Thursday, October 15, 2009

Another song: Pack my jack

Shades is another true favorite album of mine. Oh my. It has live feeling unlike any other records of JJs.

Pack my jack is one of the long grooves on this record. With no other but the GREAT James "Jumpin Jim" Burton on one solo guitar! He also plays on the Travel-log album.

By my ear it is a 12-bar blues in G. So it goes:
G///G///G///G///
C///C///G///G///
D///C///G///D///

The first 15 seconds of the intro solo, to my ear, are something like this:
--------------------------------------------------------
---6-8-/11-8----8-11^-8-11^-11-11~--11h12p11h12p11h12p11
-7------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------
-13'11-13-11-11-11-8~-----11-10-8--------------------------
------------------------x----------9-7-5-------------------
-----------------------x-----------------7'-5-7p5--0-3-0---
----------------------x------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------0-


where ' denotes a small bend and ^ is a bigger bend. The x are muted strings, so there is rake across the muted strings, that lands on the fretted 11th fret second string.

So he looks to be playing a mixture of G minor pentatonic and G major pentatonic. He plays around with the third, which is very common in a lot of solos anyway: slight bends on the minor third (B string 11th fret) to go to a bluesy note (short of the major third a fret up), or the bending (or hammerin on) one fret up (from minor third to major third).

OK, this was a quick one, hope it is somewhere in the ball park! :)

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