Minor Blues 3

Usage

• Cold, Cold Feelin' - Albert Collins (1978)
• Stormy Mondays - Freddie King (in C) (1969)
• If Trouble Was Money - Albert Collins (in C) (1978)

Summary

This 12-bar progression has the character of a minor blues, but with a few notable twists in the usual layout. Bar 2 uses the quick change to the iv minor 7 before returning to the i minor 7 in bars 3 and 4, which gives the opening a little more motion than a static minor blues. Bars 5 and 6 stay on the iv minor 7, offering a familiar minor-blues colour and some room for melodic development, before bars 7 and 8 shift to a dominant I chord, adding a brighter, slightly more blues-jazz inflection. The turnaround is where the sequence becomes more distinctive: bar 9 goes to the V7 as expected, but bar 10 passes through the sharp 5/flat 6 before moving to the 5, and bars 11 and 12 continue with split-bar movement from 1 to 4, then 1 to 5, giving the closing phrase a busier harmonic rhythm that can encourage soloists to trace the changing contours rather than sit on one idea.