If you listen closely to blind Willie, Mattel's you St. Louis Blues, at least the version I learned from, you'll hear him use some variations on that basic verse chord progression and he actually does some really neat picking with both his first finger and his thumb. Let me play the variation for you the way I've figured it out. I may not be right on this, but it sounds okay to me. And now I'll try to show you what he's doing. He does a little variation over the sea and also a little Boogie Woogie thing over the F which is kind of fun. goes like this.
Kind of like that. What I'm doing is when I come out with the turnaround my pinkie on the third fret of the first string, I'm going to play the C chord with the pinky on the first fret of the third string, then I'm going to start with a pin between the fifth and the first string this time. And then I'm going to do this slide which is basically sliding the pinkie from the third fret to the fifth fret. Back to the third, open first string, coming down on the third fret of the second string. The trick is we're keeping the chord shape. We're trying to keep the alternating bass going while we do this, we get something like this.
What you have to do is just try to not worry what you're doing with your pinkie. Just keep the alternating bass going and it's got to be a quick that movement. If you do it quickly, you can stay in the alternating bit So let's try that again. ends with the downstroke of the thumb. Then we're going to play this little Boogie Woogie thing. And I'm going to get my thumb on the first fret of the sixth string, open fifth string, open fourth string, first fret of the fourth string, whoops Tom and then open for.
Now we're gonna get right back into the F chord with the alternating bass. So watch how I do this. What I'm doing is right after that, I'm putting the cord back down. Coming up with my right hand first finger. And you'll see how I do this. Let me do it again.
Whoops. I'm doing the base part, all with my thumb. So actually I get the upstroke then the six on the bass and then the four. Let me try to play that variation through again slowly for you. So there you have East St. Louis Blues by blind Willie Mick towel. And again, listen to the original recording, although his tuning is not going to match up with yours, listen to how he plays it get a feel for how the song suppose the sound.
Then if you work with my version, I think you'll you'll see how I'm how I'm doing this. So anyway, there's our first song with an alternating bass in the key of C and let's move on to the next one.