Re: Blues For Beginners?
Hmm... from what it seems, you're taking blues from WAAAAAAAAAAY too much of a classical, notated approach. Blues is what I started on, and that's why I had a lot of trouble applying theory to guitar (I get it b/c I'm a clarinet player, but guitar's a whole different story...).
When playing blues, it's not about notation. A LOT of the greatest blues players had no clue on how to read music, and even a lot of modern-day blues players still can't read music. It's a very different genre.
Learn your pentatonic blues scale (in terms of notation, root, minor 3rd, major 4th, diminished 5th, major 5th, flat 7th, octave; there's a lot of sites out there with tab to help you with that scale). Once you learn that scale, you just have to improvise; a LARGE portion of my soloing is based solely on this scale; no modes, no klesmyr scales, no jazz scales, no classical scales. It's amazing how far this scale will actually take you. I'm pretty sure this scale is the ONLY one Hendrix used for soloing.
A good place to start in terms of listening is: Jimi Hendrix (funny, but he does have a LOT of blues, especially his later stuff), Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Johnson (the master), Eric Clapton/Cream... you get the idea. These are just generic names, I'm not sure if you want to go REAL deep blues, if you can I've got a few artists.
PM me if there's something I haven't covered.