Grant Green, Kenny Burrell, George Benson, Wes Montgomery — these legendary guitarists made their claim to fame in the 1960s playing a soulful, groovy style that combined jazz, blues, gospel, and R&B.
The downscaled organ trio format combined with simple chord changes allowed for fervent, impassioned solos. This is why the encompassing style of jazz, blues, and boogaloos is as fun to play and is as popular today as it was decades ago. In his “Lead” edition of Jazz, Blues & Boogaloos, Sean McGowan takes you through this timeless era so you can jazz up your blues, and blues up your jazz.
Here are six free jazz, blues, and boogaloo video
Jazz Blues Guitar Lesson – Oatmeal: Overview
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Here’s another funk groove, in the classic style of the James Brown band. There are essentially two tonal centers, and this solo will give you ideas of what to play over static chords such as pentatonic and pentatonic substitution, chromatic side-stepping, and blues lines using a rapid-fire ostinato figure. We’ll also explore a few ideas to create “outside” lines using patterns in different intervallic combinations.
Jazz Blues Guitar Lesson – Oatmeal: Performance
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Follow along with my performance so you can get a feel for how it sounds all together.
Jazz Blues Guitar Lesson – Oatmeal: Breakdown
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Now, let’s explore some of the ideas you can use in a solo over a relatively static progression.
Jazz Blues Guitar Lesson – Bring It to a Texas Boil: Overview
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This song features a classic, “Texas” style blues shuffle. I’ve created some variation in the progression by adding two bars of 3/4 in the turnaround. For the solo, we’ll look at how to combine classic Texas blues language with contemporary jazz concepts such as dominant diminished, altered extensions, and triad pairs.
Jazz Blues Guitar Lesson – Bring It to a Texas Boil: Performance
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There are some tasty licks in here. See if you can follow along and feel that pocket rhythm for when we break this down.
Jazz Blues Guitar Lesson – Bring It to a Texas Boil: Breakdown
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All jazz, particularly bebop, is rooted in the blues. Since we’re playing in an organ trio format here, you can get away with playing some things that you might steer away from if you were playing in a larger ensemble.
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