Topic: Bo Carter's Guitar Style--Queries and Tips

[Wailing Wolf]

It's worth mentioning Roy Book Binder has a good lesson on this song on his "Introduction to Open tunings and Slide Guitar" DVD.? He calls it "Baby Don't You Do It" with a slightly different take on the lyrics.? He tabs it in Open G but to convert it to Bo tuning raise top D to E and lower each top E fingering 1 tone.

I've done lyric transcriptions some time ago for both Bo versions so I'll post them as my opinion differs from some already expressed.? The source is "the Essential Bo Carter" as already mentioned.

I WANT YOU TO KNOW Bo Carter Key Open G

Babe I want you to know
Babe I want you to know
That little you been doing Lord
Baby don't you do it no more

Babe I want you to know
Honey I want you to know
That little you been giving Lord
Baby don't you give it no more

'Cause I'm a stranger here just dropped in your town
Ain't none of these women Lord turn me down
They're cryin' baby, honey,

Babe I want you to understand
Honey I want you to understand
I don't mean you no more good now
Please get you another man

Babe I want you to know
Honey I want you to know
That little you been doing Lord
Baby don't you do it no more

Babe I want you to know
Honey I want you to know
That little you been giving Lord
Baby don't you give it no more

'Cause I'm a stranger here just dropped in your town
Ain't none of these women Lord turn me down
They're cryin' baby, honey,

Babe I want you to understand
Honey I want you to understand
I don't mean you no more good now
Please get you another man


DON'T DO IT NO MORE Bo Carter Key Open G

Honey I want you to know
Honey I want you to know
That little you been doing Lord
Baby don't you do it no more

Babe I want you to know
Sweet girl I want you to know
That little you been giving Lord
Baby don't you give it no more

I got so many women don't know who I love
Gang around me like the Indians above
They're cryin' baby, honey,

Babe I want you to understand
Honey I want you to understand
I don't mean you no more good now
Please get you another man

Babe I want you to know
Honey I want you to know
That little you been doing Lord
Baby don't you do it no more

Honey I want you to know
Honey I want you to know
That little you been giving Lord
Baby don't you give it no more

I'm going out east for a change
So many women they addle my brains
They're cryin' baby, honey,

Babe I want you to understand
Baby I want you to understand
I don't mean you no more good now
Please get you another man

[Wailing Wolf]

OK I goofed.? .? Raise top D to E and raise each top E fingering 1 tone.? should make more sense.

[Yves]

Anyone already worked on "Don't Mash My Digger So Deep" from Bo Carter ?

I just began to decipher this morning
Open D tuning - capo 1st fret - Could be second fret if tuned 1/2 a step below the pitch...
Standard 12 bars - 12/8 rythm notation
Bass alternate 6 - 4 most of the time - Boom Tchac...
When he sings instead of using a "standard open D chord" I think Bo uses the above chord ?

x
2
0
3
0
0

As he does in Cigarette blues ?

licks around the following notes
3 - 2 - 0
3 - 2 - 0
2 - 1 - 0
0
 
G chord
x
2
1
0
2
x

A chord
2
1
0
2
x
x
 
Any crucial mistake please let me know

Yves "the Froggy bluesman"

[Johnm]

Hi Yves,
I had to go back and listen to it, because I couldn't remember it, but I think you have it.  It sure sounds right to me.  I hope all is going well.
All best,
Johnm

[Prof Scratchy]

Just been listening to Bo Carter's Old Devil on the good old Weenie Juke. What on earth is Bo doing here, especially those weird but wonderful fills??? I know someone'll know - johnm maybe? So any help in accessing this wacky backing would be most welcome.
Prof S

[Johnm]

Hi Professor Scratchy,
You're sure right--Bo did some really unconventional stuff on "Get Back Old Devil".  On some of the fills you are talking about, he moves a position in which he fingers the third and fifth strings at the 2nd fret (B minor 7) up two frets and back in a sort of vamp behind his singing of the first and last line of each verse.  When he goes to his IV chord, A, he makes it sound as though he's playing in Vestapol by voicing it with the third of the chord in the bass, so it is fretted at the 4th fret of the fifth string with the second, third and fourth strings barred at the 2nd fret.  For his fill at the end of the first line of each verse he frets the second string at the 3rd fret and the third string at the 4th fret.  He then alternates from the sixth to the third string while going back and forth between the second and first string.   When he opens his solo, he goes to an E chord position up the neck that I have never heard anyone else use:  He frets the first string at the 12th fret, the third string at the 13th fret, and leaves the second string open (?!).  He then alternates from the sixth string to the third string while going back and forth between the second and first strings.  Bo really explored a lot of possibilities on the instrument that never occurred to other players, I think.
All best,
Johnm

