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50 Jazz Blues Licks is an exclusive series of video guitar lessons by David Hamburger covering the jazz blues styles of historically great guitarists like Geoge Benson, Kenny Burrell, Joe Pass, and many others. A new lick will be released each week, so be sure to subscribe and check back often!

I bought this record my freshman year of college, which means it formed part of my basic aesthetic DNA, along with Mike Bloomfield’s Between the Hard Place and the Ground, Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks and my impeccably cool housemate’s collection of Delmark, JSP and Alligator LPs. So much so that when, a couple of years later, a roommate of mine got a reel-to-reel and we figured out how to run off half-speed, octave-down copies of our favorite records, “Good News Blues” was the first thing I took and transcribed, using brute force and sheer determination to get all five choruses of Joe Pass’ solo down on paper. Since then, I will admit, I have had a tendency to forget how amazing Pass is. I love his duets with Ella Fitzgerald, and I heretically find I generally have better things to do than listen to his solo Virtuoso recordings, but whenever I put him on in a band setting playing the blues I’m floored all over by the clarity of his sound and ideas. As my buddy Bret says, “his lines sound like he’s worked out every last detail – but he hasn’t worked out anything.” For example, check out how he gets from the I to the IV in this lick.

Read on for the full guitar lesson…

Video Guitar Lesson

If you like these guitar lessons, be sure to also check out Frank Vignola’s Jazz Up Your Blues, which showcases essential jazz blues vocabulary and techniques, Mark Stefani’s Jazzed Blues Assembly Lines, which takes you on a sonic learning tour through the funky rhythm and blues stylings and fretboard concepts of top jazz blues players, and of course all of David Hamburger’s courses.