“St. Louis Blues”
Christopher Schlegel Update 04-16-2010
I was born and raised in St. Louis. So, this tune had to make the cut on my first album of standards. William Christopher Handy’s classic blues is the fifth tune on my Solo Jazz Guitar Standards, Vol. 1 disc.
http://cdbaby.com/cd/schlegel8
W. C. Handy was an amazing man whose life deserves a little study if you aren’t familiar with him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Christopher_Handy
I did a whole tutorial series on GuitarTricks.com on how to build a chord melody solo guitar arrangement. I used “St. Louis Blues” to do it. It really is a great tune for that kind of thing. Much of the lesson material grew out of my own arrangement. This vid on my YouTube channel is a highlights overview of those lessons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbfGJzfFBRU
Later on, the Gibson Guitar company website picked up my “St. Louis Blues” video lesson and embedded it on their lesson pages. It has been in rotation as a featured Lesson Of The Day. If you play guitar and want to try my arrangment, I suggest the Gibson lesson page because they included my musical score along with the vid.
http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/Lessons/InstrumentLessons/Learn-St-Louis-Blues-320/
For those of you with Guitar Tricks subscriptions, you can see the whole tutorial series of lessons here:
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=759
Enjoy!