Put this loose rendition of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" together for a live set at a small local venue. It's an early version, more a draft or work-in-progress than a polished cover, but it gets across what I was trying to do at the time. Originally in F, I transposed it to E for easier access to open strings and harmonics. The B section is based on B7 to A7, but I only hint at the melody there, preferring instead to play around with outlining the chords.
I have since added this tune, in the original key of F, to my jam session repertoire and recently called it when there were several horns on stage. It's a blast of a tune to play, both in a group and as a solo piece. For the latter, when I did the above performance (which was part of a set including several other tunes), I'd been experimenting with split dominant chords (for lack of a better term). I copped these voicings from watching Jim Hall videos comping for Art Farmer. Hall uses a tritone on strings 5 and 4, mutes 3, and adds upper extensions on 1 and 2. In the jam session version I use these split dominant chords more extensively (no recording available). For the solo set in the above video, I use them only briefly in the last minute or so.
The guitar is a PRS S2 Studio, with out-of-phase pickups, through my small grab and go all Mad Professor pedal board (including a compressor, a spring reverb and a delay) into a Roland JC-120 (part of the venue's backline).
I hope you enjoy. Thank you very much for listening!
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