During his truly colorful career, Taylor worked with, rubbed elbows, got breaks for, and influenced a number of popular acts in the 1960s, ’70s. Sam Taylor was a career singer-songwriter, guitarist, and session musician.
That whistle came from Sam Bluzman Taylor. A song that was truly greater than one’s self.Īs we know, that song was Otis Redding‘s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.” Most music historians would point out that Otis Redding never got to hear the final version of the song song with Steve Cropper’s electric guitar overdubs.Ĭropper was waiting for Redding to hear after returning from his now-fateful gig in Madison, WI.īut as sad as that is to hear, what perhaps is the saddest aspect of “Dock of the Bay’s” history is that the iconic whistle which outros the song is not Otis Redding’s. A song so beautiful and well-crafted that it would take more than one person to finish it. A song so great it would take his lifetime to discover it. Once upon a time, the greatest soul singer in the world wrote the greatest song the world would ever know. And then we practice putting it together.“The whistle at the end of “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” belongs to longtime musician Sam “Bluzman” Taylor, who was brought in to finish the final overdubs. I have an easy F chord that I show you, you’re welcome to use either that or the F bar chord.Įither way, we practice through every single section of this song intro, verse, chorus bridge outro. And we also have to deal with a barre chord, the F chord.
We do this just by using the first half, down down-up, on each of the two shapes within the measure. First of all, we’re splitting measures, meaning we have to split our strumming pattern among two chord shapes. Not too much needs to be said about that, but the bridge does have a couple things we need to take a look at. The chorus is very, very straightforward.
We talk about how to count it out, learn how to play it, and then we move on and learn the rest of the tune. It’s a 16th note pattern, it’s twice as dense as the other one. I don’t recommend using this one if it’s a solo performance but if you do play with a band, this pattern is the one that they use and it sounds great. Then we practice putting it together with the chord shapes.Īfter that, just for completion sake, I’ve included another strumming pattern that you hear the guitar playing on the recording. My biggest advice is to learn how to say it, that’s going to get you there the fastest if you are having trouble with stuff like this. It’s the most common strumming pattern ever. We talk a little bit about switching between them and how to practice that effectively and then we play them in order, using downstrokes only, just to get the counting right.Īfter that, we take a look at a strumming pattern. The lesson starts off with the chords needed to play the verse: G, B7, C, A7. But even then, I will show you a simpler way to do it so that will be possible.
Even if you’re fairly new to guitar, you could play each section of this song, except probably the bridge. It’s a classic strummer made up of some pretty simple components and a great opportunity to work on some lesser practiced chord switches, like from G to B7 for instance.