He would sit all night long feeling bad and just continue singing and playing, improvising one song after another, and tears would stream from his eyes. And he'd get other people crying. Then, sometimes, he would be on another kick, you know . . . love. He'd just love women. Listening to him he'd make you think you were, well . . . this can't be written down, but you know what I mean. That is, you couldn't understand what the hell he was singing, but you didn't have to - Blind Lemon Jefferson, remembered by Josh White
Here's one that got caught on a small blues festival in Tartu, Estonia, about a year ago, and which of I only just learned about myself. I think it might interest people who wonder about singing a song in a different key, than the original piece was done. William Brown's Mississippi Blues was played out of the A position in standard tuning, and probably capoed up, so he would sound about in C. Even in A is too high for me to sing, so I transposed the song in E, still in standard tuning. I sing the melody my own way, though, and I have had to reverse the bass line to play it in this key, but hopefully I have managed to keep the basic idea recognizable.
Cheers,
Pan
Edited to add: apologies for the first 18 secs of electric blues guitar. :/
« Last Edit: December 21, 2018, 07:10:30 PM by Pan »
Wow, good for you, Pan! That is really great and inventive guitar playing and the vocal sounds really good, too. That last solo is really uptown--like it starting on that E6 chord up the neck. It's really cool to hear someone do something different with that song that still has the same mood as the original. Thanks for posting that. All best, Johnm