Ukulele Hunt

Tag: 30s

  • Cab Calloway – Minnie the Moocher (Tabs)

    Cab Calloway – Minnie the Moocher (Tab)Download

    Intro: I love the way the Em6 here gives the song a heavy, brooding feel. There are a couple of challenging bits here. First, the slide up to the 7th fret in bar 6. Second, the fast picking on the triplets in bar 10.

    Verse: The verses are nice and simple. If you like, you can use the Em6 here as well in place of the Em. I chose the Em here to make the harmony clearer to the listener.

    Chorus: It’s important to create as much contrast as possible between the call and the response here. So this arrangement has the call in single notes high on the neck. And the response is low on the neck and in a chord.

    Double Time Chorus: This section is a burst of anarchy in the song. It’s also the most difficult to play. So I embraced the chaos and did whatever I felt like in this section.

    Outro: A very effective descending chord run to end on.

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  • Dooley Wilson – As Time Goes By (Tabs)

    Dooley Wilson – As Time Goes By (Tab)Download

    As Time Goes By is most famous for its inclusion in Casablanca. But the song was written a decade earlier by Herman Hupfeld for the long forgotten musical Everybody’s Welcome.

    Intro: A quick campanella intro. There are a million things you could do here.

    Verse: The slow pace of the song make this fairly simple to play. Just a trip up the fretboard in bar 7 to deal with. Another opportunity for your own spin at the end of each verse. I went jazzy in the first verse and bluesy in the second.

    Bridge: Bringing out the strums for the bridge.

    Solo: The solo is based on the melody shifted up an octave. With a few passing notes, a pre-bend (i.e. bending the note before plucking it then releasing) and a descending-ascending run in bars 23-24.

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  • Peggy Lee/Jessica Rabbit – Why Don’t You Do Right? (Tabs)

    Peggy Lee/Jessica Rabbit – Why Don’t You Do Right? (Tab)Download

    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). 

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  • Ray Charles – Georgia On My Mind (Tab)

    Ray Charles – Georgia On My Mind (Tab)Download

    I hastily put together this version of the Hoagy Carmichael classic last week while it was still relevant. But it turns out this song is going to be relevant for a while yet.

    My version is heavily based on Ray Charles. But I’ve made a few adjustments. For the intro, I played around with the chords and I added on an old-school blues outro.

    The picking is a bit haphazard, but it’s mainly melody notes picked with supporting chords strummed. Other than a few moves up and down the neck, there’s nothing particularly tricky and the tune flows beautifully.

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  • Blind Willie Johnson – The Soul of a Man (Slide Uke Tab)

    Blind Willie Johnson – The Soul of a Man (Slide Uke Tab)Download

    Today’s post was prompted by Douglas and Stephen who requested a bit of slide ukulele. I was trying to think of which song to do when I watched the new Assassin’s Creed trailer that features a cover of Blind Willie Johnson’s Soul of a Man and immediately got to work on it.

    Slide playing is noisy at the best of times. I wrote a whole ebook about playing slide, but the number one tip for slide playing is to mute everything you’re not playing. Mute everything behind the slide with your index or middle finger (or, even better, both). And mute any string you don’t want to hear with your picking hand.

    It’s mostly standard slide playing. But there is a little trick in bar 4. There, you need to angle the slide so you’re playing the A-string at the 10th fret and the C-string at the 11th. Mercifully, the vibrato there means you’ve got a bit of leeway in hitting the notes.

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  • Vera Lynn – We’ll Meet Again (Tab)

    Vera Lynn – We’ll Meet Again (Tab)Download

    I was inspired to do a version of this Ross Parker and Hughie Charles classic after hearing Sophie Madeleine’s ukulele cover being used as the backing for a COVID-19 video that’s been doing the rounds.

    The arrangement isn’t very taxing but there are a few jazz chords you may not be familiar with in there. And there’s plenty of space for you to add your own little runs and ideas if that’s your bag.

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  • Dream a Little Dream of Me (Tab)

    Dream a Little Dream of Me (Tab)Download

    I wrote up the chords for this song more than a decade ago, so it’s high time I gave it the tabbing treatment.

    Dream a Little Dream of Me was written in the 30s by Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt and covered by all the greats including Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole. But it hit biggest in the 60s when the Mamas and the Papas released their cover. And it’s that version that I’ve mostly based my arrangement on. But I took a few cues from Doris Day version in the intro.

    My favourite thing about this song is how it creates that feeling of slowly drifting off to sleep. It does this with a series of gentle, chromatic downward shifts in the chords. So C shifts to B7, Ab shifts to G and F shifts to Fm.

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  • Midnight, the Stars and You (from The Shining) (Tab)

    Midnight, the Stars and You (from The Shining) (Tab)Download

    For Halloween, a song from the greatest horror film ever made. It’s so densely packed with detail, unforgettable images and jarring juxtapositions. Which has spawned an entire industry of fan theories from the undeniable to the entirely ridiculous to the disturbing and plausible (and if that theory is true it recontextualizes this song in an entirely alarming way).

    Midnight, the Stars and You was originally perfromed by Al Bowlly and Ray Noble and released in 1934. Making it out of time for the 1921 photo. The song also cropped up in Snowpiercer and was recently unexpectedly covered by Deerhoof.

    The tune gives plenty of room for some jazzy noodling. For the first half of the arrangement I use those gaps to play around with the chords. In bars 7-8 and 11-12 I add in chromatic descending notes. And in bars 19-20 I throw in diminished and augmented chords.

    In the second half of the verse I throw in a couple of licks in bars 23 and 27-28. In those licks I’m using the F Mixolydian scale. Which sounds fancy but is just an F major scale with a flatted 7th (i.e. an Eb instead of an E). I picked that up from the Eb used so effectively in the descending run at the end of the original version.

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  • George Gershwin – Summertime (Tab)

    George Gershwin – Summertime (Tab)Download

    Having spent my summer break measuring cotton and watching tench pole-vaulting, I thought this song from Porgy and Bess best summed up my experience.

    I’ve done a few jazz tabs in the past (like Take Five and La Vie en Rose) but this is the first time I’ve used a jazz approach and used the tune as a springboard for soloing. In this arrangement I play the melody straight for the first verse. Then semi-improvise around the tune for the next two verses. Each with a different scale.

    In the second verse I’m use the G blues scale.

    There’s an exception in bar 23 (and later in bar 39). That little turnaround lick is adapted from the Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald version of the tune.

    I get more adventurous in the third verse and mostly use the G harmonic minor scale. I had fun playing around with the scale. The wide gap between the Eb and Gb notes give it an unsettling feel.

    I also borrow an F (A-string, 8th fret) from the G melodic minor scale in bar 37.

    I highly recommend you play around with the scales and phrasing in this piece to come up with your own version.

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