Rock and Roll music is rooted deeply in the blues and some of the greatest rock songs ever are, after it is all said and done, the blues. When we think of the blues we conjure up images of broken down dreams, love gone wrong or a host of calamities of the soul.
But that does not mean the blues have to be bleak, the music itself can be bright, uplifting even hopeful, just like the featured song this week, Hey Now Baby by Professor Longhair. Recorded sometime between 1949-1953, Hey Now Baby was finally released in 1972 on the album, New Orleans Piano by Professor Longhair, the album is listed as number 220 on Rolling Stone Magazine’s top 500 albums of all-time (2003). Hey Now Baby is a blues song that reveals the anguish of a spurned lover, Longhair wails for his baby’s love; explaining, “I say I love you baby, I really do, If you don’t believe me baby, they ain’t nothin I can do.” The vocal is haunting, a howl in the wind, because you see, he still wants her even though she rejects him, that’s the blues! The power of this song is in the fact that we don’t feel sorry for him, the melody is bright and optimistic and the listener is swept away in a funky, boogie-woogie. Professor Longhair’s pioneering style is evident here, as his right and left hands seem to be working against each other yet they create a harmonic unity of joyous spontaneity inherent in the ‘New Orleans’ sound he helped create. Hey Now Baby appears on over 15 records and most recently was released by Alligator Records on a disc titled, Professor Longhair (2010). Unknown and mostly forgotten by the end of the 1960’s, Professor Longhair resurfaced in the early 1970’s to become an icon in the history of Rock and Roll, influencing countless musicians and earning the admiration of thousands of fans.
Hey Now Baby has a rolling New Orleans baseline against a syncopated right hand which is essential to playing blues and rock.
Written by Henry Roeland Byrd
Administered by Don Williams Group
All Rights Reserved Used by Permission
Learn how to play rock and blues piano from one of rock’s greatest. Chuck Leavell, legendary keyboardist for The Rolling Stones, The Allman Bros, Eric Clapton, John Mayer, and more.
Practice Schedule
Second Week: Add the Exercise and Improvisation to your practice. Remember, many blues-rock songs have a very similar structure. Learning this song will open you up to hundreds of similar songs!
The above video is a preview from the lesson. Every lesson includes a groove chart that teaches how to play the song with a rock band, a rock theory and dexterity exercise, an improvisation, and a full arrangement of the song itself. All lessons include instructional videos as well as the sheet music.
Practice Schedule
Second Week: Add the Exercise and Improvisation to your practice. Remember, many blues-rock songs have a very similar structure. Learning this song will open you up to hundreds of similar songs!
The above video is a preview from the lesson. Every lesson includes a groove chart that teaches how to play the song with a rock band, a rock theory and dexterity exercise, an improvisation, and a full arrangement of the song itself. All lessons include instructional videos as well as the sheet music.
Practice Schedule
Second Week: Add the Exercise and Improvisation to your practice. Remember, many blues-rock songs have a very similar structure. Learning this song will open you up to hundreds of similar songs!
The above video is a preview from the lesson. Every lesson includes a groove chart that teaches how to play the song with a rock band, a rock theory and dexterity exercise, an improvisation, and a full arrangement of the song itself. All lessons include instructional videos as well as the sheet music.
Practice Schedule
Second Week: Add the Exercise and Improvisation to your practice. Remember, many blues-rock songs have a very similar structure. Learning this song will open you up to hundreds of similar songs!
The above video is a preview from the lesson. Every lesson includes a groove chart that teaches how to play the song with a rock band, a rock theory and dexterity exercise, an improvisation, and a full arrangement of the song itself. All lessons include instructional videos as well as the sheet music.
Practice Schedule
Second Week: Add the Exercise and Improvisation to your practice. Remember, many blues-rock songs have a very similar structure. Learning this song will open you up to hundreds of similar songs!
The above video is a preview from the lesson. Every lesson includes a groove chart that teaches how to play the song with a rock band, a rock theory and dexterity exercise, an improvisation, and a full arrangement of the song itself. All lessons include instructional videos as well as the sheet music.
Practice Schedule
Second Week: Add the Exercise and Improvisation to your practice. Remember, many blues-rock songs have a very similar structure. Learning this song will open you up to hundreds of similar songs!
The above video is a preview from the lesson. Every lesson includes a groove chart that teaches how to play the song with a rock band, a rock theory and dexterity exercise, an improvisation, and a full arrangement of the song itself. All lessons include instructional videos as well as the sheet music.
Practice Schedule
Second Week: Add the Exercise and Improvisation to your practice. Remember, many blues-rock songs have a very similar structure. Learning this song will open you up to hundreds of similar songs!
