Goodbye Pork Pie Hatby Jeff Beck

Bass by Wilbur Bascomb

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TRANSCRIPTION to GOODBYE PORK PIE HAT by JEFF BECK, bass by WILBUR BASCOMBE

This transcription is Jeff Beck’s version of the Charles Mingus song “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.”

This song is a staple of Jeff’s live shows - if you’ve got the ‘Live At Ronnie’s’ DVD you’ll find a version of it there with Tal laying down the bass line. (If you don’t have it - and you like blues rock - why not?)

The song was originally written as a tribute to tenor sax player Lester Young.

Jeff Beck’s version in bass terms has probably been overlooked by the bass community because Joni Mitchell featured a version on her “Min-gus’ album and Jaco laid down an incredible bass line.

But Wilbur Bascombe’s bass line is pretty cool and worth checking out.

This song also represents an interesting bass challenge - not only is the time signature an ‘odd’ time (it’s in 6:8), but there’s a swing 16th note feel going on in the bass line. And copious 16th note triplets alongside those swing 16th notes. So an interesting rhythmic challenge.

Here’s how the bass line lays out:

Letter A - Bass In - 1.18Letter B - 1.31Letter C - 1.56Letter D - 2.08Letter E - 2.20

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Letter F - 2.33Letter G - 3.11Letter H - 3.24Letter I - 3.35Letter J: 3.49Letter K: 4.02

As always, the tab reflects my fingering system, hand size and scale length. If any of these differ for you - the probability of which is high - then feel free to change the tab positions around to suit YOUR playing system, hand size and bass length.

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