[Slack]

It's a great song, one of my favorites - I'm going to have to go back and plug some of Johnm's tips in however as I figured it out on my own a long time ago using 'slow down' software and missed a number of subtleties!  Bo gradually increases the tempo as the song progresses and he is really cooking toward the end of the song - very difficult to play at that tempo - especially one of the fills he plays -  so I do an easier substitute fill.  Deacon, one of Port Townsends better players, said it took him two years to get that fill! 

cheers,
slack

[Prof Scratchy]

This is great stuff! I would never in a million years have worked any of this out myself! I'll get straight to it and see if I can get these tips to work - though, like Slack says, the speed that Bo works up on the right hand with those fills will be a bit of a challenge!
Prof Scratchy
PS: I take it, John, that we're talking concert tuning here??
 

[Johnm]

Yes, you are right, Scratchy, it is E position, standard tuning.  Have fun with it and Happy Holidays!
All best,
Johnm

[Prof Scratchy]

Thanks John - I think I'll have a busy holiday trying to work out those licks (or maybe Santa will bring them for Christmas)?? Thanks a million for your advice, and happy  hols to you and yours, and of course to everyone who visits these fine pages!
Prof S

[Ignatznochops]

I've been working on figuring out the relatively easy Bo Carter tune "baby don't you do it" in Spanish tuning. However, I've heard that this one was originally recorded in G6. Did he use this tuning in other tunes as well? Are there other people who used this tuning for blues tunes??

I've also become very interested in the story of the Chatmon clan, and the issues of race and authenticity that they attempted to navigate. Here's an interesting article about the evolution of the tune Corrine, Corrina that in part discusses Bo's music and the troubles he ran into trying become an early "crossover" player. The title is "Corrine Corrina, Bo Chatmon, and the Excluded Middle", and it can be found at:?
www.utexas.edu/.../ erlmannseries/corrina.htm

It is of course distressing to read about his last years spent broke, blind and largely forgotten in a dank shack behind Beale St. I would imagine that this has been discussed before on this site, but to my untutored ears he was a brilliant player who brought? a rich melodic inventiveness to so much of his extensive repertoire. I just can't get bored of hearing them and trying to the best of my feeble abilites to pick them apart enough to play them.

Joe

[Montgomery]

I don't know what G6 tuning is, but he recorded many songs in D-G-D-G-B-E tuning, maybe it's the same thing.

[waxwing]

In that E is the VI note of the G scale you could call it G6, I guess, altho' that seems to imply that you would play in the key of G. But I think both Bo Carter and Lonnie Johnson, who also played in this tuning a lot, used it as much or more for the key of D, like Drop D, but also using that nice IV chord root bass note for licking up the neck from, and still being able to play the V chord (A) by barring an extra string on the second fret. Cool. JohnM could probably give us more insight into this tuning and you can find quite a bit of discussion on this thread from a while back. I think of it as the Drop D & G tuning but many refer to it as the Bo Carter G tuning or the Lonnie Johnson tuning.
All for now,
John C.

[Ignatznochops]

I thought G6 is DGDGBE.

Wish I'd taken those music theory classes back in undergrad school...

[Prof Scratchy]

I'm with Ignatzochops on this - I've always referred to it as G6 tuning. The way I discovered it was this: in 1970 I was living in Canada. One day, whilst I was in the middle of tuning down to open G, the phone rang before I'd got the length of tuning down the E string to D. It was my mother, who talked a lot....anyway, when I next picked up the guitar I just assumed it would be in standard tuning (which it wasn't) or open G (which it wasn't), or drop D (which it wasn't either)! Then I noticed that if you played D and A7 shapes up the neck at various points you could play the 'ragtime' sequence of chords in G, and there I was, having unwittingly learned most of 'Baby I want you to know' by Bo Carter! A miracle and a revelation!! How many other 'telephone tunings' are there out there? I can think of one other: the EADF#AD that Blind Blake used on Sweet Jivin' Mama - but there are probably others. In G6 tuning, I'm not sure which titles Bo and Lonnie Johnson used it for songs in D?? Can anybody enlighten???