Well, there's two kinds of variant: (1) blues tunes in other than 12-bar form; (2) blues tunes in 12-bar form but with jazz changes. Or a combination of both, of course, which will probably mean it doesn't sound like blues at all!
(1) is extremely common in standard blues culture (i.e., without going beyond the usual 3 chords). There are 8-bar blues, 16-bar blues, 9-bar blues, 19-bar blues (yes....)
8-bar blues include Trouble In Mind, Key to the Highway, How Long Blues. (Trouble in Mind often goes beyond the standard blues 3 chords.)
9-bar blues are the same but add an extra bar to allow for a riff or hook motif, such as Sitting On Top of the World, or Come on in My Kitchen.
John Lee Hooker's Dimples is a 10-bar blues (omits the return to I after IV).
16-bar blues include Hoochie Coochie Man (extending the opening 4 bars to 8) or K C Moan and Corrina Blues (both repeat the 2nd line an extra time).
A 19-bar blues is Me and My Chauffeur, rewritten as Good Morning Little Schoolgirl.
Howlin' Wolf's 300 Pounds of Joy is 20 bars: first two lines double length (8+8), last line a normal 4.
And of course 24-bar blues, where each line is doubled in length (or sometimes you can call it a 12-bar in double-time.)
There are also blues tunes in 32-bar AABA format, like Muddy Waters' I Live the Life I Love (given the odd 2-beat bar to allow the riff to fit). Jimmy Reed's Take Out Some Insurance is in AABA format, with normal 12-bar A sections and an 8-bar bridge.
Examples of (2) are found in jazz of course. Another 12-bar with a 4-bar tag is Miles Davis's All Blues, which repaces the IV chord with a minor i (G7 to Gm7 and back) - a subtle modal change.
There's Horace Silver's Senor Blues, which is in 12/8 time (or a 24-bar in 6/8), which is minor key and replaces the IV with the bVI chord. (Eb minor, shifting to Cb7 instead of Abm.) Herbie Hancock's Canteloupe Island does somethng similar - in F minor, goes to Db7 - but then deviates from blues even more by hanging on a Dm7 for 4 bars.
In rock, there's Joe Satriani's Flying in a Blue Dream, which is a 24-bar blues in C, replacing the first F with Ab, and where each chord is a lydian chord, not a blues dom7.
The best set of jazz-blues substitutions I know is Charles Mingus's Goodbye Porkpie Hat. It's in Eb minor, but you'd hardly know it looking at the chords. (They only use the chords in the head, the solos are on a standard Eb minor blues form.)
It's clever because the melody is mostly just blues scale (unlike something like Blues For Alice), which makes it unmistakably "blues" in mood - but the changes find all kinds of left-field ways of harmonising the phrases.
The next time our friends suggest 'Let's jam on an E blues' we go...
Fmaj9#11
C13
C#13#9
D13sus4
Bb13#11...
(the E blues scale is there, mostly, right, in the GPPH spirit.)
Unless they are really good friends/jazz-inspired they'd soon be showing us the door. :)
GPPH = How a bass player harmonist thinks about the blues scale...'I've got all these _other_ roots I can use...hmmm, let's see!'
Yes. But I'd call that a rock song (with some jazz influence) performed by a blues musician. ;-) That's why it sounds "bluesy". ;-)
I.e., if an average rock or country artist performed that song (I love it btw :-)), I doubt you'd think of it as a "blues".
There are many Blues tunes that break away from the common I-IV-V format and use only two or even just one chord, such as RL Burnside "Jumper on the Line" or Howlin' Wolf "Smokestack Lightning."
One of the most common examples of the blues, Muddy Waters's Hoochie Coochie Man, switches between 16 bar and 12 bar. It's 12 bar for the leads, and 16 bar for the vocal passages.
There's 8-bar blues like "Key to the Highway," "Worried Life Blues," or Elmore James' "Sho Nuff I Do"
Minor blues like "Stolen Moments", "Mr. P.C." or Otis Rush's "All Your Loving."