The above video is a preview from the lesson. Every lesson includes a groove chart that teaches how to play the song with a rock band, a rock theory and dexterity exercise, an improvisation, and a full arrangement of the song itself. All lessons include instructional videos as well as the sheet music.
Great lesson! Some great licks and riffs here to incorporate into ‘Tipitina’ or vice versa or mash the two songs together and come up with something awesome.
Is there a secret to getting the right hand down on bar 13. I can’t seem to figure it out.
Great question!!! You’ve homed in on one of the most challenging parts of playing rock piano. And it’s also what separates the great rock pianists from all rest. The section you are asking about includes a three-note repeating melody pattern over a 4-count bass line. This is called a cross-rhythm. Cross-rhythms are common to classical music ( Chopin, Brahms, Debussy) but Professor Longhair challenges the classical approach to cross-rhythms by not just having a melody pattern that doesn’t line up with the bass line, he also syncopates them both. Professor Longhair was the Michael Jordon of rock piano. He had the coordination of a superb athlete.
One approach to learning cross-rhythms is by tapping them out on your knees. This will help you to focus only on the rhythm before complicating things further by introducing the notes. Begin by tapping the beat on your knee with your left-hand. Don’t tap the actual bass line, just a four-quarter note beat. Tap along with a metronome. Now add the right hand. This will be relatively easy because you are tapping repeating 16th notes over a steady four-note beat. Once you have this mastered, now comes the challenge. Continue tapping with both hands but ACCENT THE FIRST NOTE of each phrase in the right hand. For this passage that would be all of the C-Eb dyads in the measure. Try keeping the left hand constant while only accenting the beginning notes of each phrase in the right hand.
Next, count aloud “1-ee-and-aa, 2-ee-and-aa, 3-ee-and-aa 4-ee-and-aa” while continuing tapping and accenting. Don’t go any faster than you can while still doing it correctly. The speed will come with repetition. When you can tap the beat in your left-hand while counting aloud and accenting the beginning of each three-note phrase, you can now begin tapping the actual rhythm of the left hand. Don’t try playing this on the piano until you can get everything happening at the same time on your knees; 1) counting aloud, 2) tapping the left hand rhythm, and 3) tapping the right-hand rhythm while accenting the beginning note of each three-note phrase.
Let us know how you do. Take it slowly.
Anyone else have any other suggestions?
I am enjoying the lesson for Hey Now Baby. I’m still on level 5–not rushing it. Based on my experience with Tipitina, I’m confident I’ll get to level 7 eventually. One of the great things, too, about Professor Longhair songs is that they sound great at slower tempos.
Right now my greatest difficulty is in measures 31-32 where the fingers 4 & 5 are used. This causes me to tense up the other fingers for some reason. So maybe I need to turn my hand or otherwise adjust it, or change fingering and maybe use a crossover? Any suggestions?
We’re glad you’re enjoying the site. Thank you for the question. The 4 & 5 fingers are usually the weaker fingers so it isn’t uncommon to find passages where they are used extensively to be more difficult. In our music teachers’ forum Chuck spends some time showing the exercises he uses to strengthen his fingers.
He also suggests doing the exercises in Hanon.
You can check out Chuck’s video here:
nyc-rock-keyboard-workshop
I love this song. It has a great groove to it.
Yeah, Professor Longhair pretty much invented groove playing. Enjoy!
I’m enjoying the lessons immensely but I have a query. Can you tell me what runs your pianist does at the end of Joy boogie and hey now,
They’re shown on the preview lesson but on the purchased ones they just end on the seventh chords mostly.
Collin is just arpeggiating the dominant seventh chords up and down the keyboard. For Joy Boogie he uses G7 and for Hey Now he uses C7. You can go to the “Tools & Resources” to find the chords.
The way you play the first part of the song in level 7 is exactly the way I learned a generic norleans groove…later I have no idea why but I decided to play it to Randy Newman’s “you can leave your hat on”…singing along with it sounds great, nasty and unexpected, but I could never work an improv instrumental chorus in…just way too syncopated for me to figure out…I am hoping this lesson will make that
happen!
Nikalette,
You might want to check out the Groove Chart. That will give you the basic New Orleans groove which you can comp with. Then check out the Improv which will give you some riffs that you can work into the groove. The video will show you how to get some improvising going over the syncopated groove. Keep rockin!
Jagger,
Your left hand groove is excellent. That is a difficult groove to get down and you nailed it. Have you tried improvising over it yet? Try working with notes from the C blues scale in your right hand while keeping that steady New Orleans groove going in your left.
Awesome job!
I love the feel to this song! The grace notes make it challenging….