How to Play Gee Baby Ain’t I Good to You – Kenny Burrell Blues Lesson

Hey, how’s it going this is Jon McLennan with Guitar Control, I bringing you this video lesson and it’s on a Classic slow blues called “Gee baby and I good to you”. I love playing this song on gigs I’m going to break down two different sections and show you kind of how Kenny Burrell does it and there’s a lot of good jazz voicing that I wrote out.

How-to-Play-Gee-Baby-Aint-I-Good-to-You-Kenny-Burrell-Blues-Lesson-Blog

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I’m going to break down basically how you can play the whole song and you’re going to learn some great jazz chord voicing. Let’s zoom in and get started so for the first part of this tune I’m going to show you some stock chord voicing you can use that basically from the Kenny Burrell version of this off midnight blue and you can also use these as a great source to play chord and melody as well, so a lot of the voicing that I’m going to show you have the melody note in the lead.

So I’m starting out on a C13 here and I’ve got the 8th fret the skip a string 9th fret and 8th fret the 13 chord and I used my thumb a lot this is just stuff that I picked up from Kenny that he showed me so 13 and then a flat 9 the next chord and that’s 11-10-11-11 and I go to G7 which is 10-9-10-8, very stock chord back to a C7 with my thumb and that’s 8 skip a string 8-9-8, so if I go over the first two bars remember that each chord gets two beats.

Then the next four chords, I would like to use an F7 flat 9 here which is 8-7-8-7,F, A, B flat, G flat, to an A flat triad with a B flat in the base and this is one of my favorite chord is actually it’s just a major triad and then I use my thumb again to get that root if you don’t want to use your thumb you can play it like this 6-6-5-4, but it sounds better this way and then E flat 6 which I play with just three fingers but I’m kind of double-stopping these two notes here. I’ve got 6-5-5-4, and then G7 sharp 5 which is 10-9-8-8, kind of like a T-bone Walker chord you might hear that like stormy Monday or F7 flat 9, A flat over B flat, B flat 6, G7 sharp 5, and that repeats again.

Now the second time that E flat 6 becomes a E flat 7 and that leads us into the next section but before we go there I just kind of walked a little bass line over the chords of the a section and let’s just see if we can repeat it and practice together so you can either do a half note on each chord or you could do chord notes or you can mix it out you’ll see I might next mix in a few things so here we go and also kind of arpeggiate.

Then we get into the B section and on the B section we get there from E flat 6 to E flat 7 and then we go to this A flat 13 just like the first chord in the song I’ve just relocated it to the 4th fret so 4-4-5-6, A flat 13 then A diminished 7, which is 5 skip a string 4-5-4, to E flat 6, this time with a B flat in the base, it so basically like a chord note at the base note of to the 6th string any flat 7, back to a flat 13, A diminished again and I’m a 2-5-1, takes us back home to the A section so the way I play that is 5-6-5-6, D minor 7 flat 5, G7 sharp 5, basically three skip a string 3-4-4, then you’re back to the melody or back to the A section so let’s see if we can go through the a section we’re going to play it into the B section so it goes a A, A, B, A basically so here we go 2, 3, 4, you’re back to the top.

Remember it takes time to get good at playing jazz so let’s try those changes now with more of a Chord and melody approach so once you get those chords found and clean you can try and add the melody with those chords which is a little bit harder but it sounds really cool and the idea is that I’m going to harmonize to play the melody and then harmonize and fill it out with those chord shapes so if I start from the beginning I’m going to play the first two bars so I’ve got that C13 chord and I’m going to bring out that top melody because here’s the melody that I’m going to play and put the chord down these lines and then play on the 3rd string G7, play that top string that 2nd string then do this B7 chord.

A little bit maybe I mean it’s blues you know flied in the chord then I guess that F7 flat 9 and then I’ll play that A flat with a B flat and a base and t now you can bring out the melody. I really hope you get inspired from this lesson to keep playing and keep practicing for more information you can click on the annotation on your screen or the iCard if you’re on mobile you can check out one of the courses from Guitar control.com there’s a lot of good ones on their, I’ve got some on there and a lot of other teachers and content so be sure to check it out and don’t forget to subscribe on our YouTube Channel and we’ll see you in our next video lessons, thanks for watching.

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