GW 1007
Country Blues Musicianship — Disc One Introduction.
The idea behind this lesson is to build your knowledge of the musical language of the blues so that you’re better equipped to pick up new songs, participate in jam sessions, and in general, feel confident in most instances that you know where a song is going to go next, especially after having listened to it one time through its form. Let’s get started!
I, IV and V — Finding them on the neck.
The lesson goes over the spatial relationships you can use to figure out where the IV and V chords would be rooted given a particular location on the neck for the root of the I chord in standard tuning. Complete the following exercise to test your ability at figuring out where the IV and V chords would be rooted in the following instances. For the purposes of the exercise, let’s assume that you are rooting the IV and V chords on a string immediately adjacent to the string on which the I chord is rooted. 1) The I chord is rooted at the sixth fret of the sixth string. The IV chord would be rooted at the ________ fret of the ________ string and the V chord would be rooted at the ________ fret of the ________ string. 2) The I chord is rooted at the fourth fret of the fifth string. Going down in pitch, the IV chord would be rooted at the ________ fret of the ________ string and the V chord would be rooted at the ________ fret of the ________ string. Going up in pitch, the IV chord would be rooted at the ________ fret of the ________ string and the V chord would be rooted at the ________ fret of the ________ string.
12-Bar Blues.
Not all 12-bar blues that you’ll encounter in the Country Blues conform to either an AAB or Chorus Blues phrasing model, as the lesson notes. Sometimes the lyrics will not fit either of those phrasing schemes, and sometimes the chords will be varied in some way. An additional possibility for variety is inclusion of measures in the form that are not four beats long, so that the meter is not consistent. One way in which the chords to a 12-bar progression are sometimes varied involves both of the first two four-bar phrases beginning with two bars of the IV chord. Some examples of 12-bar blues that utilize such a progression would be Mississippi John Hurt’s “Monday Morning Blues”, Mance Lipscomb’s “Rocks And Gravel Make A Solid Road”, and “Going Down Slow”, as performed by Mance Lipscomb and a host of other musicians. I teach “Monday Morning Blues” on the Mississippi John Hurt, Vol. 1 lesson put out by Stefan Grossman’s Guitar Workshop, and I teach “Rocks And Gravel Makes A Solid Road” on my “Texas Blues” lesson. 2
Examples of 12-bar blues in which the lyrics don’t conform to either an AAB or Chorus Blues phrasing would include Luke Jordan’s “Church Bell Blues” and Sleepy John Estes’ “Black Gal”. It is a good musical survival skill to be able to recognize and identify when a song “breaks meter”, and has a measure or measures of lengths other than four beats. Sometimes a phrase is shortened (“goes short”) and sometimes a phrase can be lengthened (“goes long”). John Hurt’s “Monday Morning Blues” goes long in its final four-bar phrase by having two measures each of six beats followed by two measures of four beats. Quite often, these places where the meter changes for one or two measures may be something you never noticed in listening to the song, but first picked up on when learning to play the song. If you figure out how it is that the song “goes short” or “goes long”, it is a good thing to be able to explain if you’d like to be able to play the song with other musicians in a jam. Sometimes songs with irregular phrasing are referred to as “jam-busters”, but they need not be if the person who would like to play the song can communicate how the irregular passage works and where it falls. Really, the 12-bar blues format is so strong and durable that it can (and has) accommodated a host of variations. If you listen to this music a lot, I’d venture to say you’ll encounter subtle changes to either the chord structure or the phrasing of the lyrics in many of the songs you hear. The 12-bar AAB and Chorus Blues archetypes do end up providing the foundation for most of the 12-bar blues you’ll encounter, though.
Applied musicianship skills re the 12-bar blues — a brief quiz.
1. Whether you’re playing an AAB or Chorus Blues, in both instances you’ll go to a ________ chord in the fifth bar of the form. 2. You’re playing a standard 12-bar AAB blues in the key of D. In the ninth bar, to begin the third vocal phrase, you can expect to go to an ________ chord.
8-bar blues.
A good way to internalize these forms is to classify songs according to their structure as you listen to them. I think that you’ll find that 8-bar blues of the “Key To The Highway” archetype sound much more different from those of the “How Long, How Long Blues” archetype than simply looking at the similarity of their chord structures would lead you to believe. They really sound quite different, and it’s mostly a function of how differently the vocal is phrased in the two archetypes. I should note perhaps that I’m making an assumption here, which is that you listen to this music. It may or may not seem obvious, but listening to the music is the beginning of internalizing its sounds and structures and being able to play it. If you don’t have the sounds in your head, they’re not going to come out of your fingers. Knowing the sounds of the idiom and having models to shoot for are the foundations for learning to play the music. 3
16-bar blues.
See if you can think of some more 16-bar blues. Incidentally, a very good resource for information of this sort is the Country Blues website, www.weeniecampbell.com, where there are threads on 8-bar blues, Rag blues, and a host of other related information, in addition to having 24-hour streaming Country Blues internet radio on the Weenie Juke.
18-bar rag blues.
Blues of this progression really became popular in the ’30s, and Blind Boy Fuller recorded numerous songs with this form. More recently, Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” used this same progression.
The examples by Blues Greats: * Bill Broonzy — “How Do You Want Your Rolling Done?”
