Triple-o

I read where Scotty Moore was the inventor of power chords for the song “jailhouse Rock”. When I tried to verify that I discovered it wasn’t true. Jailhouse rock may have made them popular but, the credit for there first recorded use in written music goes back a little further to classical guitar player Heitor Villa lobos. He also wasn’t the inventor, but his two note fingering for power chords is the one most used today. William Johnson ( How many more Years) and Pat Hare (Cotton Crop Blues) probably were the first to use them in rock and Roll music before Scotty. On a side note; Scotty left Elvis because because as Elvis started making more money Scotty was on a fixed salary and he wasn’t happy with that financial arrangement. Elvis was making “MILLIONS” Winfield S Moore was making $200 a week.

Do you find the lyrics in “Money for Nothing” a little weird ? Are the verses in the song the result of a band “breasting the waves” of song writing or responding to a bet they couldn’t use microwave ovens, refrigerators and MTV in a song? Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Mark was in an appliance store and in the vicinity of a delivery man talking to a store employee. Both were also watching MTV. He started to write down the conversation between the two about the work of installing microwave ovens vs the musician on MTV playing a guitar, how guitar playing wasn’t really work and how he was making “Money for Nothing ”. First rule of song writing. Always carry a notepad and pencil, because sometimes all it takes is three words.

I was looking at Cross Road Blues. (Crossroads) preformed by Eric Clapton and Cream.It’s good that they gave credit to Robert Johnson for the “words and music” and because of that I was surprised by the differences in the versions of the song. it’s a little confusing because it was written and recorded by Johnson in 1937 as “Crossroads Blues” but is commonly known as “Crossroads”. The lyrics by Cream aren’t quite the same as in Bob’s version notably “Have mercy, now, save poor Bob if you please.” I assume since Johnson refers to himself as Bob in the song everyone in the barrelhouses did too.Speaking of barrelhouses. I was confused by Johnson’ use of the term in his version,“We can still barrelhouse baby on the riverside”. So obviously the term barrelhouse can also be used as a verb to describe an activity like drinking or partying or whatever they were doing on the riverside. I am curious why Cream’s version also said “ tell my friend boy, Willi Brown” why did they add. “ Boy”. I guess Willi Brown was indeed a friend and was an influential person in Johnson’s guitar career. It’s hard to believe that it’s been over 50 years since Cream preformed this song in San Francisco and that Eric Clapton never was impressed by the song. He’s the last man standing of the original band members.

You’d see them wearing their baggies or is it tight dresses and lipstick. Without the lyrics would you know which song you were listening, Surfing U.S.A. or Sweet Little Sixteen. I Imagine Chuck Berry wasn’t very happy when he heard Surfing U.S.A. because The Beach Boys Obviously stole his Music. Chuck Berry did end up with the publishing royalties from Surfing U.S.A.The Beach Boys surprisingly didn’t know of this agreement for 25 years.

Paul Simon is another guitar genius. I can’t say that I like the lyrics in his song “Hearts and Bones” I only found one line that I liked. Now the genius is in the measures. I could never in a thousand years wrote this music Take. a look. https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/paul-simon/hearts-and-bones/MN0114907

When I work on a solo I like to write out lyrics related to the song by sentence.Then I try to approximate the rhythm of the spoken lines into a riff. That way I see where I breathe and insert rests or dotted notes.Then I play the riff over the chord progression. One song I play with occasionally is Autumn Leaves. Today I asked AI for a few lines and I was quite surprised with the response. The AI response was better than anything I could have written . I assumed AI would just search the internet and give me something someone else already wrote. So, I searched the internet for the AI lines and nothings showed up. Then I gave the lines back to AI and it responded with twenty paragraphs telling me how great the lines were and then explained why the lines were so poetic and meaningful. it’s not something I want to do but, I understand I could have AI also provide the riff in guitar tab. Bob Dylan was right “The times they are a -Changin’”

