Language of the Blues - Edmonton Blues Society

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Blues players sometimes also call open E Major tuning (E B E G# B E) Vestapol.
Chicago blues guitarist Jody Williams learned how to tune his guitar to Vestapol in E
from Bo Diddley. As a child, Williams played harmonica in a group called The
amateur shows.
guitar and a washtub b
sound of a guitar. We got together backstage then and we played a little bit and I asked
him, if I got a guitar, would he teach me to play a little something on it. He said he would
and the next week I spied a guitar in a pawnshop for thirty-two dollars and fifty cents. So
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he taught me how to tune it to his tuning. It was E, open-
Williams never did learn to play guitar in standard tuning (E A D G B E). He taught
himself to play the blues by imitating players he admired, such as T-Bone Walker and
B.B. King, and created his own chord voicings. By the 1950s, Williams was a top session
we
were in Chess studio playing, and I was playing some B.B. King~style stuff. And this
me. Watching my hands, watching my fingers, you know. Watching my guitar work.
off B.B. King, playing B.B. King style. So I get up, and I move my chair to where he
y stuff. I am
t on like this for a few more songs with him sitting there trying to watch me. Then
Leonard Chess said we gonna take a break and play the songs back that we had recorded.
So I put my guitar down and go over to the piano and start talking to Otis Spann. Wolf
the guitar
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