Twelve bar blues – the basics

You’ve heard of it, and as a beginner maybe you’ve played it. It’s one
sequence that’s so well known, it’s a starting point for many a jam
between musicians, especially those who have not played together before.
Everyone knows how the chord progression goes, and it just repeats over
and over, so you can forget worrying about learning the chords and
concentrate on your rhythms and solos. If you’re an early beginner, you
can at least play along, provided it’s in an accessible key, simply
adding a rhythm figure by playing the chords in time. It’ll get those
chord changes happening, if nothing else. Here is the basic 12-bar blues
in the key of A:


(1) |:A |A |A |A |D |D |A |A |E7 |D |A |E7 :|

repeat again and again

The above is for the eager beavers who just want to grab the progression
and run off to play it. For the rest of you, twelve-bar blues is popular
partly because it’s easy, partly because it’s very widely used and
partly because it lends itself to a wide variety of interpretations. The
melodic variety generated by a single chord sequence is surprising, and
the best blues musicians, like Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan and John
Mayall, find different rhythms, guitar styles, arrangements and melodic
inventions from song to song, so it can take a moment, unless you’re
listening for it, to realise that a particular song is simply another
12-bar blues. John Lennon’s Ballad of John & Oko (“you know it ain’t
easy…” etc) is one of the more obvious examples of a 12-bar blues in a
popular song. Less obvious is Donovan’s Sunshine Superman (although
this is a slight variation on the standard progression because it starts
on a seventh rather than a major chord). The Beatles’ “Get Back” is also
a variation on a 12-bar blues (but without the characteristic
one-chord-change-per-bar ending sequence that tends to give the 12-bar
blues much of its flavour). Their “Come Together” is another altered
blues progression.

Twelve-bar blues is easy to play because it uses just three chords --
the three most important chords in any key. What follows is true whether
you’re playing blues, or jazz or rock. These three chords have fancy
names, but the most useful way to think of them is as the first chord
(also called the root or tonic chord), the fourth chord and the fifth
chord in any key. For example, in the key of C these chords are C (first
chord), F (fourth chord) and G (fifth chord). In every key, the notes
are numbered from 1 (C in the key of C) to 7 (B in the key of C) with
note number eight being an octave higher than the start (the next
highest C).

(1)C (2)D (3)E (4)F (5)G (6)A (7)B (8)C

The chords built on these notes are given roman numerals, so the first
chord in any key is a I, the fourth chord is IV and the fifth chord is
V. You can add variations after the big roman number, so in C if you
want Dm7 you can specify ii7, the small roman numerals representing a
minor chord and the 7 denoting the 7th chord. The II chord, built on the
D note, is usually played as Dm (D minor) in the key of C, and is
sometimes written ii. It can also be played as a major chord (D major)
in this key, in which case it would be written as just II. The V chord
in C is often played as G7, written V7.

Since A is a common blues key (other widely used ones are E and G,
though you can find examples in almost any key) and the chords are easy,
we’ll start with a blues in A. If you don’t know the song (Lucille), you
might like to try to acquire a recording of it. If you want to start
without knowing the song, just practise the chord progression as given
below.

We’ll assume you know how to play the chords A, D and E7. In this key,
the key of A, the first (I) chord is A, the D is the fourth (IV) and the
E is the fifth (V). In the standard blues progression, the fifth chord
is usually replaced by V7, in this case E7.

The 12-bars blues is in 4/4, that is, four beats to the bar. In the
blues progression already given, start by playing one bar of A. Count
with the emphasis on the first and third beats: *one* two *three*
four. Here is the progression again, in the key of A and in roman
numeral notation. The colon (:) means “repeat”. The % symbol is used
here for the symbol that normally represents the instruction “stay on
the same chord as in the previous bar”. The proper symbol, which is
unavailable, looks a bit like a percentage symbol.

(1) |:A |A |A|A |D |D |A |A |E7 |D |A |E7 :|

OR, in roman numerals for use in any key:

|: I | % | %| %| IV | % | I | %| V7 | IV | I | V7 :|

Play each chord four times (for the four beats of each bar) for each of
the bars bounded by the bar symbols, so |A |A |A |A | means play
four bars of A. In chord charts like this, that are marked out in bars,
sometimes a repeat symbol that looks a bit like a percentage sign (used
here in absence of the correct symbol) is used to indicate a bar with
the same chord or chord sequence as the previous one, so |A |% | %
| % | also means play four bars of A. Sometimes a slash (/) is used to
signal another beat within a bar using the same chord as before, so
|A / / / | A / / / | means play two bars of A in 4/4 time. A sign that
looks like |: says “begin repeat from here” and means you play until you
get to another sign that looks like :| meaning “end repeat”, then you go
back to the |: and play again (repeat only once unless otherwise
indicated).

After the initial 4 bars of A in the standard 12-bar progression there
are two bars each of D and A in the same manner. For the next four bars
there is a chord change every bar, and it is this sequence that makes a
12-bar blues most easily recognised.