John Fogerty was one of my favorite performers but, one of his songs has always been confusing “Hot Rod Heart” What’s he really referring to in the song. 1. “Big Ol’ Buick” is that a 1952 Buick with a front grill that looks like a mouth full of teeth like an alligator? 2. “Big ol’ gator putting’ on the zoom”. His he talking about a real alligator moving fast or a fast moving Buick? Is zoom referring to speed or did it just rhyme with moon. I’ ve seen another song with puttin’ on the zoom and it was referring to sex. Could the real gator be confused and attracted (zooming) to the Buick with with pretty chrome teeth? I’ve never heard of any alligator term related to “zoom”. The album’s name is “Blue moon Swamp” and swamps have gators. I ‘ve also heard truckers refer to “gators” but, they are talking about retreads coming off and laying on the highway that look like the back of an alligator. 3 Why the reference to a Harley? I’ve never heard a motorcyclist say he had a hot rod heart. Hot Rod “usually” in more modern times means a souped up roadster. “Hot rod Lincoln” a model A Ford with a Lincoln engine. An open sporting car with seating for two. 4. The lyrics “wheels on fire” seems to belong to the verses with the Harley and the gator verse belongs with the Buick. I’ve seen other songs where they just had so many lyrics that got eventually got mixed up and no one bothered changing them because it sounded good either way. 5. Did the “wheels on Fire” come from Bob Dylan’s song “This wheel on Fire.”? I think he’s referring to his motorcycle accident. 6. Did “putting’ on the zoom” come from Aretha Franklin’s song “Who’s zooming Who”? What do you think, Artistic License? I know some writers like a little mystery or lyrics that can be interpreted in different ways. I just can’t get “Big Ol’ Gator putting’ on the zoom out of my mind. I’d like to have that album cover along with a 52 Buick’s Grill and my strat hanging on the wall.

Chuck Berry’s Maybellene has its genesis in a song with a thousand verses, “Ida Red” an American traditional song with an unknown origin. It does have a catchy rhythm that many used but with their new lyrics.Among those was “Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys”. Wills 1938 version was the one Chuck Berry had heard. Berry contacted Chess records ( guided by Muddy Waters) with his new version. Berry titled it “Ida Mae”. Leonard Chess thought that the name was too similar and there might be issues using that name. Berry claimed he then came up with the new name based a childhood memory of a cow named Maybellene. Berry’s pianist said the name came from a “ Maybelline” cosmetic box in the studio. They change the spelling and went with the new name. When the record was released Berry was in disbelief when he saw it had two additional writers Alan Freed a well known Disc jockey and Russ Fratto the money behind Chess records were also credited along with Berry as the song writers. In the 1950’s it was apparently common to give credit to a disc jockey so he would promote and play the record. Rumor has it that Lenoard Chess owed Russ money and this was how he was repaying him. To Russ’s credit he gave the royalties to Berry. In 1959 laws were changed and that practice was illegal. **** Clark was even brought before congress to testify about the “payola. It was another thirty years before Berry got full credit. It seems Chuck Berry was the first to recognize a new record market, the American teenager. I remember Steve Cropper once saying how it spent a considerable amount of time going from one radio station to another. The only way to sell a record was to get it on the air. It reminded me of my teenage years listening to KOMA,a rock and roll station with 50,000 watts reaching the Rocky Mountains. One of Berry’s guitars named Maybellene is in the National African American Museum in Washington D.C. The red Gibson is in the grave. “Wee Wee hours” the flip side of Mabellene. The lyrics are pretty bad like “in a Wee Wee little room I lay there and yearn for you” strange thing,Berry was given full credit for that one. “MoonDog is out” and a “promise to keep that beat in your heart.”

: “As I roll along I find things aren’t always what they seem” and I certainly wouldn’t have expected E maj pentatonic too provide the interesting riff Jack used in this song. I do prefer the 7th fret E over the open E string shown in the sheet music. The opening riff is easy but, the strumming is challenging. The lessons below are pretty good. Don’t worry about needing a second guitar. I noticed that the sheet music strumming and chords are also different than the way most seem to play. https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/jack-johnson/upside-down/MN0076252 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55hwyfVEYK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9vgt0s23sc

If someone said play a F#m11 sharp 5, my head would immediately spin. My next thought would be why didn’t the “Horse have a name? It must be a reference to heroin! Well, I would be wrong on both counts, no drugs and a real easy chord. A song that any beginner should learn for that time someone says “ play something”. Or just a song to strum while visiting the Great Sand Dunes National Park.

