Fred Sokolow Teaches Blues With a Feeling

I would like to do another slow 12 bar blues. This is a tune at Little Walter link, famous Chicago blues harp player made famous called “Blues with the feeling” and there’s a new chord, chord alert, new chord in this song. This is a new way to play you’re A 7th instead of this A7th, you’re going to do this bar where your index finger hits the fourth, third, second, and first string, see it flatten your finger like that. So it hits the top four strings of the guitar. And then, with this finger, you catch the first string. So that’s a new way to play an A7th. In this tune, we’re going be sliding that around a little bit so you can frets in sequel if you just strum those four strings that you’re fretting with your thumb, you can move it around like that. And if you move it up two frets, suddenly it’s a B7th instead of playing it this B7th, you can play your B7th up there. And then slide it back down to the A7th and that’s a real nice Bluesy effect going back and forth between those two chords. B7th up here and then A7th down here.

Now for the E7th, we’ll just use this turn around position that we used. And here’s a little bit of blues with a feeling, I’m just going to be strumming it with my thumb and keep your eyes mostly on my left hand and check what is going on with this. So now we just got three chords, this E7th, the A7th and the B7th. But they’re all sliding around, moving around a little bit to make some bluesy effects like this.

Blues with a feeling that’s what I have today. Blues with a feeling that’s what I have today. I’ve got to find my baby if it takes both night and day.

Now, we’ll mix that in with the other chords like this.

And it’s sad and lonesome waking up all by yourself. And it’s sad and it’s lonesome, waking up all by yourself. That’s when the one you love has gone off with somebody else.

Then all of these blues techniques can be mixed and matched like you can go, “Blues with the feeling that’s what I have today”. It’s just between their vocals filled that go back to your boogie woogy wood. “Blues with a feeling that’s what I have today. I’ve got to find my baby even if takes for night and day”. Okay now, these are E7th up here turned into an A7th when you move it down a fret. Every once in a while instead of going to an A7th chord, blues will just go up to this position, down on a fret and that’s what we did at the beginning. Instead of going to that A7th you just drop that down.

Now to finish this song, there’s another course of the song we do some little typical blues stuff, time stuff. To do that right, I just want to show you nice bluesy like I call it this is the, hoochy coochy man like because it’s the one that Matty Walters used in the Hoochy Coochy — and it’s simple like with this finger here, your ring finger. Instead of bar, as if you’re raging part of A7th chord. You bar and play it with your thumb, you just brush those bar strings and then you can brush the same four, three, and two. You brush them open and then back to an E.

You know, come to think of it, we’ve been doing E7th so long. Here’s a real E, it’s just like the E7th but with its ring finger added. So you’re going, you can keep your E chord and to sort of drop the ring finger down so it frets like that on top and back on E. A lot of blues they just come based on this fret. So what happens and let’s back up and do this some blues with a feeling.

I’ve got to find my baby, if it takes both night and day. Well you know I’ve loved you baby, what are the reason why, you’ve gone and left me baby. Let me hid a crime. Blues with a feeling, that’s what I have today. I’ve got to find my baby if it takes both night and day.

Okay now, one last thing that I want to do. We’ve got this thumb steady to be going with your thumb. Sometimes, you can do these licks in between the vocals you can do those by brushing up with your finger and as much as possible you keep this going all the time. So, sometimes, you’re going to be doing both things at once like that. Say you’re brushing down with your thumb and when there’s a pause between a vocal, you slip in some other stuff with your finger. It’s the beginning of real finger picking where you really got the thumb and the index finger doing two really different things. But the main thing about this is you keep it steady one, two, three, four beat going with your thumb and don’t let anything interfere with that. And this takes second place to that because there is where your rhythm is coming from. What I want to do is split the screens so that you can watch both in my hands because I’m going to be doing all this moving around here and also I want you see what it looks like when you’ve got the thumb going against that index.

Blues with a feeling, that’s what I have today. Blues with a feeling that’s what I have today. I’ve got to find my baby, if it takes both night and day. So here, I’ve got my thumb hitting the top six strings. And when I go to the A7th, it’s going to be on the 5th string. That’s what I have today. Now if you play this B7th up here and then your thumb is on fourth string, if it takes both night and day. If you do ever wake up, wake up all by yourself. Did you ever wake up, wake up all by yourself. You know the one your loving as gone off with somebody else.