Will You Be Loving Another Man

Hi everyone,
The song of the week is 'Will You Be Loving Another Man' in the key of A.

This classic bluegrass song was written by Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt during WWII, and then recorded after the war in 1946 by the original bluegrass band, Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys, which consisted at the time of Bill Monroe on mandolin, Lester Flatt on guitar, Earl Scruggs on banjo, Chubby Wise on fiddle, and Howard Watts on bass.


Recordings
Here is the original 1946 recording of Will You Be Loving Another Man, with Lester Flatt on lead vocal and Bill Monroe on harmony vocal during the choruses: key of A:
Will You Be Loving Another Man? - YouTube

Jason Homey & The Snake River Boys - key of A
WIll you be loving another men - Jason Homey and the Snake River Boys - YouTube


Jam Videos
Here are three youtube jam videos I have made for Will You Be Loving Another Man:
Jason’s YouTube Links – Alphabetical Listing – Parisology (cyberplasm.com)


Progression 
The chord progression for Will You Be Loving Another Man is:
1111
1155
1144
1511

(Prog. V2 on the Basic Chord Progressions handout.)

This is the same progression that is used to play Mama Don't Allow, She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain, The Crawdad Song, and When The Saints Go Marching In. 


Harmony
Notice the use of the b7 (flat-seven) note in the tenor harmony in the second measure of the third line of the choruses on the recordings. (That is, the measure that consists of the syllables '-turn will you be'). In the key of A this is G note. In the key of G, it would be an F note. The singing of the b7 note in the harmony part here turns the A chord being played at the time into an A7 chord, which leads the ear to want to hear a D chord next (transposed to the key of G, it would be a G chord being turned into a G7 chord leading to a C chord), and adds interest to the harmony part.


Breaks 
Notice on the Bill Monroe recording how each of the breaks differ from each other. The short mandolin intro break (half the length of a full intro break: it uses the last half of the progression) states the melody of the song in a simple manner, making use of drony-sounding double stops in connection with the main melody notes. 

In the first fiddle break, there is a lot more going on than what there was in the mandolin intro break, yet the melody is never lost sight of at any point in the break: its influence on the break is there from beginning to end. 

The banjo break zeros in on only the most essential notes of the melody and fills up the space between them with 8th notes that, for the most part, are notes that are part of the chord being played at the time. 

Finally, the second fiddle break, after its first four measures, contains almost no trace of the melody at all. The last 3/4 of this break is made up entirely of non-melody-based licks (which have gone on to become standard - one might say 'cliche' - bluegrass fiddle licks), fitted to the chord progression of the song. 

On the Snake River Boys recording, I start the song off with a full-length intro break on banjo that follows the melody of the song closely, but not slavishly. But, in my banjo break near the end of the song, I deviate more and more from the melody as the break goes along, taking a similar approach to my break as what Chubby Wise did in his second fiddle break on the Bill Monroe recording. The fiddle break on the Snake River Boys recording that follows that banjo breaks carries on where I left off, being very lick-oriented, rather than melody-oriented, and then the mandolin break that follows that fiddle break reels the song back in with a melody-oriented approach to break playing, which ended up making for a good segway into the final sung chorus of the song. (This specific arrangement for the song was not rehearsed in advance: we all just did our part in making it up as we went along, playing off of each other.)

The first fiddle break follows a more melody-oriented approach than the second fiddle break, and the first mandolin break follows a more lick-oriented approach than the second mandolin break. But, notice that in all of this, just like in the banjo breaks I played, the melody is never entirely absent in the lick-oriented fiddle and mandolin breaks, nor is the sung melody copied slavishly in any of the melody-oriented breaks. 


Song List
15 songs were played at last night's jam: 10 from the main list, 3 from the additional songs list, and 2 that are on neither list:

Cluck Old Hen - A
In The Pines - E
Leaning On The Everlasting Arms - A
Liberty - D
Lonesome Road Blues - G
Long Journey Home - A
Old Joe Clark - A
Will You Be Loving Another Man - B
Worried Man Blues - Bb
Wreck Of The Old '97 - D
Blue Ridge Cabin Home - A
I Can't Feel At Home In This World Anymore - G
Will The Circle Be Unbroken - G
Canaan's Land - Bb
You Ain't Goin' Nowhere - G

Happy Pickin',
Jason

Will You Be Loving Another Man Banjo tab.pdf
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Will You Be Loving Another Man Guitar tab.pdf
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Will You Be Loving Another Man Mandolin tab.pdf
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Will You Be Loving Another Man Melody in A.pdf
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