Caroll County Blues

This month we're going to play an old time fiddle tune, Carroll County Blues. This was originally recorded by the Mississippi duo Narmour and Smith. This tune doesn't conform to the typical 12 bar blues progression, and in their original version, never went to the V chord at all.

A later recording by fiddler Benton Flippen added a four measure turnaround that goes to the V chord, and I've included that in the arrangement. To play it like Narmour and Smith, just skip measures 13-17 and go to the B part after repeating the A part. Although the A part is 12 bars, we don't change to the IV chord until measure 6, so there's five bars of the I chord instead of the usual four. That makes it feel a little crooked. The melody is syncopated, many of the melodic phrases start on the and of four instead of on the downbeat of a measure. This is fairly typical in the blues.

Here's a couple of variations that aren't written in. It's easier to read the melody without them. In the A part, I occasionally play the open G and D strings below the melody on either the B note at the downbeat of the measure or the Bb note on the and of 4. I generally use tremolo on the whole notes. That is marked.

I often use open string double stops in the B part, when the melody is on the low G, i play the open D above, when the melody jumps to the D string, I play the open G below it. You can try that for the entire B part as a variation.

I hope you enjoyed playing Carroll County Blues.

Seth Austen
seth@sethausten.com http://www.sethausten.com

Bookmark this article with:

          

Stumble It!     Share on Facebook      Delicious