Active Melody

Learn to play blues guitar.

Jimmy Rogers Style – Chicago Blues Guitar Lesson – EP097

Description

In this guitar lesson, I’ll show you how to play a classic Chicago blues style rhythm and lead in the style of the great Jimmy Rogers. Jimmy played in the Muddy Waters band during the 1950s and went on to develop a solo career, recording on Chess records with classics like, “That’s Alright” and “Walking By Myself”. This lesson takes samples of some classic Jimmy Rogers style licks and combines them into a single composition. This composition also has a beginning and an end, which is something new that I’m going to start introducing to these lessons.

Part 1 - Free Guitar Lesson

Part 2 - For Premium Members

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Slow Walk-Through - For Premium Members

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Video Tablature Breakdown

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Comments

    • hi hope this works. I join a lot guitar sites in my day ,find this one be one of the best ones! everybody is in a hurry to learn cover tunes without knowing how to play! I find this site to be the most friendly site to use, videos tab and the looper makes practicing fun and you are learning at the same time! brian explains everything easy not like some guitar instrutors I have been too. you can work at your own pace !Keep up the AWESOME lessons Take care all

  2. Once more….Brian shows us that if we really don’t care about being a knowledgeable, standout and accomplished guitarist….and find ourselves unafraid to dig and delve into all sorts of fantastic exciting directions on our guitars…then we need to revert back to our simplistic and basic Mel Bay guitar books! I do not knock Mel Bay but I do make the simple and easy choice to extend and challenge myself and stick to what works. Brian Sherrill and Activemelody.com definitely works!!

    Jim C.

  4. I have greatly improved my guitar playing with your lessons. I didn’t think it would get any better than your last two lessons, but you topped them yet again!

    There are lots of great nuggets in this piece for aspiring blues players.

    Thanks for such rich, inspiring, and easily understandable lessons.

    Michael

    BTW, I did like learning the ending. It would be great if you could start doing that for all your songs.

  8. @bhamels - no advantage to only using the ring finger.  I’d say if you can work in your middle finger go for it.  With fingerstyle pickers, you’ll see some only using 2 fingers, some 3, and some 4

  9. Hi Brian, love this style of lesson, lots of great ideas that can be used in all my playing…..running out of adjectives to describe the value of your lessons and how much I have added to my song list!

    BTW love having endings, outros which are an art themselves…….

    Thank you Brian!

  10. Great lesson.  Good to see the 335 is back (I thought you’d gone over to The Dark Side for ever ;-) ) and yeah, more intros & endings, please.

    Thanks

  16. definitely one of you’re best lessons to date IMHO…
    theres so much in here from hybrid picking to timing and string skipping to name a few..love it..thanks for all you’re hard work Brian..

  17. Thanks for the new lesson Brian.  It must be my favourite so fa!  Great groove, love the style.  The hybrid picking really sweetens things up I think I’m gonna go look for some Jimmy Rogers.

  18. Again, this is Brian’s second best lesson to date and anyone wondering why they need to put some extra effort and nail down the hybrid progression specially over the 1 chord, this is where ‘extraordinary’ guitar players are separated from average! If getting this complete E chord lick progression down takes a separate hour or even more……..it’s definitely worth it! I know I signed up with Activemelody.com to not be left behind in the dust of other players! I want to stand out and Brian’s stand out lessons more than help me achieve this goal!! OK…..back to practicing that hybrid method until I get it down cold!!

    Jim

  19. This is my first post.  In my opinion this is your best lesson.  Thank you.  Now, how about a follow up to this with a lead course that follows this arrangement?  For another idea, a Johnny Winter style blues with slide course would be interesting and challenging.  Thanks again.  Craig Robin

  20. Good comment, Jimbostrat.  Which is the best one in your opinion?  My personal favourite is EP018, the Clapton-esque blues rock one.

    Wonder if Brian’s cooking up something really special to bring up his100…

    Mike

  21. Hey, Mike! I know Brian’s best thus far (and this has nothing to do with me suggesting this lesson as Brian points out!!) is easily EPO31 (Robben Ford Blues/jazz progession)!! I think Brian ate his Cheerios that day and I love it not just because it sounds so cool with the intro and jazzy cool chord changes but because it challenges me plus never will I play average every day barre chords again………..the timing, touch, tone and feel of this super lesson is magnetic!!
    I say all this yet generally love sophisticated acoustic blues the best (also love EPO37-Delta Blues) but everything Brian touches sings to me!! EC is cool plus Brian has an excellent handle on Robert Cray as well!!

