

Although it mainly consists of notes within the second and seventh frets, hammer-ons and pull-offs, slides, and some vibrato, it really fits the song as if it was meant to be. Knowing the version of the song I was playing was in the blues key of B, I knew I could use the blues scale to come up with my own version.īelow is the solo I came up with. Tried as I may, I could not find any tabs that had the solo. Deas-performing their electrified and upbeat version of that Beatles composition on the Howard Stern Show.Recently, I was jammin’ out on the guitar and decided to pick up on an old classic, Mustang Sally from Buddy Guy. There’s also a recent video of him and his band-drummer Johnny Radelat rhythm guitarist King Zapata bassist Johnny Bradley and keyboardist Jon E. And in 2017, on the soundtrack of DC Films’ Justice League, Clark’s version of The Beatles’ Come Together is featured. In 2015, Don Cheadle cast him in the biopic on Miles Davis, Miles Ahead, in which he played a member of Davis’ band. In 2014, Clark, lean, lanky, bearded and unconventionally good looking, also appeared in the Jon Favreau film Chef, performing two songs live with his band. Both are pure gold for blues enthusiasts. Refreshingly too, This Land is a long album, clocking in at 72 minutes and with 17 songs, including the bonus track, Did Dat, which has a distinctive hip hop feel in the background.Ĭlark’s studio albums are supplemented by two live albums-2017’s Live North America 2016, and 2014’s Gary Clark Jr Live. Yet these experiments don’t seem contrived and Clark and his band segue effortlessly between styles. The songs on This Land range from old-timey blues ( The Governor) to neo-soul and R&B ( Pearl Cadillac) to good old rock ‘n’ roll ( Gotta Get Into Something).
MUSTANG SALLY SONG BUDDY GUY FULL
That theme appears full on in the title track where Clark sings without mincing words: “ Paranoid and pissed off/ Now that I got the money/ Fifty acres and a model A/ Right in the middle of Trump country/ I told you there goes a neighbourhood/ Now mister Williams ain’t so funny/ I see you looking out your window/Can’t wait to call the police on me." Reggae, funk, hard rock, soul, and even hip hop styles emerge on the album where the theme, for a large part, is about a successful black musician who still faces the backlash of racism and discrimination. Blues purists may be a bit taken aback by This Land because unlike the music on his past albums, Clark pushes the envelope quite vigorously on it. In the article I mentioned, Remnick quoted the late American novelist and scholar Ralph Ellison’s description of the blues: “The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism." Listening to the title track in Clark’s new album, I was reminded of that description. And his vocals, occasionally hitting a falsetto high, make his songs always seem like he means every word that he sings. His riffs can remind you of a young and wild Buddy Guy but also of the late guitar genius, Stevie Ray Vaughan. But it is his live performances that showcase his talents the best: incredibly great guitar playing and deeply soulful style of singing.

Since then he has released two more studio albums, The Story Of Sonny Boy Slim in 2015, and his latest, This Land, which came out last month. Although he has been playing the guitar since he was 12 and doing gigs in his home-town, Clark burst upon the scene in 2012 when his first album on a major label, Blak And Blu, was released.
