For this month’s Crossroads, John Wheatcroft shines a light on the chordal mastery of a guitarist who assimilates sophisticated jazz harmony into his stunning blues style.
Robben Ford is one of the most significant electric guitarists active anywhere in the world today. For over 50 years he has maintained a successful solo career as a blues singer, guitarist and composer, with a stream of successful releases to his name. Along with this, Robben had an illustrious career as sideman to the stars, with credits that include Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, George Harrison, Little Feat, Michael McDonald and, believe it or not, Kiss. In recent years he’s also had great success with collaborative projects alongside fellow guitar greats Larry Carlton, Mike Landau and John Scofield, and he’s also enjoyed considerable success as a producer.
Ford’s prowess as a soloist is legendary, with a style immersed in both blues and jazz and with a tone to die for. However, today we turn our attention to Robben’s equally impressive chords and comping, specifically his ability to seamlessly integrate jazz chord voicings into a blues context, which he first discovered when working with the blues harp legend Charlie Musselwhite, when he was still in his teens. Robben was working through Mickey Baker’s jazz chord book and found that these voicing all worked well in a Chicago blues context.
The examples that accompany this article are divided into eight sections. We kick things off with a contextualised chordal ‘lick’ that outlines the changes between the I7, IV7 and V7 in the key of Bb, full of colourful extensions and alterations. Next up, we explore 7th chords on the top four strings using voice leading
