D.

E -> D
A -> A
D -> D
G -> F#
B -> A
E -> D

Open-G tuning means changes your tuning to take the low E to D, the A to G, and then the next three strings (D, G, B) remain the same. The high E is tuned to D.

E -> D
A -> G
D -> D
G -> G
B -> A
E -> D

Open tunings work really well with slide and both these tunings are ones I use. Another simple song I use to practice slide is “Oh! Susanna”. This is a Stephen Foster song from 1848. It’s among the most popular American songs ever written. Its mostly major pentatonic. Its a simple song where the key is easily changed. Pete Seeger did a banjo version in what amounts to Open-G on a guitar.

Here’s some slide practice in Open-G where I ended up with some inspiration from Oh! Susanna.

Oh, I come from Alabama
With my banjo on my knee
I'm going to Louisiana
My true love for to see
It rained all night the day I left
The weather it was dry
The sun so hot, I froze to death
Susanna, don't you cry

Oh, Susanna
Don't you cry for me
For I come from Alabam
With my banjo on my knee
Oh, Susanna
Don't you cry for me
For I come from Alabama
With my banjo on my knee

Later in that same practice I retuned to Open-D (on my Mavis Mule) and recorded this (which is pretty far from Oh! Susanna but I named it that anyway since it came out of the same practice session):