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Thread: Wild Bill Jones chords?

  1. #1
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    Default Wild Bill Jones chords?

    A little help here, please! I can pick out the melody to Wild Bill Jones, but I'm stumped on what chords to play in this strange modal tune. I generally play the melody starting with a low E: E F# A B A F# and so on. What chords go with that? There are probably LOTS of ways of playing the tune, but I'm wanting to sort out the chords on THIS version. Thanks.

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    Default Re: Wild Bill Jones chords?

    Sounds like the key of A Major, to me. This tune has just the I with a passing V chord.

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    Default Re: Wild Bill Jones chords?

    Well may be so, Alan. "A" was an obvious key to try, but it sounded too "major" for the tone of the melody. But you can kind of sing or play "across" the A and the E chords, which creates the dissonance of that modal sound. More or less like Old Joe Clark I guess (the musical theory of which I've never figured out!). Amazing how this site can help!

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    formerly Philphool Phil Goodson's Avatar
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    Default Re: Wild Bill Jones chords?

    My jam group throws in a 2-beat G in the chorus right after "Wild Bill, Wild Bill". Just a little extra spice!
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    Mando accumulator allenhopkins's Avatar
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    Default Re: Wild Bill Jones chords?

    I don't play it the way Alison Krauss plays it; I do it on the banjo in "mountain minor" tuning, raising the second string from B to C. Her band does it in A, and the only chords are A and E7.

    What you have to realize is that the melody uses a flatted third, C instead of C#, so you're actually singing a "minor" melody against major chords. When I play it, say in G, I use a B flat instead of a B on the melody, and instead of the D7 chord I play an F note below the G at the end of the verse. If you look at Tyminski's guitar on the Union Station vid, he's only playing a G and a D chord, capped up two frets to be in the key of A.

    I got my version from an old Mike Seeger Vanguard album. It's on YouTube and Wild Bill Jones is at 35:23 on the vid. Can't claim to have his banjo expertise, but my version is based on what he plays.
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    Default Re: Wild Bill Jones chords?

    I'm a rank amateur when it comes to traditional music but I usually play it on the mandolin or autoharp in A5. I leave the third out of the chord altogether. On the mandolin, I play the simple two finger A chord, AEae. Occasionally I'll drop in a minor third note as a passing thing, very little sustain.

    This works for Reuben's Train as well.

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    Default Re: Wild Bill Jones chords?

    Quote Originally Posted by AlanN View Post
    Sounds like the key of A Major, to me. This tune has just the I with a passing V chord.
    Yup, easier to hear in ralph stanley, leftover salmon versions.

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    Default Re: Wild Bill Jones chords?

    Yup, playing a major chord against a melody that suggests the minor is one of the high points of Western civilization. That and twin fiddles.

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    Default Re: Wild Bill Jones chords?



    That, and Bill Monroe with Pete Rowan singing the Walls of Time will make folks head for the hills and pigs fly...no lie.

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    Mando accumulator allenhopkins's Avatar
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    Default Re: Wild Bill Jones chords?

    Now, I'll show my lack of music theory expertise, but isn't Wild Bill Jones in a type of pentatonic scale? As far as I can hear it, the second note of the scale (B if you're playing in the key of A) doesn't figure into the melody at all. Instead, there's a flatted third note (C instead of C#), and then the D and E notes. If the B appears, it's just as a passing tone, a quick run down from the C note, C/B/A... Instead of that run, I usually hammer on a flatted seventh on the way up to the A note, E/G/A.

    In over my head here, I'm afraid. It's a great song, in any case: wild and grim and cruel. I played Roots Night at a club here in Rochester week ago Thursday, and that was the first song I played. Used my long-neck Regal banjo, played it out of an F position (G "capoed down" two frets).
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    The Amateur Mandolinist Mark Gunter's Avatar
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    Default Re: Wild Bill Jones chords?

    Something similar on the Levon Helm Dirt Farmer track, False Hearted Lover - I'm pretty sure it's played in F# Major, but the melody is F#m pentatonic. https://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/s...ht=dirt+farmer
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    Default Re: Wild Bill Jones chords?

    It's just Wild Bill Jones chord, really. Although there's that brief visit to the 5


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    bon vivant jaycat's Avatar
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    Default Re: Wild Bill Jones chords?

    Here's a different take on the song, nothing to do with bluegrass, and with a few more chords:

    "The paths of experimentation twist and turn through mountains of miscalculations, and often lose themselves in error and darkness!"
    --Leslie Daniel, "The Brain That Wouldn't Die."

    Some tunes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa1...SV2qtug/videos

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    Default Re: Wild Bill Jones chords?

    What does Carlton Haney have to say about it....
    Timothy F. Lewis
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    Registered User Ivan Kelsall's Avatar
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    Default Re: Wild Bill Jones chords?

    Posting error !.

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    Default Re: Wild Bill Jones chords?

    Quote Originally Posted by AlanN View Post


    That, and Bill Monroe with Pete Rowan singing the Walls of Time will make folks head for the hills and pigs fly...no lie.
    Actually, meant Wayfaring Stranger, but same diff...

  23. #17
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    Default Re: Wild Bill Jones chords?

    Pharis and Jason Romero do an interesting version as well at www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZCuPVwhLM0 And she is playing major G chord (capoed up at the 4th fret to B Major) most of the way through. Funny though. I play it in A major (it appears....), but as soon as I finish playing melody and go to a chop A major chord to start singing a verse, I sense something that doesn't work smoothly. Once I start singing the melody, things seem to work again. But first hitting that A major? ouch! Maybe I just haven't reached that high point of Western civilization yet

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