Old Joe Clark is one of those old time tunes that has become a Bluegrass standard. It doesn’t matter what Bluegrass instrument you play, you probably learned Old Joe Clark when starting out. More often than not, it’s played as an instrumental, but many groups have played (and recorded) it as a song with lyrics – and it has a lot of lyrics. In fact, it seems to have about 40 different verses!
I had never written the tune out before, and when I did I realized I was playing all the G-notes on the first strings as naturals (3rd fret), and all the G-notes on the 3rd course of strings as sharps (6th fret). Sounds fine to me, and you can try it that way if you want. But, I thought I’d be a little more grammatically correct when putting it on these pages.
This version is in A mixolydian. For those into building scales, the pattern for the mixolydian scale (or mode) is W-W-H-W-W-H-W.
A – B – C# – D – E – F# – G – A
Listen to Old Joe Clark for mandolin:
Old Joe Clark
Key of A Mixolydian
Download:
Music and Tablature
Just the Music
Just the Tab