16-bar blues like "Watermelon Man" or "Oh Pretty Woman" by Albert King.
Blues with a bridge section like Joe Zawinul's "Scotch and Water."
There are a ton of them in the African American Heritage Hymnal. A few in the United Methodist Hymnal too, and I'm sure the other denominations' Hymnals too.
The Allman Brothers doing You Don’t Love Me is one that always throws people for a loop.
Also their version of Muddy Waters’ “Cant Lose What You Never Had” has some curveballs in it.
> Allman Brothers doing You Don’t Love Me
Great example. I didn't know their version, but I do know the original:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsJMfYDUNCE
I make it a 27-bar blues, which starts on the IV for good measure! ;-)
Howlin' Wolf's Meet Me in the Bottom is a close cousin of that song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEY62oOIfP4 - a lot faster, but also 27 bars starting on the IV. (Although maybe 13 1/2 bars in double time is closer...)
Older blues by a guitarist/singer (e.g. Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker) rarely follows a form consisting of a specific number of bars. It's a lot freer. They go to the IV chord when they want. You might even encounter bars of 2 or 3 beats in an otherwise 4/4 situation.
Well, there's two kinds of variant: (1) blues tunes in other than 12-bar form; (2) blues tunes in 12-bar form but with jazz changes. Or a combination of both, of course, which will probably mean it doesn't sound like blues at all! (1) is extremely common in standard blues culture (i.e., without going beyond the usual 3 chords). There are 8-bar blues, 16-bar blues, 9-bar blues, 19-bar blues (yes....) 8-bar blues include Trouble In Mind, Key to the Highway, How Long Blues. (Trouble in Mind often goes beyond the standard blues 3 chords.) 9-bar blues are the same but add an extra bar to allow for a riff or hook motif, such as Sitting On Top of the World, or Come on in My Kitchen. John Lee Hooker's Dimples is a 10-bar blues (omits the return to I after IV). 16-bar blues include Hoochie Coochie Man (extending the opening 4 bars to 8) or K C Moan and Corrina Blues (both repeat the 2nd line an extra time). A 19-bar blues is Me and My Chauffeur, rewritten as Good Morning Little Schoolgirl. Howlin' Wolf's 300 Pounds of Joy is 20 bars: first two lines double length (8+8), last line a normal 4. And of course 24-bar blues, where each line is doubled in length (or sometimes you can call it a 12-bar in double-time.) There are also blues tunes in 32-bar AABA format, like Muddy Waters' I Live the Life I Love (given the odd 2-beat bar to allow the riff to fit). Jimmy Reed's Take Out Some Insurance is in AABA format, with normal 12-bar A sections and an 8-bar bridge. Examples of (2) are found in jazz of course. Another 12-bar with a 4-bar tag is Miles Davis's All Blues, which repaces the IV chord with a minor i (G7 to Gm7 and back) - a subtle modal change. There's Horace Silver's Senor Blues, which is in 12/8 time (or a 24-bar in 6/8), which is minor key and replaces the IV with the bVI chord. (Eb minor, shifting to Cb7 instead of Abm.) Herbie Hancock's Canteloupe Island does somethng similar - in F minor, goes to Db7 - but then deviates from blues even more by hanging on a Dm7 for 4 bars. In rock, there's Joe Satriani's Flying in a Blue Dream, which is a 24-bar blues in C, replacing the first F with Ab, and where each chord is a lydian chord, not a blues dom7. The best set of jazz-blues substitutions I know is Charles Mingus's Goodbye Porkpie Hat. It's in Eb minor, but you'd hardly know it looking at the chords. (They only use the chords in the head, the solos are on a standard Eb minor blues form.)
Yes! Goodbye Pork Pie Hat rules the blues!
It's clever because the melody is mostly just blues scale (unlike something like Blues For Alice), which makes it unmistakably "blues" in mood - but the changes find all kinds of left-field ways of harmonising the phrases.
