Country-blues Heroine Comin’ Round the Block

Rory Block got her first exposure to acoustic guitar as a pre-teen in Greenwich Village in the 1960s, fell in love with Mississippi Delta blues guitar before she turned 15, taught herself how to play the style by transcribing songs on old records, and then left home to find the masters in person. She released her first album in 1967 at age 17, took eight years off to start a family and then returned to both the studio and the road in the mid-1970s. 

Block has released almost 40 albums under her own name since then, including the John Sebastian-produced High Heeled Blues during the period when she was a peripheral part of the legendary Woodstock Mountain Revue, and When a Woman Gets the Blues, her first of three records to be named Acoustic Blues Album of the Year. She’s also earned four additional Blues Music Awards, including “Acoustic Artist of the Year” as recently as 2019; well-deserved recognition of her prowess in both interpreting country blues classics and performing her own songs.

Now 75, Block doesn’t get out to the West Coast very often, and even then usually only the major cities. But after years of trying, the Santa Barbara Blues Society has landed the much-heralded singer-songwriter-guitarist for her first local gig in almost two decades, a special solo performance set for Sunday, September 7, at the Unitarian Society (1535 Santa Barbara St.) a night after the acoustic blues master performs at L.A.’s famed McCabe’s Guitar Shop.