Back in the early 40's, blues and jazz were pretty much synonymous. The big bands were exciting audiences with their new stomping jump blues performances, which Billboard recommended for "hepsters who go for swing and boogie, and beats in a loud, hot unrelenting style." Jump Blues combined the popular boogie-woogie rhythms of the day with gritty swing solos and "playful lyrics laced with jive talk." More than seven decades later, Jump Blues still pulls listeners out of their seats and onto the dance floor with its boogie-woogie grooves and heavy, insistent beats.
Matt Brandt's 50 Jump Blues Licks You MUST Know covers the stylings of all of the major jump blues guitar players, from originators like Charlie Christian, T-Bone Walker, Clarence Gatemouth Brown and Freddie King to modern players like Duke Robillard, Ronnie Earl, Hollywood Fats, Rick Holmstrom and Brian Setzer. Even more poppy or rocky oriented bands and players like The Black Keys and Joe Bonamassa use jump blues elements in their guitar solos and backup parts.
"I find this course one of the best 50 licks courses I own. Why? Because it makes you a better and more awaresome player, because it focuses on basic principles and then embellish these in many different ways. I have played the blues for many years, and have and ongoing quest to move away from any pattern and play more melodic and interesting. I find this course is good for this purpose. I find a lot of inspiration and insight here, that can be applied in many blues concepts." Torben L., TrueFire Student
Throughout these 50 Jump Blues licks, Matt Brandt helps players develop two simple tools that every blues guitar player should have solid command of and which he refers to as the Standard Riff and Inner Logic. Matt will teach you how to identify the target tones of any underlying chord progression to enhance the harmonic structure of your solos. Spice your blues licks up with these tools and you'll open up the fretboard to the even more uptown sounds that emerged in the Big Bands of the late forties and early fifties. And because Rockabilly, Rock and Roll, Swing, Jump Blues and Jazz are all dialects of the same musical language, you can use this collection of licks across all of those styles.
50 Jump Blues Licks You MUST Know is the cream of the crop of the library of jump blues solos Matt Brandt has collected over a period of 25 years; analyzing albums, bootlegging concerts and studying with some of the giants of Jump Blues. Be sure to play them with a smile.
"Matthieu Brandt’s 50 Jump Blues Licks is exactly what you need if you want to get that cool jazzy West-Coast blues sound, without wasting time anywhere else or going after it piece-meal. Everything you need to become a real-life player of this special genre is right here: what scale to use; the chops you use; how to apply the chops in various areas of the guitar neck (in fact, linking them end-to-end covers all the useable notes of a wide expanse of the neck vertically, and fills it up horizontally); and whatever theory you might need. In addition extra applications are provided for extending the basic forms and special situations. He gives you some good turn-arounds, too. You will be a playing expert in no time at all with Matthieu’s masterful course. He has a dry wit and is seriously funny too, on a couple of occasions." John S., TrueFire Student
