Blues in the Closet ala Walter Bishop, Jr.

Okay, first a note. I realized that not all of you might have WBJ in your record collection so I went back and updated the post on my first transcription in the series, Green Dolphin Street, with a link to an mp3 of Bish's actual solo on the tune. I cropped out everything but the solo, so that you can follow along with the transcription. Also, I think there were like two typos in the pdf where bars with whole note rests had a note marked down. This is due to my fights with the note placement tool, the pointer tool and the pan tool in Sibelius. If you forget which is activated you may accidentally write down some note when you are trying to pan. So I checked and updated that pdf.

Now on to the matters at hand. I present to you the Walter Bishop Jr. fans, Bish's awesome Blues in the Closet solo from the Speak Low album. Here is the mp3. I actually finished this about a week or two ago but was in the process of moving into a new and had to unpack my computer and wait about two weeks for Qwest to hook up my internet connection.

A few things about the transcription, this is a blues. It is in F. And Bish is crushing notes all over the place but I haven't notated them. Most are the typical flat 3rd to 3rd when he is playing a third (3rd and 5th). There were some crushes later in the solo where he is playing fourths and some odd intervals but I couldn't figure out how to make grace notes in Sibelius. It took me about 40 minutes to figure out how to note a trill. Maybe next time.

Click Here to listen to an mp3 of the Blues in the Closet Solo.

About the changes. I looked at them them briefly and will spend more time on them when I analyze the solo. But here is the basic deal:

F7    /  | F7    /   | F7        /     | F7     /
Bb7  /  | Bb7 /   | F7        /     | F7     /
Gm7 /  | C7   /   | Fmaj7  /     | Gm7 C7

This is what I have written over the solo. Listening closely, in some choruses Bish slides up to F#7 for measure 2. Sometimes he puts a ii V in bar 4 (Cm7 to F7 leading to the Bb7 of bar 5). Sometimes he plays a leading chord on beat 3 of bar 6 leading to the F7 and finally sometimes he plays a ii V in bar 8 leading to the Gm7 (Am7b5 D7).

So that is pretty much what he is doing. Throwing in some ii-V's occasionally sometimes sliding, etc. he just doesn't go to Bb7 in bar two.

About next time. It may be a while before I post a new transcription, maybe late June. I have a lot of material here in these two first solos to analyze and work on. I've been going full tilt on the transcribing so far. Time to dial it back and spend more time looking deeper into these two solos prospecting for gold.

Peace out,
Big D