Freddie King, Freddie King, Freddie King. The Texas Cannonball. As a guitarist, all I would want to be is Freddie King. Frankly, as a mandolinist, all I would want to be is Freddie King. A true genius and innovator of blues guitar who composed some of the most memorable and covered instrumentals.
This is part 1 of learning Hide Away, the quintessential Freddie King tune. I spent much time–even now–studying Freddie King’s compositional skills as well as his guitar technique using this tune. I also spent a lot of time learning Eric Clapton’s version when with John Mayall. That’s where the “woman tone” was invented of a Les Paul with tone turned down played through a cranked Marshall 45 watt combo.
E is the guitar blues key and if you’re going to play blues with guitarists, you should get familiar with the key. Hide Away lays out INCREDIBLY well for mandolin and should be a gateway to both playing in E as well as adapting guitar pieces for mandolin.
About the Tune
This lesson focuses on the first half (1st four bars of E and the 2 bars of A) getting up to measure 6. One of the big considerations here is that (a) keep that shuffle rhythm underneath everything you do and (b) your runs are in triplets. This is actually one of the things that always confuses me about fiddle tunes being in straight 8ths. Coming from the blues side of things, you’re theoretically playing 12 notes to the bar (4 triplets). You can seem to play pretty fast when really it’s a moderate temp and everything is laid out in triplets. Getting accustomed to playing blues triplets over a shuffle rhythm is essential to playing tunes like this.
Tablature for this blues mandolin instruction is available at my Patreon site; www.patreon.com/jimrichter
