Bar Room Blues

Bar Room Blues: “Hoochie Coochie Man”

Bar Room Blues is an exclusive series of video guitar lessons by Steve “Red” Lasner covering classic blues songs from historically great guitarists like B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, Buddy Guy, and many others. A new lesson will be released each week, so be sure to subscribe and check back often! Also, if you want more guitar lessons like these, be sure to check out Red’s Guitar Sherpa class.

“Hoochie Coochie Man” (sometimes referred to as “(I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man”) is a blues standard written by Willie Dixon and first performed by Muddy Waters in 1954. The song was a major hit upon its release, reaching #8 on Billboard magazine’s Black Singles chart. The intro and verse to Muddy Water’s version feature stop-time while the chorus features a refrain. According to an account by Dave Van Ronk, Muddy Waters stated that the song is supposed to have a comic effect.

The song was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1984. The song was given a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998. The song is a part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll list. The song was featured on the Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, where it was voted number 225 by representatives of the music industry and press.

The Hoochie Coochie was a sexually provocative dance that became wildly popular during and after the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Since the dance was performed by women, a “Hoochie Coochie Man” either watched them or ran the show. Alternatively, from the directly sexual meaning of hoochie coochie, he greatly enjoyed sexual intercourse.

In this video guitar lesson, I show you how to play this classic song on guitar in your own style. Check it out:

Video Guitar Lesson

Jam Track

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50 Jazz Blues Licks

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April 16th 2012

50 Jazz Blues Licks: #33 Sonny Clark

50 Jazz Blues Licks is an exclusive series of video guitar lessons by David Hamburger covering the jazz blues styles of historically great guitarists like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Joe Pass, and many others. A new lick will be released each week, so be sure to subscribe and check back often!

Sonny Clark made only a handful of records as a leader before his untimely demise in 1963 at the age of 31. During his time in New York he was in regular rotation at Blue Note, and consequently recorded with the cream of the hard bop artists associated with the label, including saxophonists Lou Donaldson, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Jackie McLean, Hank Mobley, Ike Quebec and Stanley Turrentine, trumpeters Lee Morgan, Art Farmer and Donald Byrd, and guitarist Grant Green. Like Wynton Kelly, another Blue Note pianist popular with his peers for his accompaniment skills, Clark worked with vocalist Dinah Washington in the 1950s, in part as a way to get himself from California, where he was working with musicians like Buddy DeFranco and Howard Rumsey, back to East Coast, explaining to critic Leonard Feather in the late 1950s, “I wanted to see the east again…the fellows out on the west coast have a different sort of feeling, a different approach to jazz. They swing in their own way. But…the eastern musicians play with so much fire and passion.” Clark’s quintet records like “Dial S For Sonny,” Leapin’ and Lopin’” and “Cool Struttin’” certainly exemplify that “Eastern” aesthetic, epitomizing everything there is to dig about the classic late-50s/early 60s hard bop approach.

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If you like these guitar lessons, be sure to also check out Frank Vignola’s Jazz Up Your Blues, which showcases essential jazz blues vocabulary and techniques, Mark Stefani’s Jazzed Blues Assembly Lines, which takes you on a sonic learning tour through the funky rhythm and blues stylings and fretboard concepts of top jazz blues players, and of course all of David Hamburger’s courses.

Comment on this post | Tags: 50 jazz blues, 50 jazz blues licks, david hamburger, guitar lesson, jazz blues, licks, sonny clark

Bar Room Blues

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April 11th 2012

Bar Room Blues: “Little Wing”

“Little Wing” is a song written by Jimi Hendrix. It was first recorded by The Jimi Hendrix Experience on their 1967 album Axis: Bold as Love. It is ranked #366 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.

