Why Don’t You Do Right? (Tab)
Why Don’t You Do Right? has a colourful history. The tune started out as Weed Smoker’s Dream in 1936. It was adapted and released in 1941 by Lil Green (with guitar by Big Bill Broonzy). The most famous version was the Peggy Lee’s uptempo take. At least it was until Jessica Rabbit’s sultry version in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Tempo-wise, this version is most similar to the Lil Green version. But I took inspiration from all three versions.
There are a heap of places in the song for little licks, and I’ve included a solo as well. As always, I recommend using the tab as inspiration for your own ideas rather than slavishly following each lick.
When soloing, I mostly thought in terms of the D blues scale (D – F – G – Ab – A – C – D). In addition to that, I threw in a few notes that crop up in the chords: Db and Bb. And a couple of chromatic runs (in bars 31-32 and the blues turnaround in bars 35-36).