    Jim

  22. Hey Brian,

    I think its a great idea to do beginnings and endings.  I’ve learned a lot of your stuff but it would be nice to have a top and tail!

    I’m always wondering where you get all this stuff and wonder if it might help for you to go back and put some beginning and endings on the lessons you have already done?  As they are tabbed and videod perhaps you could just add some bits without having to do them all over again.  If this is nonsense just ignore it.

    Perhaps some of us could suggest lessons we would like this done to!!

    Just the ravings of an old man who knows you have a family to entertain.

    Cheers,

    Andrew

  23. Wow great lesson Brian!  Can’t wait to dig into this one.  You always do a great job of slowing it down and explaining things.  Keep the great lessons coming!

  25. Hi Brian,

    I have just returned from a 3 weeks away without the Strat. This lesson is just a great sound and I am looking forward to getting into it. I love the Chicago blues theme and for me the more of this style and its derivatives you put out the more keen I will become. For me this is the root of the music that I really want to play. Great keep em coming!!

  26. I love this lesson!

    I think a lot of us who think of ourselves as blues people each have our own idea of what blues essentially is, so not everybody is going to see this my way. But for me, this lesson has more blues in it than anything I’ve seen so far.

    I’m definitely going to work my ass off on this lesson. I want to get all of it. And when I do, I think that what I’ll be playing is my music.

    There’s a side-light on this that really interests me. I’m not very familiar with Jimmy Rogers, himself, but I feel I already know his music through people who were influenced by him.

    I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia has a very lively music scene, including a blues scene, and the Grand Old Man of Nova Scotia Blues is a guy called Dutch Mason. When I Google Jimmy Rogers, I get a bunch of links, including links to Dutch Mason. I wonder if that may be why I feel like this lesson is aimed right at me.

    In any case, thanks a bunch. I get a lot out of all your lessons, but this one is kind of the one I was looking for.

  27. Hi Jim,

    A good jimmy Rogers ‘primer’ is the 1999 album ‘Blues, Blues, Blues’ (There’s a clue in the name) which is a compilation of Jimmy Rogers doing Blues Standards with just about everybody, Clapton, Page, Plant, Jagger, Keef, Stephen Stills, Jeff Healey etc. 

    All the stuff in Brian’s lesson is in there and it shows just how much he influenced other people.

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blues-Jimmy-Rogers/dp/B00000DD2D/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430830929&sr=8-1&keywords=Jimmy+Rogers+Blues+Blues+Blues

    Sure it’s on sale on the US/Canada site too.

  29. I am 68 years old and decided in my retirement to take up guitar. I take lessons with a wonderful professional teacher as well. He thoroughly supports my following Brian for my progress. As a beginner, I find Brian challenging in all the best ways. I love that he threads in enough music theory to ground the lessons. This particular lesson is fabulous. It may take this old coot a few days to stumble through, but I’ll get there. I’m just a huge fan of this site. Bravo, Brian p.s.: I’m so glad there is a Premium Membership alternative so this fine musician/mentor gets paid! I encourage everyone to upgrade!

  31. For me, this is definitely my favorite lesson so far, and I’ve been through them all.  Fingerstyle came very easily for me, so I just play it with straight fingerstyle, and it works great.  In fact, I’m finding that I can play about half of all Brian’s lessons as finger style, adding cool bass lines which don’t appear in the tabs.

  34. Brian, this is a very valuable lesson for me.  There is a lot of neat content embedded here, plus, this lesson is helping me with timing of the turnarounds.  I really appreciate your efforts.

  36. OK i have made a pledged with my self to give myself some incentive i have been trying this site out for a while now to see if i like it it , it’s for me and i can live and keep up with most of the material as it don’t come easy for me . As soon as i have nailed this lesson clean i’m upgrading to premium . This is undoubtedly the best guitar tuition website out there . Well done Brian a great online teacher .

  38. old Chicago blues from late 40’s to 1959 is very very deep and there is so much to learn there needs to be many more lessons on how to play it… the guys who backed Little Walter were quite incredible in the diversity and the way the two guitar players compliment each other never getting in the way of each other and also reacting to Walter’s harp licks instantly and all of it with a fair degree of harmonica improvisation……. Straight up Chicago blues is not always hard but playing well backing harp players is an art in itself.

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