Title: SLOAN

Style/Series: Longform - Hardcore Studies

Format: EPS (Extended Play Single)

Recording Date: 2015

Release Date: Various

Track Notes (Bandcamp):

LATE NIGHTS IN THE LAB:
These were experimental recordings. For generating ideas. Not for release. After rent increases abruptly ended the Lab, I decided some of the exploratory tracks were interesting enough to share. For full effect, TURN IT UP. Don't forget to turn it back down.

EPS NOTES:
SLOAN is an explorative longform track inspired by an obscure Delta blues musician named Henry Sloan.

All that is known about Henry Sloan is he was an itinerant field hand who was the first known Delta blues musician. He may have been the slide guitarist W. C. Handy heard on the Tutwiler railway station platform. And it was rumored that Sloan was one of Charley Patton's teachers. Although this wasn't particularly encouraged by Sloan himself. Robert Palmer, in his blues history book, "Deep Blues," said Patton "dogged his every step, at least for a few years."

This recording is not intended to project or fabricate what Sloan might have sounded like. He would not have sounded like my playing, because I have a technical background. I just wanted my own limited experience of what creating early Delta blues might have felt like.

Some say Patton copied Sloan. I doubt that. Charlie could only be Charlie. But he might have borrowed a cuo of Sloan's blues and never paid it back.

There are no recordings of Henry Sloan to verify any of this. He was probably too rough to interest early Delta blues recording labels like Paramount and ARC. Sloan wasn't an entertainer like Patton.
Sloan played for himself.

This track was spontaneously composed in one take.

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Instrument Tech:
Guitar: 1974 Martin D-18
Mods: Carbon fiber saddle, fat frets, ebony bridge pins
Tuning: C#G#C#F#G#C# (DADGAD a half-step down)

Player Tech:
Style: Bare-handed, no picks
Slide: Craftsman 11/16ths thick wall deep socket

Credits:
Spontaneously
composed by PwM
Audio production by PwM
(Mea culpa)
Mix Version: ML2 PL4 v190207
Acoustic Blues Lab Release: 6/8
Music © 2015 Paul Warren Miller
Art © 2021 Paul Warren Miller

The Hardcore Studies:
This project was intended to push further into hardcore blues than
common sense would advise.

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Note: Text and visual content are copyrighted.

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