Bob Evans

Lord Randal is one of the most well-known of the English murder ballads. It is the story of a young man who has lunch with either his girlfriend or, in the version I sing, his stepmother. He returns home not feeling well and through a series of probing questions from his mother realizes he has been poisoned. It’s sort of like CSI 1700′s style.

My arrangement is an adaptation of Martin Carthy’s version from his 1972 album Shearwater. Carthy was one of my guitar idols in the early ’70s. I loved both his unique guitar style and his approach to interpreting traditional songs. On Lord Randal he used a dulcimer as the main accompaniment instrument and I was drawn to how it drove the story along. While note trying to emulate a dulicmer, I did try to capture the energy of that accompaniment part in my guitar arrangement arranged.

Originally, back in 1973, I arranged and played this using Carthy’s tuning of DADEAE. However, these days I don’t use open tunings that often. So I have adjusted the guitar part to be played out of Drop D tuning.

• Purchase:  Free download
• Tuning: Drop D (DADGBE)
• Key: Dm
• Capo: 2nd Fret
• Transcription: Lord Randal Transcription
• Audio: Lord Randal MP3
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The Maple Leaf Rag was Scott Joplin’s first and biggest hit. This piano piece was originally published in 1899 and put ragtime music at the forefront of American popular for the next ten years or so. Ragtime music enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in the early 1970′s, through recordings of Joplin’s work by artists like Joshua Rifkin and Dick Hyman. The use of his music in the soundtrack The Sting, with the accompanying hit single “The Entertainer”, really put it in the public’s eye.

Maple Leaf Rag was one of the first ragtime piano pieces I arranged for guitar. That was back in the early 1970′s at a time when, coincidentally, like a number of other guitarists around the world, I was heavily into arranging the classic piano rags by composers like Joplin, Joseph Lamb, James Scott and others for the “six string piano”.

But after a while “the mood passed” for me. I haven’t touched any of those pieces for years. Until recently, that is. A couple of years ago I started rediscovering this music and the pleasure of playing these arrangements again. And so here I am at it again. What goes around comes around I guess.

• Free download
• Transcription:
• Tuning:  Standard
• Key:  A
• Capo:  2nd Fret

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• Free download
• Transcription:
• Tuning:  Standard
• Key:  A
• Capo:  None

Yikes! We’re already half way through December. I figure I better get this out before I slide right through the holiday season into the new year.

Lyrically, Santa Claus is Coming to Town has to be one of the creepiest tunes in the Christmas song catalogue. Sung to a beguilingly cheerful tune, the lyrics are an Orwellian view of Christmas, where Santa is a punitive Big Brother. He monitors everything you do and judges you accordingly. He knows all about you: when you’re happy, sad, good, bad, awake, asleep … everything! He is watching YOU.

Phew! Listen to this song a couple of times and it won’t be the anticipation of presents on Christmas morning that makes it difficult for you to get to sleep at night.

Fortunately, this is an instrumental version of the song. You don’t have to be worried about a seasonally induced dose of paranoia while listening to this arrangment.

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• Free download
• Transcription:
• Tuning:  Standard
• Key:  A
• Capo:  None

If ever there was a Christmas carol that should be played on the guitar, it would be Silent Night. After all, according to numerous recountings of the songs humble origin, it was first performed at the Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, 1818, with the musical accompaniment coming not from the church’s organ, per standard operating procedure, but from Fr. Mohr’s guitar. In the almost 200 years since its creation, it has become a central piece in the Christmas canon.

Stories abound about the reason the organ wasn’t functioning: mice had chewed the bellows, the organ had broken down and there was no organ technician who lived close by to repair it, and so on. But the role of the guitar in its composition and first performance remains consistent.

Gruber’s autograph of the song with guitar accompaniment appears above.

This is my humble arrangement of the tune. You’ll find it is a realitvely straightforward arrangement of this uber classic, although it does shift positions up and down the neck.

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