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admin — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 17:50:12 +0000

In 1990 I took part in 12 Blues Sessions at the "Berliner Institut für Gitarren" in Berlin-Kreuberg 61, Oranienstraße 161. Lecturer was a guy by the name of Nick Katzman, a guitarist from New York (nickname "New York Nick").
I'm still in posession of the BIG-Flyer and it provides the following information:

„In zwölf Sessions behandelt Nick Katzman alle wesentlichen Stilistiken der Blues-Gitarre. Nick hat in den Staaten mehrere Blues-LPs veröffentlicht und u.a. mit Guitar Crusher, Champion Jack Dupree und Louisiana Red zusammengespielt."

Most remarkable for me at the time was the way this guy operated. With a guitar in hand, a tape-recorder on the table and a piece of paper and a pencil lying in front of him, it took him approximately 10 minutes to nail down the whole song coming out of the tape-machine and put it on paper in form of tablature.
Maybe he knew all them Blues-Cliches there are by heart, knew all the different open tunings and stuff, I don't know. I couldn't even tell the key of a song, to be honest. Anyway, when he had finished, he put the thus received concoction on a copier and handed a copy to each of us students, as homework.
Most of these tabs I lost or threw away over the past 30 years, but one little gem (by Willie Brown) I kept, cause it's simply a great tune, though hard to learn (since it features a rather tricky alternate bass).
Here's Nick's scanned original work from 1990:

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