Big row blues starts out with this really cool descending bass finger goes like this. What I'm doing there is playing the sixth. And the fourth strength, I'm using my thumb on the open six and I'm using my first finger on the fourth. And I'm starting out with an open string, open six open for that, I'm putting my first finger on the second fret of the sixth string, and my second finger on the second fret of the fourth string, and then I'm moving that shape from the second to the fourth fret. So we got this As I play the bass string every now and then I try to get my thumb pick under the sixth string and snap it, which is kind of a neat effect. You can play around with that or you can just play it straight to get used to it.
But the fingering is just taking that shape and moving it open 234, open 234 and then when I get ready to move to the four chord, I'm going to stop at the third fret, so we got this. And from there, we're going to go to the G seventh. To get to the G seventh, we're going to use a little walking pattern. Open fifth string, one, two. Then my second finger is going to be in my G my new G, seventh chord shape for drop D tuning. displaying a simple phrase getting the second string first string, second string and then taking my ring finger off and going with my first finger to the first fret of the first strike.
The fifth strike so watch this. Do that walking bass both time. So let's play everything we've got so far for big road blues, taking it from the introduction, which is the baseline. From here we're gonna play this. What I'm doing is just keeping an open six string going, that's my D and then with the D chord. I'm taking my fingers off and I'm putting my first finger on the first fret of the first string and keeping my ring finger on the third fret of the second string.
So we got this when I'm up stroking with my with my first finger, pretty much getting just the first three strengths. We got this if I want to I can play this The second string as a passing though, somebody played in context. And that's all he's playing when he gets over the wind. And then when he gets ready to go to the five, it's pretty simple. We're just gonna play an a seven, get the open fifth or something that open fifth. While I'm stroking with my first finger on the A seventh shape.
Then I'm gonna walk to the g7 and then the open six. That's the end of the verse and we start the next verse with that base, right He plays while he's singing, which couldn't have been easy to do, it's not easy to do. That's all you all you have for big road blues. Now there's a second guitar on the original recording. So if you listen to the original recording a big road blues by Tommy Johnson, there's two guitar players on this. And so I'm just showing you a simple version that you can play on your own and practice the chords that you need to play in D and drop D tuning.
So let me play a couple verses of big road blues one more time slowly for you. Here we go. There's big road blues by Tommy Johnson our second tune in the key of D. Now the next three songs that we're going to learn are also in this drop D tuning. And it's just a matter of fact that most of the time when country blues men played in the key of D they use this technique which gave them more money. more flexibility and more options with the open six string and what they would have in standard tuning.