The 6 EASIEST Blues Heads You MUST KNOW

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To play jazz you must know some blues heads, I’m going to give you 6 of the easiest to learn and most often played at jam sessions and performances.

You could learn all of these in a short amount of time and start building your repertoire today. The other bonus with these tunes is that they are super easy to memorize and play without any sheet music which is something a lot of people struggle with.

C Jam Blues

C Jam Blues is a Duke Ellington Composition and exercise in simplicity and minimalism. The head, which is jazz lingo for the melody, has only 2 notes, Concert G and C which you would think of as the 5 and 1 of whatever key you are playing this in.

So on alto saxophone, which is a transposing instrument, you’d be in A so your notes are E and A. On tenor saxophone you’re in D, so your notes are A and D. 5 and 1. The melodic figure is repeated exactly the same way 3 times.

I used to use this tune when teaching young beginners. As soon as they could play 2 notes, they could play a blues head. I’d accompany them on piano and they absolutely loved what it felt like to play this in the first week of playing their instrument.

We always learned it by ear since the kids didn’t know how to read sheet music yet, and I never had a child that couldn’t learn this quickly on any instrument.

Sonnymoon for Two

Sonnymoon for Two is in the key of Bb and the melody only has 5 notes which happen to be the minor pentatonic scale of the key. Just as with C Jam Blues the melody figure is played exactly the same way 3 times.

So just learn that one minor pentatonic scale line and you’re done.

Bags’ Groove

Moving on, we have Bags’ Groove a composition by Vibraphonist Milt Jackson whose nickname was Bags.

It’s similar to Sonnymoon for Two in that the melody is built using the minor pentatonic scale of the key. Bags’ Groove is typically played in the key of F, but when you learn tunes this way, it becomes easy to transpose them into any key, you just need to know your minor pentatonic scale.

And once again we have a melody that is just a single phrase repeated 3 times. With those 3 blues heads we have already covered 3 different keys and these are the most commonly used keys when it comes to jam sessions. Concert Bb, F and C.

You want to have melodies ready at your fingertips in all 3 of these keys and you want to work on getting comfortable improvising over a blues progression in these keys as well.

Mr. PC

Next we have Mr. PC which is a minor blues by John Coltrane.

By the way the backing tracks I’m using for all of these examples are from bettertrax.com if you want great backing tracks to practice blues heads and lots of other standard tunes there’s a great selection over there. I put a link in the description with a discount code for you.

Mr. PC is our first melody that isn’t just a straight up repeat. Any 12 bar blues melody can be thought of as being divided into 3 parts and these typically follow a standard call and response scheme. The first part is the call, the second part is a repeat of that call, often with a variation, and the third part is a response.

Mr. PC is a perfect example of this. The first part is this minor scale melody on the i chord. The second part, the same melody is played but transposed up to the iv chord. And the third part is a response that uses the blues scale.

If you want to learn more about how the blues progression works, the chord symbols, the different scales and how to improvise on the blues, I have a course called Blues Foundation that teaches all of that stuff in a a really organized and clear way.

It’s an excellent place to start if you want to get into learning jazz and improvisation. I’ll put a link to that in the description as well.

Now’s The Time

Now’s the Time is one of Charlie Parker’s best known tunes. It’s a blues in the key of F and while the notes of the melody aren’t particularly difficult, the rhythm is quite complex and will be the biggest challenge.

Notice the variation between the first and second parts. The third part is the response and it’s different.

Similarly to C jam blues, the melody to Now’s the Time leans heavily on the 5 and 1 of the key but also adds in some chromatic notes.

Tenor Madness

The original recording of Tenor Madness is the only recording where we have the masters John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins playing together.

This melody in Bb follows that call, repeat, response pattern and while there is a lot of repetition the last part does have some chromaticism in it. This is a very typical example of a bebop line.

Tenor Madness is the trickiest melody out of this list, but with a bit of practice you will be able to learn and memorize it quickly. The best way to learn these melodies so that you memorize them quickly and they stay with you for the rest of your life is to put on the original recordings and learn them by ear.

This is also how you can build the most important skill for any musician which is ear training. But, if you don’t want to do that, you can do a google image search for the titles and you’ll find many examples of them written out.

Word of warning though, if you show up at a jam session and need the sheet music for C jam blues or really any of these tunes, you will not be making a very good impression on your fellow musicians. Furthermore, it’s essential to understand that music of any style needs to be listened to in order to learn it properly. Sheet music is only ever telling a limited part of the story.

BetterSax Shed

If you want access to all my free lessons on saxophone and learning to improvise head over to the BetterSax Shed to sign up. There are tons of lessons in there with pdf downloads, videos, and backing tracks all free, and as a bonus you’ll get my weekly newsletter which is awesome if you’re a saxophone player.

Now watch this video next to learn more about playing the blues.