Nobody's Dirty Business - Tutorial + Tab
In this video, I will show you how to play the guitar part from Mississippi John Hurt's song Nobody's Dirty Business. The guitar part is played on a guitar in standard tuning, is in the Key of C, and is in 4/4 time. Like most of Mississippi John Hurt's songs, this is very repetitive. The guitar part is basically 7 bars long and is repeated through the entire song. However, for each verse that he sings, he plays two of these 7 bar sections back to back, then adds a small turnaround at the end before repeating. You will see this in the tab for the music below. In the video have played through this whole 14 bar section once. The guitar part uses a travis picking pattern, so if you are used to playing like this, it shouldn't be too problematic.
Below are some tips to help you play this piece and links to download the tab. I have also provided the lyrics if you wish to sing the vocal parts too
Nobody's Dirty Business - Mississippi John Hurt - Lyrics
Ain't nobody's dirty business how my baby's treatin' me
Nobody's business but mine
Ain't nobody's doggone business how my baby's treatin' me
Nobody's business but my own
Some of these mornings going to wake up crazy
Going to grab me a gun kill my baby
Nobody's business but mine
Ain't nobody's doggone business how my baby's treatin' me
Nobody's business but my own
Some of these mornings going to wake up boozy
Going to grab my gun, going to kill old Suzie
Nobody's business but mine
Going back to Pensicola
Nobody's business but my own
Say babe did you get that letter
Would you take me back, I'll treat you better
Nobody's business but mine
Ain't nobody's doggone business how my baby's treatin' me
Nobody's business but my own
Ain't nobody's dirty business how my baby's treatin' me
Nobody's business but my own
genius.com
Playing Advice
- Fast Tempo - The song is played at a very fast tempo, like a lot of John Hurt's music. This is played at roughly 180bpm which is fast for a fingerstyle guitar piece. Although the fast pace shouldn't pose too many problems, you do have to make the chord changes very quickly and accurately to avoid falling out of time and not playing the notes cleanly. The 3 chords used are C, F and G so you should familiar with playing these. However, I recommend learning this piece of music at a slower tempo and once you can play it, try upping the tempo then.
- The F Chord - The song uses the F chord for many bars of the music. As I said, this piece has a very fast tempo so you have to be quick and accurate when changing chords. The F chord will likely prove to be the most problematic of these chords to change to and from. This will all depend how you play the F Chord. I believe John Hurt uses the techique where you hang the thumb over the top of the neck. This is probably the most efficient way to play it but, if like me, you dont like playing the F chord this way, you will have to play it another way. I use a full barre over fret 1 but this can be troublesome changing to and from this at speed. I have made a post and video about the different ways you can play the F chord. Pick the method that is best for you and allows you to play the music the easiest.
- Making the G Chord - The G chord is relatively straigtforward to play and shouldn't be too difficult in this piece. However, the fingerings for this chord might be different to what you are used to. Often people will play the G chord using the middle finger on lowest E string and the ring or pinky on the highest E string. However, this probably isn't the best way to play it in this piece. For this, it is best to play it with the ring finger on the 3rd fret of the lowest E string and the pinky on the 3rd fret of the highest E string. This offers a number of advantages. Firstly, it allows you to play the 1st fret on the highest E string with your index finger when required. This is seen in bar 6 of the music. Also, it is more efficient to make this shape when changing into and out of the C chord as it involves less movement of the fretting hand. If you aren't used to making a G chord like this, I would recommend practising it like this, as it makes playing music like this easier.
This is about all I need to say about this piece. If you are used to playing travis picking fingerstyle guitar you should be able to learn this quickly enough. Once you get used to the fast tempo and are able to make the chord changes quickly and accurately you should be able to play this song quite easily.
Thanks for Reading,
Neil
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