Favourite blues chord progressions

From one of the blues ukulele books I´ve read I found a chord progression that I really like (8 bar blues):

A-A7-D7-Adim7 ¦ A-F#m-Bm7-E7-A-D7-A-Eaug7

Does anyone else have something different to the conventional lot that could be shared?

This is the progression I used for my cover of Billie Holiday's "Fine and Mellow", it's 12 bar with jazz flavoring.

C13 (3453) | F9 (2333) | C13 | C13
F9 | F9 | C13 | Em7 (4435) Ebm7 (3324)
Dm7 (2213) | G9 (4555) | C13 | G9 G7#5 (4536)

Here's a link to the vid: Fine and Mellow

Very helpful, thanks!

Right now, I'm playing Stars Fell On Alabama, and Someone To Watch Over Me. Have always loved Dream a Little Dream Of Me.

Stars Fell On Alabama

Someone To Watch Over Me

Dream A Little Dream Of Me

When playing in the key of C I like to use G7 F9 F13 C (one chord per beat) as a turnaround - at the end of a song I might follow it up with a tremolo measure of Csus and then a final C

F9 = 0313
F13= 0315

The turnaround measure is a lot easier than it sounds. You play the G7 normally, slide the fingers on the 1st and 3rd strings up one fret for the F9, drop the pinky on the 1st string at the fifth fret for the F13, then lift everything but the finger that is already on the 1st string, third fret for the final C. This was just something I stumbled on when I was messing around one day. I had to sit down and figure out what the "oddball" chords in the middle were afterward.

John

Digressing slightly, can anyone recommend a good blues ukulele book, to pick up a few progressions like these? Taking one on holiday with me seems a good way to expand my playing a bit.

Thanks for sharing, some interesting stuff so far and I'm learning a lot!

In terms of blues books, if you into finger picking, the Daddystovepipe stuff is my favourite.

sirwhale said:

Thanks for sharing, some interesting stuff so far and I'm learning a lot!

In terms of blues books, if you into finger picking, the Daddystovepipe stuff is my favourite.

Click to expand...

DaddyStovepipe has books now? I've loved his YouTube videos for a long time; I discovered him when I was going through my mandolin phase.

My two favorites are "From Four Until Late," by Robert Johnson and the 12-bar blues by Mike Lynch.

Here's a 12-bar blues tutorial by Mike

AnnaUK did an awesome version of "From Four Until Late."

great thread some good stuff to attempt here thanx

When I first started I did a beginners 12 bar blues in C tutorial, and to my amazement it's had over 24000 hits.
Now when I watch it I cringe, but it seems to have helped a few people!

Right now for me, the easiest is a 12-bar with A7, D7, E7 as shown by Rigk Sauer from RISA ukulele, here in his ukulele blues workshop:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13FPL5cYMGM

Another thing I've fooled around with is tuning the uke as

G-C-E-G

which with low-g as the 4th string gives me a C-major chord and a octave-G on the 1st string, and then you can easily do blues in C either with a guitar slide or by doing a flat barre chord, and if you want the bomba-dida on beats 2 & 4 as you are chunking, it's easy to add the Maj-7th to the flat chord shape

so the 1-4-5 or I-IV-V is open-4th fret-5th fret

I do not think it is possible to get simpler than this...

Maybe 9th and 13th chords might be simpler to finger in this tuning but I have not tried it yet...

Also with a re-tune an open F, G or or D chord is not far off, and easy to play with similar progressions...

I saw a YT video of a guy doing something like this and re-tuning mid song to change the open chord, but he had friction tuners so it was do-able inside of a single beat, but I can not remember who did it and I did not save the link...

lots of FUN with BLUES on uke!