How To Play “Stormy Monday” On Guitar
One of the top songs for all blues guitarists to learn is the great T-Bone Walker classic Stormy Monday. This is a song every blues guitarists should have in their repertoire, especially if they want to go to a jam.
And to play this song correctly, requires knowing a few more chords. You’ll need to know some 6th and 9th chords to play it right… plus some easy minor chords. Check out this page to get those chords down. And the fact is, there are many ways to play the song. Even T-Bone didn’t play it the same way every time. So if you want to have all possibilities covered learn them all.
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And the version that first turned everyone on to the song was probably the Allman Brother’s version from Live at The Filmore East. That version is a little closer to the second video you see here.
In the 2nd video TrueFire.com instructor Red Lasner provides a video of how to play the song. I think he does miss one cool change that T-Bone actually played and is the epitome of his style…
When Red first comes back to the 1-chord on the 3rd bar, T-Bone does a fancy little slide up and down around that chord. It’s really essential T-Bone changes that if you want to really learn T-Bone, you must include in the song. Here’s a video that shows how T-Bone played it. Now there are no live videos where you can see how T-Bone played the song, so this will have to do for now.
By the way… In this video. T-Bone is playing in G. Red’s version is also in G, so hopefully that will get you started playing along.
And here’s another video that gets into even more detail about the variations that many people play.
Between all of these videos, I think you have Stormy Monday covered, and may even be able to teach your guitar playing friends a thing or two about the song. Enjoy!
