Crazy Creek, Marcel Ardans (Advanced)

Information on Crazy Creek courtesy of The Traditional Tune Archive.

Crazy Creek was originally composed by Tommy Jackson in 1979, you may know Tommy Jackson from his other classic fiddle tunes like Cherokee Shuffle. This tune is full of mode mixture, that is to say the song appears to be in the key of G major but then we keep seeing chords like Bb and Eb pop up. Chords that would make a lot more sense in the key of G minor. That means that improvising over this tune demands that you change from a major to minor tonality frequently. To make matters worse the tune is crooked as well, both the A part and B part have a couple extra measures hanging out at the end. For the uninitiated a listen to the Wyatt Rice version is well advised!

(Advanced guitar tabs generally include a very ornamented version of the melody, chord markings above (with extra extensions and variations), kick-offs, tags, and improvisation that drifts far from the melody at hand. Expect to come across hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides and more in all kinds of combinations as well as syncopation, triplets and other rhythmic challenges. These tabs are excellent if you want to get inside the head of another improviser and explore the choices that an advanced flatpicker might consider.)