Sam Bush - Sailin' Shoes, Crossroads

[Mark Gunter]

Well, I suppose this has been posted before, since the vid was uploaded to YT in 2010, but . . . I just found it, and really like this. Maybe there are some who haven't seen this yet. I was really diggin' on Sam's one-take performance of Sailin' Shoes, but when he lit into Robert Johnson's Crossroads, I was like, yeah . . .

[G7MOF]

Just, WOW!!!

[Fretbear]

Sambo!

[Jim Hudson]

Saweeeet!

[Ron McMillan]

Thanks for linking this. Superb.

[tree]

Sam is a national treasure.

Never heard him do Crossroads - one of my favorite Clapton songs, BTW - but I know he listened to Cream in his youth, and I think I remember him saying that Clapton is one of the folks he'd love to have a chance to pick with. If that ever came to be, I'd sure love to hear it!

[journeybear]

Yep! People who question whether mandolin works as a solo instrument should check out what Sam Bush can do with it. Also, people like Ry Cooder, Mike Compton, Yank Rachell ... the list goes on.

[AlanN]

O, that Right Hand...

FRETS Magazine laid out what he did on Sailin' Shoes (off the great Late As Usual, 1984) and basically, he floats a dom7 voicing on the D/A/E strings, with flourishes. On the recording, at some point Cowan comes in on elec. bass, and it's very powerful.

That whole record is terrific. Crooked Smile just burns. Jethro and Sam team up on Broadway (Dave Peters tabbed out Sam's take-off solo). The definitive modern version of Russian Rag (with Mike Marshall), some fiddle tunes, other stuff. Never tire of that one.

[journeybear]

He's also doing a lot of half-step slides. He does it differently from me. I do a Gb-G slide for the main body of the song. I think he's doing more of a Db7-D7 to G riff. He also does it a LOT faster than Little Feat - it's pretty revved up. I do it slower than they do it. I like it slow and slinky on this one.

[Mark Gunter]

First thing that caught my eye was the way he uses the muting with open G chord for that chunky sound with low open string notes, love it.