Vote for Blues or Traditional PIYW (June)

rsl12

The June Play It Your Way is due to be announced on April 16, so let's vote on what we will learn! The genre is "Blues or Traditional". The suggestions below came from the suggestion box:

How Long Blues (Leroy Carr)

Freight Train (Elizabeth Cotten)

West End Blues (Louis Armstrong)

12-bar blues (this suggestion is for anything that fits a 12-bar blues format)

Amazing Grace (Traditional)

You Are My Sunshine (J Davis & C Mitchell)

Vote below. You are not limited to just these suggestions, but if you add a new one, please be prepared to help me find links to sheet music if your selection wins!

PS. Feel free to submit ideas to the suggestion box for future PIYWs. Here's the tentative schedule for the next few months:

Announcement/Publication date:
(May 2026: Quarterly Recital)
Apr/Jun 2026: Blues or Traditional
May/Jul 2026: Classical
(Aug 2026: Quarterly Recital)
Jul/Sep 2026: Post-Classical PIYW
Aug/Oct 2026: Jazz or Ragtime PIYW

rsl12

To vote, please copy & paste this message and increase the number in front of each piece you are voting for. Multiple votes allowed. Add any new suggestions to the bottom of the list.

1 - How Long Blues
1 - Freight Train
1 - West End Blues
0 - 12-bar blues
1 - Amazing Grace
1 - You Are My Sunshine

I'm OK with learning any of these, though I think "12-bar blues" is a little too broad for PIYW. I definitely have a favorite among these: You Are My Sunshine. It can be done many different ways, including the bluesy way shown in the example recording.

TC3

2 - How Long Blues
1 - Freight Train
1 - West End Blues
0 - 12-bar blues
1 - Amazing Grace
1 - You Are My Sunshine

Only because I have "How Long" already recorded. 😃. Actually, I'd be willing to do a fresh recording, maybe a different take on it.

And if you don't mind me sharing the original, for the piano:

Simonb

3 - How Long Blues
1 - Freight Train
1 - West End Blues
1 - 12-bar blues
1 - Amazing Grace
1 - You Are My Sunshine

ShiroKuro

Simonb
3 - How Long Blues
1 - Freight Train
1 - West End Blues
1 - 12-bar blues
2 - Amazing Grace
1 - You Are My Sunshine

Given the support for How Long Blues, there’s probably no chance, but I really hope it’s Amazing Grace!

raagamuffin

3 - How Long Blues
1 - Freight Train
1 - West End Blues
1 - 12-bar blues
3 - Amazing Grace
1 - You Are My Sunshine

raagamuffin

I don't know if I'll participate, given that I've not really played any blues pieces; but in a perfect world, I'd know how to play a bluesy version of Amazing Grace 🙂
so please count my vote as a partial one !

rsl12

raagamuffin you don't have to play it bluesy! Even if a blues piece gets picked, you can play it however you like.

WieWaldi

4 - How Long Blues
1 - Freight Train
1 - West End Blues
1 - 12-bar blues
3 - Amazing Grace
2 - You Are My Sunshine

WieWaldi

Gentle reminder @rsl12 , when do you want to reach out for the reddit people? Do you want to include them already in the voting process, or only invite them to play and submit?

rsl12

WieWaldi Feel free to reach out! Your help is welcome!

diretonic

5 - How Long Blues
1 - Freight Train
1 - West End Blues
1 - 12-bar blues
3 - Amazing Grace
2 - You Are My Sunshine

So with a guitarist in the band did they really play this in Eb or is the playback a little slower than the recording or was the piano out of tune?

(Of course we can pick our key...)

TC3

diretonic It's my understanding that it's really in Eb, though that doesn't rule out variations in recording speed and/or piano tuning either. Eb was fairly common for old school blues and boogie players, the Eb minor pentatonic scale lies nicely on those black keys.

diretonic

TC3 It's my understanding that it's really in Eb, though that doesn't rule out variations in recording speed and/or piano tuning either. Eb was fairly common for old school blues and boogie players, the Eb minor pentatonic scale lies nicely on those black keys.

Well, I'm just displaying my ignorance here having only just discovered the song was composed, played and sung by Leroy Carr so, for sure, that makes complete sense - Eb definitely brings some pentatonic bluesy benefits (apparently Dr John was very keen on its next door neighbour, Ab). The plot thickens; might the guitarist have tuned down? Or is it insulting to suggest that blues guitarists can't play in Eb?

TC3

diretonic Haha! Scrapper Blackwell often played with a capo, plus those old blues guitarists would use various alternate tunings from song to song, so I'm sure he figured out how to roll with it.

diretonic

TC3 I'm going to have to expose even more ignorance. I wondered about a capo, but you can't capo down so wouldn't that mean fixing it 11 frets up? Wouldn't that sound horrible? (my head's spinning). Alternate tuning sounds likely.

TC3

diretonic Yah, there are all sorts of base tunings that you can combine with capo. E.g., open D tuning with capo at the first fret, open A tuning with capo at the 6th fret, etc. You name it, and those guys did it. 😃

diretonic

Apparently, says google, you can:...put the capo on the 1st fret then play D Chord Shapes: Play chords as if you are playing in the key of D major. Ingenious (apologies, I'm a bit slow these days).

TC3

And there's a picture with a capo!

WieWaldi

rsl12 I am not a reddit person. (Don't have an account)

Btw, has anyone from reddit joined PIYW, so far?