In this video, Jim Pankey shows us how to play the Man of Constant Sorrow (also known as ‘I am a Man of Constant Sorrow’). The song was first published by Dick Burnett in 1913 and has been covered by dozens of artists including Bob Dylan.
In 2002, it won the Grammy for Best Country Collaboration after being featured in the 2000 film ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ soundtrack.
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Video Text:
0:00:01. –>
hey Jim Pankey here I had two requests for this one and you know honestly I thought I’d already done it and evidently I have it and it’s a popular tune a lot of folks are going to ask you for it it’s man of constant sorrow it was pretty popular a few years back from almost seventeen years ago and the movie o brother where art thou I learned it even way before that from the Stanley Brothers recordings and so I’m just going to give you a basic run through of it I do it out of key of G so standard tuning and it’s gonna be a whole lot of forward rolls so just follow along it’s short does one little thing and then it then it just does it again and you’ll be able to play it alright so we’re gonna start just that’s our lead in four three two you can hammer or slide we’re gonna
0:01:04.9 –>
slide from 2 to the 3 on the second string and it’s going to be a forward roll it’s it’s just a lot of fun rolls [Music] and then you’re gonna play a single note that’s your C note second string first fret and then you’re gonna play the third string at the third fret and you’re going to bend it you’re just gonna pull it and you hit your third string open so it’s all forward rolls so here’s what you got
0:02:05. –>
[Music] and then you’re gonna do that band again and then one and then get a C chord forward roll and then open second string and then second string back down at the first fret so and then I’ll slide this up to a D you don’t have to hold the whole D just take that partial C and you slide it up to the D forward roll and then we’re gonna do a forward and reverse indexes here first fret and then
0:03:04.1 –>
we’re gonna do a little bit [Applause] [Music] and then we need a tag on in so we’re just gonna put your index finger down and this is a similar tag that we’ve done we’re going to do it at the third fret so here’s what you’ve got [Music]
0:04:32.3 –>
and so you got all that now I’ll do it a little more it’s fortunately it’s not a fast song is so just medium tempo so here we go [Music]
0:05:12. –>
[Applause] so there you go man of constant sorrow be sure to subscribe to check out the links here there wherever I happen to stick them and we’ll see you next time