Hendrix spoke to a Swedish journalist about the song in January 1968, saying “Well, that was one song on there we did a lot of sound on, you know. We put the guitar through the Leslie speaker of an organ, and it sounds like jelly bread, you know.Its based on a very, very simple American Indian style, you know, very simple. I got the idea like, when we was in Monterey, and I just happened tojust looking at everything around. So I figured that I take everything I see around and put it maybe in the form of a girl maybe, something like that, you know, and call it ‘Little Wing’, in other words, just fly away. Everybody really flying and theys really in a nice mood, like the police and everybody was really great out there. So I just took all these things an put them in one very, very small little matchbox, you know, into a girl and then do it. It was very simple, you know. Thats one of the very few ones I like.”

When asked by a London reporter in 1967 what his favorite track off the Axis: Bold as Love album was, Hendrix listed “Little Wing” and “You Got Me Floating” as his favorites.Author Rotimi Ogunjobi states that “‘Little Wing’ is the name of Hendrix’s guardian angel (like ‘Waterfall’, that is mentioned in the song ‘May this Be Love’ on the debut album).”

Little Wing can be a really fun song to play! There are a bunch of cool options for both rhythm and lead and the slow tempo gives you plenty of room to “spread your wings” and really be creative! In this video guitar lesson, I show you how to play this classic song on guitar in your own style. Check it out:

Video Guitar Lesson

Jam Track

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Comment on this post | Tags: bar room blues, guitar lesson, little wing, Red Lasner

50 Jazz Blues Licks

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April 9th 2012

50 Jazz Blues Licks: #32 Wes Montgomery

I had the great fortune to take a handful of lessons with Emily Remler when I first moved to New York, and while I’d been listening to Wes Montgomery for a couple of years at that point, the way she broke down and explained some of Wes’ key approaches to the changes was consistently revelatory. While both ends of her excitement were highly hyperbolic, I do have fond memories of Emily’s reaction at my second lesson to the way I played some of the excercises she’d given me a couple of weeks earlier: “Yeah! Yeah! Last week you sounded like B.B. and now you sound like Wes!” As I say, I clearly sounded about as much like Montgomery at that moment as I’d sounded like the king of the blues a fortnight ago, but if nothing else it actually spoke volumes to her own ability to break down and explain some of the most significant aspects of how Wes did his thing. For my money Wes is still the guy to go to for some of the most consistently hip, swinging and thoroughly well-organized blowing by a guitarist or anyone else. For whatever reason, he didn’t lay back into the standard blues vocabulary to the extent of a Kenny Burrell or Grant Green, and yet his playing feels every bit as deep and swings ridiculously hard with inventive ideas from one end to the other.

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Bar Room Blues

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March 27th 2012

Bar Room Blues: “Tin Pan Alley”

Turns out this song has an interesting history! Most folks know this song from Stevie Ray Vaughn’s 1983 version titled “Tin Pan Alley (aka Roughest Place In Town).” Surprisingly this song also traces it’s roots back to the 30′s. The first song with the title “Tin Pan Alley” was cut by pianist Curtis Jones for Okeh in 1941. Lyrically this is a different song but the melody is similar. This song is a close kin to “Bad Avenue Blues” which was cut by Jones in 1937 for Bluebird. The song may have been based on an earlier song about a rough neighborhood by pianist Walter Roland as “45 Pistol Blues” for ARC in 1935. The song we know today stems from Jimmy Wilson’s doom laden “Tin Pan Alley” cut for Big Town in 1953 and credited as being written by record man Bob Geddins who operated a number of small West Coast labels. Other notable versions were cut by Johnny Fuller as “Roughest Place In Town” (1956), James Reed’s “Roughest Place In Town” and Ray Agee’s “Tin Pan Alley” for the Sahara label (1963). My personal favorite versions are Little Milton’s version and Stevie Ray Vaughn’s version. Some versions are in major keys while others are in minor keys, the SRV version is in a minor key and my version is in a minor key as well.

In this video guitar lesson, I show you how to play this classic song on guitar in your own style. Check it out:

Video Guitar Lesson

Jam Track

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.