Heartbreak Hotel

Description

The format of the song is basically your standard blues with the 1 4 and the 5 chord, but there is some really sweet guitar playing that you can incorporate into a couple of different styles of playing.

The thing about Elvis was that he always had a really great band backing him and this was of course a huge part of his success. The guys that played with him were sometimes heavy jazz cats that could really play so there's always a bit more to Elvis songs than what you may think.

One of the things we're gonna check out is the famous ensemble hits that happen in the beginning of every verse, it's such a simple idea but it just makes perfect sense to let the vocals open and then band just emphasize those hits.

There's a great rhythm part that happens over the A chord in the verse. It's really just jamming along nicely with the groove and sits perfectly in the arrangement.

There's an awesome solo that is just such a statement and a lesson in playing exactly what the song needs. Plenty of attitude in this one!

After the guitar solo the piano takes a few bars of soloing and here the guitar changes the rhythm to a unison part with the bass and it just adds great weight to the already really heavy jazz blues groove.