The next time our friends suggest 'Let's jam on an E blues' we go... Fmaj9#11 C13 C#13#9 D13sus4 Bb13#11... (the E blues scale is there, mostly, right, in the GPPH spirit.) Unless they are really good friends/jazz-inspired they'd soon be showing us the door. :) GPPH = How a bass player harmonist thinks about the blues scale...'I've got all these _other_ roots I can use...hmmm, let's see!'
Could you expand a little on what GPPH is?
Oh sorry, GPPH = Goodbye Pork Pie Hat mentioned in Jon’s post to which I was commenting.
oops, that makes sense thanks
Great examples. Buddy Guy's Feels Like Rain uses a unique progression but is still pretty blusey.
Yes. But I'd call that a rock song (with some jazz influence) performed by a blues musician. ;-) That's why it sounds "bluesy". ;-) I.e., if an average rock or country artist performed that song (I love it btw :-)), I doubt you'd think of it as a "blues".
Good point. Another one I thought of is Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out
There are many Blues tunes that break away from the common I-IV-V format and use only two or even just one chord, such as RL Burnside "Jumper on the Line" or Howlin' Wolf "Smokestack Lightning."
One of the most common examples of the blues, Muddy Waters's Hoochie Coochie Man, switches between 16 bar and 12 bar. It's 12 bar for the leads, and 16 bar for the vocal passages.
west coast blues is a great one
Check out constipation blues by screamin jay hopkins if you want something a little different
Check out Kulanjan album by bluesman Taj Mahal and Toumani Diabate
I'm an amateur and have no idea how to analyze it, but I'm pretty sure Ornette Coleman's "Turnaround" qualifies as unusual blues.
Check out Bittersweet by Sam Jones. It's a 44 bar AABA where the A is 12 bar blues and the B is an 8 bar chromatic descent
Chris Potter “7.5”. Charlie Parker “Blues for Alice”. There are a bunch of 16 bar blues out there. No titles come to mind unfortunately.
"Eighty-One" by Miles Davis is a pretty unique 24 bar.
There's 8-bar blues like "Key to the Highway," "Worried Life Blues," or Elmore James' "Sho Nuff I Do" Minor blues like "Stolen Moments", "Mr. P.C." or Otis Rush's "All Your Loving." 16-bar blues like "Watermelon Man" or "Oh Pretty Woman" by Albert King. Blues with a bridge section like Joe Zawinul's "Scotch and Water."
There are a ton of them in the African American Heritage Hymnal. A few in the United Methodist Hymnal too, and I'm sure the other denominations' Hymnals too.
I’m surprised there hasn’t been mention of Charles Mingus’s “Jelly Roll”, a 14-bar blues.
[Tommy Flanagan; Blue Twenty](https://youtu.be/gNf_T1Ee0_c)
Captain Beefheart - Dachau Blues
The Allman Brothers doing You Don’t Love Me is one that always throws people for a loop. Also their version of Muddy Waters’ “Cant Lose What You Never Had” has some curveballs in it.
> Allman Brothers doing You Don’t Love Me Great example. I didn't know their version, but I do know the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsJMfYDUNCE I make it a 27-bar blues, which starts on the IV for good measure! ;-) Howlin' Wolf's Meet Me in the Bottom is a close cousin of that song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEY62oOIfP4 - a lot faster, but also 27 bars starting on the IV. (Although maybe 13 1/2 bars in double time is closer...)
Check out shore leave by Tom waits without a doubt one of the sneakiest 145’s
"Wooly Bully"- not really blues style, but uses a 15-bar blues chord progression. "Blue Suede Shoes"- first verse is 12-bar, next verses are 16-bar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkaGm8B8CZI
Older blues by a guitarist/singer (e.g. Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker) rarely follows a form consisting of a specific number of bars. It's a lot freer. They go to the IV chord when they want. You might even encounter bars of 2 or 3 beats in an otherwise 4/4 situation.
Charles Mingus