Ballin’ the Jack – fingerstyle guitar

I always liked this peppy tune from the ragtime era. Watch the video (below) of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly doing the song and dance number if you want to see and hear some classy talent. There are a bunch of videos of bands or others playing it, but they almost all start with the main theme, not the intro. I have a record of John James playing it on guitar but I never found any tablature so I decided to arrange it from the piano music. It has a weird chord progression. The intro is written in G and the main theme in B-flat. I had to transpose those to C and E-flat respectively. E-flat sounds like a bad key for guitar but most of the chords are C, F, G7, and B-flat. The intro is written with a repeat, but I skip the 2nd time through and go right into the main theme because the intro really isn’t very catchy.

 

 

Now for the real pros: