Level: 2
Tuning: Standard

Written in 1923 by Jimmy Cox, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" was made famous when Bessie Smith's recorded it with a 5-piece band in 1929, just before the stock market crash. One of the songs most associated with her, it has also been a hit for musicians of many decades in many genres: blues, jazz, rock, folk and soul music. We'e talking Count Basie, Eric Clapton, Leadbelly, the Chad Mitchell Trio, Sam Cooke, Spencer Davis Group, Nina Simone, Sidney Bechet, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, Louis Jordan and Eric Von Schmidt and the list goes on. It was very popular during the folk era of the late 1950s, early 1960s. In this key-of-C version, the backup guitar goes back and forth between Travis-style picking, with an alternating thumb-bass, and the arpeggio figures seen in, for example, bars 17-19. During the solo, there is some monotone thumb-bass (thumping away on the root note of each chord) and some alternating bass. Except for the moveable F and D9 chord shapes, it's all played with first position chords.