This month we're looking at possibly
the most influential of all the early blues artists – the guy who
the BB Kings, Chuck Berrys et al listened to and copped licks from,
the one and only Aaron Thibeaux! (Better known as T-Bone Walker).
Straight away I heard licks I recognised from Stevie Ray Vaughan and
the intro to Johnny B Goode – clearly we're dealing with someone
very significant in the blues pantheon.
T-Bone Walker was born in Texas (as
with Freddie King a generation later) in 1910, but it was not until
the late 1940s that he would start to come to prominence, as one of
the first blues guitar heroes to embrace the electric guitar in the
immediate post-WW2 era. His devotees included none other than Jimi
Hendrix, who also admired his abilities as a showman – it was
Walker who pioneered the technique of playing with his teeth, behind
his back, and behind his head!
The basic foundation of his style is,
as with so many blues players, the basic minor pentatonic scale. In
fact, the more of his licks I transcribed, I've really found that his
style is a lesson in doing more with less. He was adept at phrasing
across the bar line, creating long flowing lines that never seemed to
run out of notes. Interestingly, there's not too much in the way of
“techniques” - hammer ons and pull offs, string bends etc – and
I think we can ascribe that to the fact that he was playing a hollow
body strung with 0.013 gauge strings. Most of his string bending
seems to have been “sound effect” rather than melodic – quarter
tones hinting at major/minor ambiguity or pulling the 4th
toward the b5th. What's interesting is the sheer amount of notes he
was able to cram into a line, as this lick from the intro to “Don't
Throw Your Love On Me So String” indicates:
However, he was not averse to going
“outside” in terms of note choice, and seemed to have a
particular affinity for the augmented (R 3 #5) triad – this chord
is notable for having each of its intervals a major third (four
semitones) away from each other. Symmetry is a topic I'll address
another day, but essentially anything symmetrical – augmented,
diminished, whole tone scale, b5 interval – tends to have a
jarring, abrasive sound that functions almost as a warning light
going off in the mind. Augmented triads feature in his intros,
particularly in his signature track “Stormy Monday”, and I would
be remiss if I didn't share this ear catching turnaround lick from
Stormy Monday with you:
As you can see, this is just an
augmented triad shaped moved up and down the fretboard, catching a
large number of “wrong” noted before resolving back to a chord
tone. Be sparing with this though, this is probably the kind of thing
you can only play once a a gig...
Although the basis of T-Bone's style
was the minor pentatonic, he was adept a extending this basic
framework with the addition of the 2nd, 6th, b5
and major 3rd degrees, creating the “hybrid”blues
scale which, let's be honest, we all use even though there doesn't
seem to be an official name for it.. (Music Theory, meet Blues.. hey,
Theory.. where did you run off to!?!) and here's a lick which
demonstrates how naturally he was able to integrate these notes:
Now, you'll have heard this before,
because it's also used in the intro to Johnny B.Goode, and everyone's
heard Johnny B. Goode! This is what I mean about him being
influential – he's the guy Chuck Berry stole that from!
Turning to chords, there's a lot of
stuff that T-Bone invented (or at least popularised – in a style of
music like blues where it's very much an oral tradition it's next to
impossible to truly say who “invented” anything!) that any
aspiring blues player needs to check out – don't forget, even in
blues, you need to be able to set up a groove and accompany the
singer, and plodding out the same Chuck Berry boogie shuffle in every song
is going to get old very quickly.
T-Bone had an affinity for the dominant
9th (written as 9 for short – so G9, C9 etc) – R 3 5
b7 9. I've shown it here with it's root on the A string, and this
shape is actually derived from a C shape.
He would tend to pair this with a
technique sometimes called the “Gospel Slide” or the “6/9
Slide”. Basically what you do is take the notes on the thinnest 3
strings, slide them up a tone, and then back. If you're starting
with a C9, that means you start with a 3rd fret barre
across the G, B & E strings giving you Bb (b7) D (9) and G (5).
You slide that up a tone and get C ® E (3) and A (6 or 13). This
averages out as giving you R 3 5 b7 9 13 – a dominant 13 chord
without ever having to play a whole dominant 13 shape. Clever! He
does the same idea on the D, G and B strings with an E root voicing
but note that only the D and B string notes are slid, as if you slide
the G you end up with a #11 which won't fit the sound we're after.
(If you want to see this demonstrated,
check out the YouTube practice Vlog)
So there we have it, a potted history
and style analysis of an often overlooked but crucial artist in the
evolution of blues guitar. This has been a real eye opener and I've
come out with a new respect for his abilities – maybe T-Bone spent
a little time in negotiations with a certain horned individual down
at the crossroads at midnight! See you next month for the Iceman
himself, Albert Collins.