One of the interesting things you may notice when listening to Bill Bronzy’s performance here is that if you just read his lyrics as he sang them, you would say, “Okay, that’s a 12-bar blues with AAB phrasing in the lyrics.”, which would be true as far as it goes. If you count along with Big Bill as he plays it, though, what you’ll find is that he lengthens some of his phrases. For instance, in the first first verse, when he sings, “Why don’t you tell m e, pretty mama, how you want your rolling done” he holds the word “want” extra long before completing the phrase. As a result, he ends up with some long measures of more than four beats. Because Big Bill is playing solo here, he can employ this kind of phrasing in the moment, and play with it a bit, without the possible consequence of his losing his band, which might happen if he tried the same sort of thing while playing with an ensemble. If you figure out this song yourself, you can make the choice of whether you’d like to “go long” like Big Bill did on those phrases or straighten them out. * Brownie McGhee — “Kansas City Blues”
Brownie McGhee plays a lot of terrific variations over the course of his rendition of “Kansas City Blues”. The way he plays the chords behind his final four-bar phrase is especially nice: | B7 | A/C≥ B7 | E | E | The A chord with the C ≥ in the bass is the one that is fingered like so: X-4-2-2-2-X. Note that in the solo that Brownie takes towards the end of his rendition, at one point, he just hangs out for a while, playing a lick that he likes in E over and over, until he’s satisfied he’s played it enough, at which point he returns to the form and goes on from there. You have to be confident of your ability to re-connect with the form and return to it seamlessly to vary things in such a way, but it’s a very exciting effect if you can pull it off. 4
* John Jackson — “Diddie Wa Diddie”
Notice how John Jackson plays his second four-bar phrase, where the chorus of “Diddie Wa Diddie” starts. He phrases it like so: | F | F |F C| C | So, instead of playing two bars of the IV chord, F, and two of the I chord, C, he plays two and a half bars of F and one and a half bars of C. He phrases more freely in his solos, too, as did Brownie McGhee. * Pink Anderson—”Crow Jane”
Pink Anderson also shows a lot of variety in his instrumental version of “Crow Jane”. He starts out working in an 8-bar “Key To The Highway” format, but at various points along the way switches to the “How Long, How Long Blues” progression with a I7 chord rather than a V7 chord in the second bar of his form, and later to a 12-bar progression for one of his solos. He also injects a really exotic sound in his concluding four-bar phrase by playing the following: | E | C B7 | E | E | The C chord is kind of a shocker, in a good way, and really gives the song a different color. * John Jackson — “Key To The Highway”
John Jackson’s version here is notable for the way he customized the phrase lengths to suit his own sense of timing. He adds two extra beats for a little ascending run at the end of the first measure before going to the V chord, and usually adds a couple of beats to the end of the form before beginning the next verse; such beats are sometimes referred to as breath-catchers. If you should ever be fortunate enough to jam with an elder tradition-bearer of the style, it is best not to make assumptions about where and when chords are going to change. Listen, listen, listen, and let the person leading the song lead it as he or she sees fit. * Dave Van Ronk — “Come Back, Baby”
Dave Van Ronk’s arrangement of Walter Davis‘ song “Come Back, Baby” makes some really pretty substitutions to the “How Long, How Long Blues” 8-bar archetype as it is most often played. Playing in the key of A, Dave starts with a double stop that suggest a G chord, resolving it upward to an A chord in the first bar. In the second bar, he does an answering A double stop up high, resolving it downward into what sounds like a G chord, but which is actually a very pianistic-sounding A9 sus chord. In the third bar he goes to a IV7 chord, D7, as you would expect, but in the fourth bar, he pulls a switcheroo by playing an F chord, which in this context sounds and functions a lot like a D minor chord. The tail end of his form is much closer to the archetype as it is usually done. This arrangement, of which I believe Dave Van Ronk was justifiably proud, shows how just a couple of well-heard modifications to one of these forms can lend a very fresh sound to a rendition.
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* Elizabeth Cotten — “Vestapol”
Libba’s first pass through the form, where she starts up the neck, follows the most common 16-bar phrasing. She shortens the form to 12 bars for the pass that follows that one, starting on her IV chord, but returns to the 16-bar form for the next two times through the form before returning to the 12-bar form to conclude her rendition. * Pink Anderson — “Ain’t Nobody Home But Me”
In his rendition, Pink goes to an A ≤ chord in the 12th bar (a ≤VI chord), a pretty common substitution for the I diminished 7 chord that is most often encountered in that place in the form of an 18-bar ragtime blues. That bar of the progression is the place in the form that is most often subject to variation and different chord choices by different players. * John Jackson — “Chesterfield”
Especially behind his singing, John Jackson sticks very close to the 18-bar ragtime blues form as it was outlined in the lesson.
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Quiz Answers: I, IV and V—Finding them on the neck. 1.
The I chord is rooted at the sixth fret of the sixth string. The IV chord would be rooted at the sixth fret of the fifth string and the V chord would be rooted at the eighth fret of the fifth string.
2.
The I chord is rooted at the fourth fret of the fifth string. Going down in pitch, the IV chord would be rooted at the second fret of the sixth string and the V chord would be rooted at the fourth fret of the sixth string. Going up in pitch, the IV chord would be rooted at the fourth fret of the fourth string and the V chord would be rooted at the sixth fret of the fourth string.
Applied musicianship skills re the 12-bar blues—a brief quiz. 1.
Whether you’re playing an AAB or Chorus Blues, in both instances you’ll go to a IV chord in the fifth bar of the form.
2.
You’re playing a standard 12-bar AAB blues in the key of D. In the ninth bar, to begin the third vocal phrase, you can expect to go to an A or A7 chord.
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