Is this one of the best or worst repertoire books for learning to play acoustic fingerstyle blues guitar?

You can learn to play music using a variety of resources including teachers, online resources, and books.

Steve James’ Fingerstyle Blues Songbook is a repertoire book drawing from various substyles of fingerstyle blues (general old time country blues, Delta blues, ragtime blues, Texas blues, and bottleneck blues).  Most of the tunes are suitable for late-beginner and intermediate fingerstyle players, although advanced players will certainly enjoy the tunes as well.  The music in this book may sound “old-timey” (much of it comes from the 1920s and 30s), but it is really fun to play if you are interested in the style.

This book is comparable to Stefan Grossman’s Complete Country Blues Guitar Book (Review #9).  Both are great resources.

Fingerstyle Blues Songbook includes solo fingerstyle guitar arrangements of 15 tunes.  Each arrangement features a single chorus of a 12 or 16 bar blues (often with a repeat and a 2nd ending).  No page turns are ever needed!  Each arrangement is presented as a lead sheet with both the vocal melody (in standard notation) and the solo guitar arrangement (in both standard notation and tablature).  Each tune includes a couple paragraphs of background information including notable recordings and some fingering suggestions.

Most of the tunes provide you with a single progression of the tune – even with the repeat, none of these will last a full minute as written.  In a real performance you would probably want to repeat the form multiple times with singing, variations, or improvisation.  My only complaint about the book is that it would have been helpful if the author had explained this a bit more.  However, if you listen to fingerstyle blues recordings, then you will hear many arrangement ideas.

As mentioned, the book provides both treble clef and tablature for each arrangement.  Tiny chord charts are written above the music with fretting hand fingering, but these do not provide fingering for any of the melody lines.  Additionally, no picking hand fingering is included (although you can tell which notes should be played by the picking hand thumb by looking at the treble clef). 

The book starts with a couple easier arrangements, but otherwise doesn’t progress from easiest to hardest.  Beginners might find the spiritual Oh, Mary Don’t You Weep on page 32 to be one of the easiest arrangements in the book.

The majority of the tunes use standard tuning.  However, alternate tunings are used for the four tunes that utilize a slide.

This is a repertoire book full of song arrangements.  This is not a method book that teaches you the fundamentals of how to play fingerstyle blues guitar.  However, if you have some fingerstyle experience, then this book will provide you with a bunch of fun tunes.  This is also a great supplement to a method book.

Recordings are available on an included CD (which unfortunately didn’t come with my used book).  These would likely be very helpful to many readers.

The book doesn’t use the modern percussive techniques used by modern players like Michael Hedges, Don Ross, Andy McKee, Mike Dawes, etc.  No thumb slaps, guitar body percussion, or tapping.

For authenticity, I recommend using an acoustic steel string guitar rather than a classical guitar.  You will need a slide for several tunes.

Published by String Letter Publishing (Acoustic Guitar Magazine).  © 2005

Distributed by Hal Leonard.

My own books:

Fingerstyle Blues Guitar: An In-Depth Study of the 12-Bar Blues in E Major – Books 1 and 2 are available in paperback or as an eBook through Amazon at https://a.co/d/g7Udsso.  The first priority of this book is to quickly get you playing a solo instrumental 12-bar blues, and then to build on it until you can freely improvise or “jam.” You should be up and running by the end of the third chapter, and each following chapter will add icing on the cake.

Arranging for Fingerstyle Guitar: go to http://joemcmurray.com/checkout/ to purchase a pdf of my eBook.  Learning to arrange melodies will also help your fingerstyle songwriting and your understanding of the inner workings of fingerstyle guitar.

My upcoming book, Arranging for Fingerstyle Ukulele, will be published by Mel Bay in 2026.

My music is available on all streaming platforms at https://open.spotify.com/artist/5dcokTG6C598OhTslHH5uo?si=hrQb7FViSZewDRSgECw9Ew:

Pins on the Map: my third fingerstyle guitar album was released on January 19, 2024. Watch the first single, “Open Road,” on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/uPBh8sZQsT4?si=EM_wAwnHFqU1VC9C.

Riding the Wave and Acoustic Oasis: my first two fingerstyle guitar albums.