Bar Room Blues is an exclusive series of video guitar lessons by Steve “Red” Lasner covering classic blues songs from historically great guitarists like B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, Buddy Guy, and many others. A new lesson will be released each week, so be sure to subscribe and check back often! Also, if you want more guitar lessons like these, be sure to check out Red’s Guitar Sherpa class.

“Bring It On Home to Me” is a 1962 soul song written and recorded by R&B singer-songwriter Sam Cooke. The song, about infidelity, was a hit for Cooke and has become a pop standard covered by numerous artists of different genres. It is one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. Cooke’s recorded version has Lou Rawls singing responses as an uncredited background singer.

This song is considered by many historians of soul music to be the founding, or at least definitive soul song, as it provides the formula that is still popular today. Cooke’s live version of this song that he performed in Miami, from the album Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963, can be seen as his personal vision of what soul music should be, owing to the texture and emotion conveyed through his vocals that night, and that were probably standard in Cooke’s near-nightly shows in primarily black clubs.

Read on for the full guitar lesson on how to play this classic blues song including video, tab, and jam tracks…

Guitar Lesson

Check out the tab and jam track below, and give this bar room blues song a try yourself!

Tab

Chart 1
Chart 2

Jam Track

Jam

Bar Room Blues is an exclusive series of video guitar lessons by Steve “Red” Lasner covering classic blues songs from historically great guitarists like B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, Buddy Guy, and many others. A new lesson will be released each week, so be sure to subscribe and check back often! Also, if you want more guitar lessons like these, be sure to check out Red’s Guitar Sherpa class.