The Animals arrangement of “The House of the Rising Sun” was changed enough from the song in public domain that they were able to get an arrangement copyright.The entire band was involved in creating the new version but, the record label had insufficient room to add all their names. The producer pick one name that started with A (Alan Price) and credited him with the song arrangement. When the song became a hit and the royalties started rolling in he was asked to split the money with all the band members and he refused. This of course caused hard feeling in the band and he eventually left the band. This whole thing is confusing to me because I didn’t realize you could make changes to an old traditional song and get a copyright. I remember reading about Dave Van Ronk’s unique version of the song and was upset when Bob Dylan recorded it without asking him first. He supposedly was planning on recording it and Dylan after hearing the version recorded it first and suddenly it “became” Dylan’s song. I guess in the end it didn’t matter since the Animal’s version was the hit. I don’t know if he took any legal action against Dylan.I think he tried suing the Animals but was unsuccessful.

It seems like the band “Bar Kays” got their name from their favorite rum.They were a sessions band that also performed as the backing band for other musician on the road. Unfortunately they were the band that Otis Redding was using in 1967 and were on board his plane when it crashed, killing Otis Redding and all but one member of the Bar Kays. (Another winter plane crash and it wasn’t that far from where Buddy Holy died).Three days earlier Otis Redding recorded sittin ’ on “The dock of the bay”. He and Steve Cropper co-wrote the song and it sold over 4 million copies.I learned this while trying to find a live performance of Otis Redding preforming the song. The song uses barre chords that cover the neck so, if you’re working on barre chords you might want to take a look at “(Sittin’ on ) The Dock of the Bay”. Not the easiest song but it might make your practice more fun. I would suggest you start with the mornin’ sun and not expect too much when the evenin’ come. I could never have written the song. I would have cluttered the lyrics with lines about the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz , fisherman’s wharf, pier 39 and cable cars and completely losing the loneliness of the song.

The song “Thing called love” by John Raitt also helped raise his daughter to superstar status. Bonnie’s version pushed her album “Nick of Time” sales through the roof when her career was in was in the balance. The song lyrics also painted John into a corner but, science came to the rescue. “ Baby you know you ain’t no Queen of Sheba”. What rhymes with Sheba? Top choice in a book of rhymes is “Omoebas” so John also had the ability to alter his shape and get out of the corner.Another interesting lyric where he makes a semantic shift is “ I ain’t no porcupine, take off your kid gloves”. I didn’t know that Bonnie ‘s father was a talented singer/song writer and had a famous guitar player friend Ry Cooder.

Imagine you’re in a band called the “Tea Set”. Then one day you go to a gig and you meet another band also called the “Tea Set”. (Only in England could that ever happen in America the band would have have been “Milk and Sugar”). A name change is the best option, however heartbreaking it must be to lose such a great name. Bands don’t want that to happen again so they put on your their thinking caps and in this case Syd remembers two American blues players featured on one of his albums so he combines their names and has a catchy new name “Pink Floyd”. Life was cruel for Syd but his band members never forgot him, they even wrote a song in his honor “Wish You Were Here.”

I was looking at Steve’s weekly lessons and came across “Springtime” a song that uses 6ths to harmonize the melody. He also had happy birthday using intervals. I remember when I first started to learn the guitar I wanted to learn to play happy birthday and couldn’t find anything interesting. Anyway this lesson is pretty good and opens the door to songs like “ Time is Tight” and “Soul Man”. I think another Steve would agree or should I say the “Colonel”. I think he may have been the reason I have a “blonde tele”. would agree.

The other day I was going through a BB King song book and while looking at the opening riff in “Please Accept My Love” two questions silently crept into my brain. The first was why hadn’t I ever heard of BB King’s song writer Saul Bihari and what ever happened to BB Kings $40 million dollars estate. It’s been 10 years since his journey into the firmament. Seems his estate still isn’t settled. I don’t believe it took ten years to figure out hieroglyphic script.I think someone is claiming he was blind and couldn’t see what he was signing.On line stories are confusing about how many children are involved.i read he was married twice and had no children in either marriage.The estate lawyers must be pulling out their hair having to spend ten years on the same estate while probably only making $500 an hour. Saul Bihari was a record producer and his name on the sheet music is interesting.I couldn’t find any song writing background. He previously had a day job stocking records in juke boxes around town and folks were always saying we better “call Saul” and find out why there’s a shortage of records by black artists. So.evidently the light bulb in Saul’s head lit up like a Bolite and he started a record company with his brother that focused on recording black musicians like BB King and Hadda Brooks the “Queen of the Boogie”. Now back to the 8 songs in Hal Leonard BB King’s guitar play along book volume 100.

I am beginning to think that writing song lyrics can help one write melodic phrases. So, I started to read about song structure and song writing. One source said to start with a metaphor or idiom like “ You’re the end of June” or “Money for Nothing ” and then build from there.They could serve as a title but as you gather steam that title may change.It reminded me of Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” which started out as “Into the Misty”. Then I wondered where other song ideas could come from and books seemed an obvious place. I picked up Don Quixote and looked at the first page and found “A skinny old horse and a fast greyhound. Then I tried Great Expectations and found” My first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from there tombstone. Pride and Prejudice I found “ A single man in possession of a fortune must be in need of a wife. Now I realize I can’t borrow those lines but they are “food for thought” Songs that were written before 1923 and in the public domain can also provide material without copyright issues. The early Blues have been “picked to the bone”. Using slang words like “speak easy”, “Dagmar bumper” How about current events like “All roads lead to El Salvador” Reading about song structure was pretty informative.I didn’t know the definition of a refrain or the difference between a bridge and the chorus. I didn’t even know why AAB songs repeated the first verse. I didn’t know songs could start with the chorus. I am still confused about a the pre- chorus. I didn’t know “Yesterday” was AABA a common song structure nor did I know it was a classified as “pop/ rock ballad”. edit …..A I internet search engines afforded light mirth and laughter.

“The man in the street dragging his feet” “ no need for greed or hunger” . Sounds like the lyrics of one song, Take a step back” it’s easy if you try” because “there is no present or future only the past happening over and over again” In the 1970’s there was a “ call and response” John Lennon’s “ Imagine” and Steely Dan’s “Only A fool would say that”. Some say there’s no connection between the songs which I find hard to believe. When you’re sitting alone in the eventide take a look at those songs and see what you think. Now that the “clock strikes thirteen” Eugene O’Neill quote about time isn’t hard to imagine or perhaps it just couldn’t be. I wonder how many song writers have borrowed from his material.

Recently I came across one of her videos. She had her guitar tuned to D# minor I didn’t know there was such a tuning. When I googled her “Dream Pop” came up as her genre, or also know as” shoegazing” two more terms that I’d never heard.

Some say Chuck Berry others might say Elvis or Jackie Brenston but, I think a serious contender is Arthur Crudup. The story of Mr Crudup is pretty sad. He should have been pretty well off instead he was picking up trash for $28.44 a week. A different take on “transfer of wealth”. Was Elvis the first to “cover” a song? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxHQUvCkV20

Another Delta Blues.The title caught my attention 32 -20 it’s an old Winchester cartridge for a rifle. A blues book said it was referring to a “sawn off shotgun” but I find that highly unlikely. Some info about the cartridge; the 32 would be the bullet diameter and the 20 would be the grains of black powder by volume.Robert Johnson says in the lyrics its more powerful than the 38 special.I don’t believe that to be true statement. The lyrics do say “cut her in half” and that would seem to indicate a shotgun blast. Even if it was a “sawn off rifle” not shotgun the cartridge was used for rabbit hunting so it wouldn’t do much damage too the meat. When looking at the lyrics one word seems to change depending on the source “cat. camp or cap” appears in different lyrics. They are all black “slang words” but. “cat” would be my choice. “Got to make the cats alright”. Some don’t even contain that last line.By the way a sawn off rifle wouldn’t have used a black powder percussion cap. The other thing that caught my attention was the verses I said, oh baby,where’s you spend the night I said, oh baby, where’s, you spend the night You come in this morning, and you ain’t looking right They sound a lot like verses in Clapton’s “Alberta” PS. The song also uses what some say is the famous fingerstyle Robert Johnson’s turnaround.

Thanks, they are pretty good. They through me a curve because I miss read their song title.I thought they were going to play “Everyday I have the Blues” and I didn’t recognize the opening verses. i wasn’t very clear in my post. What was confusing me was how to to establish the “call and response” phrases melodically in a “Blues guitar solo”. Now I see the call isn’t necessarily a musical question and the melody can end on the tonic not requiring tension and resolution.when the call is a “question” it can end with something other than the tonic. I also thought the opening 3 statements in a (A A B )12 bar blues lyrics form each singing statement (calls and refrain) should have a guitar”response”. The link below is to a rather famous bluegrass call and response that I never thought about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFutge4xn3w&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD

Call and Response, this has been a pretty confusing concept for me to understand in the Blues, simply because I ran into so many different phrase variations being used. I had assumed that call and response was the same as “antecedent and consequent”, where you ask a “musical question” and then get a musical answer one that resolves like a “period”. Resolution being the key! It seems that the “blues call” can be unresolved and the response can simply be a “musical sequence”; or reinstatement of the call melody like “Lord have Mercy” “ Have Mercy on us” I was always assuming that “call and response” meant “tension and resolution “.

I know a lot of folks don’t like the Mel Bay method books. It’s not rocket science to figure out that most beginners want to play contemporary, Rock and Roll or Blues music and not spend hours on some guy’s arrangement of Carcassi, Wieniawki or Foster. My biggest complaint about Mel Bay’s method Books is that he didn’t provide a teachers guide that would explain his lessons and the material seemed to contradict other method books.Perhaps he thought that guitar teachers didn’t need any instructions and his books would only be used by those who truly understood music theory. I use his books to get my fingers moving because most is his material contains an active melody. Now after years I am starting to take a closer look at the music. Recently in one of his lesson a D# dim chord (inverted) suddenly caught me on the jaw and as my head turned it was followed by a quick modulation and a dominant 7 chord that put me on the mat. I was stunned, a dominant 7 chord landed like a tonic and I realized that a iv chord before a V7 resolves just like a V to the I. Reaching for the rope I was beginning to understand Melbourne Bay’s method “Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee”.

I was listening to some old songs by Linda Ronstadt the other day and I couldn’t remember her band. It turned out to be “Stone Poneys”. It seems she got that name from one of Charlie Patton’s songs “Stone Pony Blues”. The song “Stone Pony Blues” is another blues song that is hard to interpret.The lyrics talk about him not riding his Shetland anymore and replacing it with the stone pony. Stone Pony is a “wonderful girl” and Shetland is also a woman.He has it tied up at his “riders”door,( “lovers” door) . Then the lyrics say he wasn’t there to steal somebody’s “brown”. ( brown is slang for a black women with a brown complexion.Take my info with a grain of salt. To make things even more confusing is that he also had a song “Stone Pony” written 1929 then “Stone Pony Blues” released in 1934. Getting the different lyrics mixed up seemed to be common. The Stone Pony song version makes reference to Vicksburg being his pony and Rayville being his mare. Them he talks about Vicksburg and Natchez as places in Mississippi and Rayville in Louisiana. PS Linda Ronstadt was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year.Sadly she has Parkinson’s Disease. P.S. Then there’s a famous music venue in New Jersey “Stone Pony” with no connection to the song so they say. https://genius.com/Charley-patton-stone-pony-blues-lyrics .