Blind Blake (Arthur Blake) was the itinerant guitarist whose roughly eighty sides for Paramount Records between 1926 and 1932 established finger-style ragtime guitar — a six-string answer to ragtime piano — as its own blues idiom, on tracks like ‘West Coast Blues’ and ‘Diddie Wa Diddie.’ Almost nothing is verified about his life outside the records themselves, but his intricate, syncopated picking shaped the Piedmont blues style that guitarists from Josh White to the Reverend Gary Davis carried forward.

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1926

West Coast BluesBlind Blake