Chicago Blues Bass Grooves

[greghagger]

There's a really cool YouTube video that I found this week called, 'Chicago Blues Live, Vol 1'. I assume this is from a DVD and who knows, you might even have it! 

 

The video was taken at Buddy Guy's Legends club in Chicago and features some great footage of different Blues artists.

 

One of the tunes by Junior Wells really caught my ear and it's called, 'If I Knew Then What I know Now.’

 

You can hear the bass very clearly in this tune and it drives the song forward from start to finish. Bass really is holding down the groove throughout!

 

I couldn't actually find out who the bassist is but he's using a 5-string bass with a modern sounding bass tone. It works great though in this context so all you 5-string players out there, you're going to love this lesson. You can easily play this bass line on a 4-string too so don't worry about that.

 

In the video I teach the main riff and then give you two more choruses filled with loads of Blues 'tricks' and licks that you can take away and use when creating your own Blues bass lines.

 

I also show you how I would approach playing this sort of Chicago Blues tune at a gig and you can catch me jamming my own bass line to the live footage towards the end of the video.

 

Enjoy!