Stack O'Lee Blues - Mississippi John Hurt - Tutorial + Tab



This is the classic Mississippi John Hurt song Stack O'Lee Blues. The song is about the murder of Billy Lyons by "Stag" Lee Shelton in St. Louis, in 1895. There are many different songs about this, with some having the name Stagger Lee or other variants. I may have a look at some of the other versions in later videos. The Mississippi John Hurt version has been covered many times by various artists but I try to keep as close to his original version as possible. The music is very repetitive with there only really being one main section which is played over and over throughout the song. In this video, I play through it twice. The music is in 4/4 time, is played on a guitar in Standard Tuning, and is a fingerstyle piece.

Below are some tips to help you play this piece, and links to download the tab.

Stack O'Lee Downloadable Tab - Power Tab - PDF - TXT
 
  • Hammering On - The music uses hammer-ons on the highest string in the first 3 bars. The notes are played too quckly to realistically negate using these hammer-ons. Therefore, you will need to practise these quite a bit to get the timing right. Its easy to hammer-on too early or too late, or to not articulate these notes properly giving them a dulled sound. Practise with a slow tempo at first until you are getting these notes correct, then slowly build up the speed.
  • The Slide - In bar 11 of the music there is an awkward little slide from fret 1 - 2 on the highest string. This is easy to get wrong because of the speed of the music. The easiest way to play it is using your middle finger. That way your middle finger is in place for playing the following D chord. If you are having difficulty with this slide though, just leave it out.
  • Forming Chords - The easiest way to play this piece is by forming the underlying chords, especially the D chord which predominates the song. This not only allows the notes to ring out by alos minimises movement of the fretting hand which should make it easier to play at speed. If you watch the video you will see my figerings when playing.

This is about all I need to say about this piece. It is quite a simple piece to play if you are comfortable with fingerstyle guitar. Just start slowly and build up the tempo so you are able to get all the notes articulated correctly.

Thanks for Reading,
Neil

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