Here is an example of a song using the 12-bar blues in A. If the chords
don’t seem to line up with the words, copy and paste the song into a
word processing file and change the font to 10 point Courier or 10 point
Courier New. Note that the first bar of the 12-bar sequence actually
starts on the second syllable of the word Lucille. This means you need
either an opening bar (of A) in which the first syllable of Lucille will
fall on the fourth beat of that bar, or, what is more common, an intro,
which can be a full 12-bar sequence with the song starting on the last
beat of the last bar before the 12-bar pattern starts again, or a
shorter sequence such as the last four bars of the 12-bar pattern.

Lucille

Words after The Beatles 1963 (BBC live sessions, recording in key of C,
capo 3 to play along)

Collins/Penniman (Little Richard)


|A | % | % | %
Lucille, baby do your sister’s will
|D | % | A | %
Lucille, baby do your sister’s will
|E7 |D | A | E7
Well you ran off and married but I love you still


A
Lucille baby satisfy my soul
D
Lucille baby satisfy my soul
E7 D A E7
Well you know I love you baby I’ll never let you go


(Change in melody and timing for the first two lines of following verse)

A
I woke up this morning, Lucille was not in sight
A
I asked my friends about it but all they did was lie
D A
Lucille please come back where you belong
E7 D A E7
I’m talking to you baby, I’ll never do you wrong


Instrumental for one verse

Repeat first verse


Variations on the pattern

Variations on the basic blues progression abound. The simplest is one
which substitutes a seventh chord at the end of the initial four-bar A
sequence, giving:

(2) |:A |A |A |A7 |D |D |A |A |E7 |D |A |E7 :|

Try replacing the A with the A7 in the fourth bar when playing Lucille
and notice the difference it makes, adding a little more flavor to the
sequence.

The following familiar song uses a lengthened 12-bar blues progression,
adding an extra four bars of A at the start of the song to give a 16-bar
sequence:

(3) |:A |A |A |A | A |A |A |A |

D |D |A |A |E7 |D |A |E7 :|

Walkin’ the Dog uses this chord pattern in the key of A. The Rolling
Stones recorded it (in the key of A), as did the author, Rufus Thomas
(in Eb).

Walkin’ the Dog

Rufus Thomas/Rolling Stones

|A | % | % | %
1 Baby’s back dressed in black, silver buttons all down her back
|A | % | % | %
Hello, tipsy toe, she lost the needle and she can’t sew
|D | % | A
Walkin’ the dog, just a-walkin’ the dog
| E7
If you don’t know how to do it,
| D | A | E7 |
I’ll show you how to walk the dog

2 I asked my mother for 15 cents
To see the elephant jump the fence
Jumped so high he touched the sky
And never got back till the fourth of July

(Stones sing “till a quarter to five” here)

Walkin’ the dog, just a-walkin’ the dog
If you don’t know how to do it,
I’ll show you how to walk the dog

3Mary Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
You got silver bells and leshells
And pretty maids all in a row

Walkin’ the dog, just a-walkin’ the dog
If you don’t know how to do it,
I’ll show you how to walk the dog

Another very common variation is to replace the turnaround E7 chord in
the last bar with another bar of A, giving:

(4) |:A |A |A |A |D |D |A |A |E7 |D |A |A :|

This is the progression used in Elvis Presley’s Blue Suede Shoes.

Blue Suede Shoes

Well it’s [A]one for the money, two for the show,
Three to get ready now go cat go
But [D]don’t you step on my blue suede [A]shoes
Well you can [E7] do anything but lay [D]off of my blue suede [A] shoes [A]

Quite a few Elvis Presley songs used the 12-bar blues pattern, including
Hound Dog, which, like Blue Suede Shoes, uses pattern 4:

You ain’t nothing but a [A]hound dog, crying’ all the time
You ain’t nothing but a [D]hound dog, crying’ all the time
You ain’t [E7]never caught a rabbit and you [D]ain’t no friend of [A]mine

Little Red Rooster

Willy Dixon’s classic Little Red Rooster, covered by the Stones but
originally a black rhythm and blues number, creatively varies the
pattern by beginning the vocal after the first four bars (the vocal
doesn’t start until the first chord change in the pattern). A second
sequence with two bars of D followed by 3 bars of A is added for the
second line of the verse, and the pattern then reverts to its usual
ending, giving a total of 16 bars (slower bars than in many blues songs):

A | A | A | A | D / / /|
I am the little red rooster
D / / / | A / / / | A / /
Too lazy to crow for day
/ | D / / /|
I am the little red rooster
D / / / | A / / / | A / / / |
Too lazy to crow for day
E7 | D / / / |A / / / |A |
Keep everything in the barnyard upset in every way



Other keys

So far we have used the key of A to illustrate, but it’s even more
common to find 12-bar blues progressions in the key of E, and other
common keys are D, G, C and Bb. Occasionally you find Eb and others.

Once you’re familiar with the progression, try it in the other keys with
the same songs until you find a key that’s perfect for your vocal range.


Key of E E (I) A (IV) B (V) or B7 (V7)
Key of G G (I) C (IV) D (V) or D7 (V7)
Key of C C (I) F (IV) G (V) or G7 (V7)
Key of D D (I) G (IV) A (V) or A7 (V7)


--
Stephen
Ballina, Australia