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6 Free Guitar Lessons to Fuse Your Jazz, Blues, and Boogaloo Playing

Sean McGowan

Grant Green, Kenny Burrell, George Benson, Wes Montgomery — these legendary guitarists made their claim to fame in the 1960s playing a soulful, groovy style that combined jazz, blues, gospel, and R&B.

The downscaled organ trio format combined with simple chord changes allowed for fervent, impassioned solos. This is why the encompassing style of jazz, blues, and boogaloos is as fun to play and is as popular today as it was decades ago. In his “Lead” edition of Jazz, Blues & Boogaloos, Sean McGowan takes you through this timeless era so you can jazz up your blues, and blues up your jazz.

Here are six free jazz, blues, and boogaloo video guitar lessons from the course. For the full course, check out Sean McGowan’s Jazz, Blues & Boogaloos: Lead on TrueFire!

Jazz Blues Guitar Lesson – Oatmeal: Overview


Download the tab & notation for this jazz, blues, and boogaloo guitar lesson

Here’s another funk groove, in the classic style of the James Brown band. There are essentially two tonal centers, and this solo will give you ideas of what to play over static chords such as pentatonic and pentatonic substitution, chromatic side-stepping, and blues lines using a rapid-fire ostinato figure. We’ll also explore a few ideas to create “outside” lines using patterns in different intervallic combinations.

Jazz Blues Guitar Lesson – Oatmeal: Performance


Download the tab & notation for this jazz, blues, and boogaloo guitar lesson

Follow along with my performance so you can get a feel for how it sounds all together.

Jazz Blues Guitar Lesson – Oatmeal: Breakdown


Download the tab & notation for this jazz, blues, and boogaloo guitar lesson

Now, let’s explore some of the ideas you can use in a solo over a relatively static progression.

Jazz Blues Guitar Lesson – Bring It to a Texas Boil: Overview


Download the tab & notation for this jazz, blues, and boogaloo guitar lesson

This song features a classic, “Texas” style blues shuffle. I’ve created some variation in the progression by adding two bars of 3/4 in the turnaround. For the solo, we’ll look at how to combine classic Texas blues language with contemporary jazz concepts such as dominant diminished, altered extensions, and triad pairs.

Jazz Blues Guitar Lesson – Bring It to a Texas Boil: Performance


Download the tab & notation for this jazz, blues, and boogaloo guitar lesson

There are some tasty licks in here. See if you can follow along and feel that pocket rhythm for when we break this down.

Jazz Blues Guitar Lesson – Bring It to a Texas Boil: Breakdown


Download the tab & notation for this jazz, blues, and boogaloo guitar lesson

All jazz, particularly bebop, is rooted in the blues. Since we’re playing in an organ trio format here, you can get away with playing some things that you might steer away from if you were playing in a larger ensemble.

Digging these free jazz, blues, and boogaloo guitar lessons? Check out Sean McGowan’s full course, Jazz, Blues, and Boogaloos: Lead.

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