How To Play Night Life By Willie Nelson

Welcome! If you've been looking to learn how to play night life by Willie Nelson on the acoustic, then my instructions and demo video clip on this page should be beneficial.

The song Night Life was written by Willie Nelson but was first recorded by Ray Price back in 1960. In fact, Willie joined Price's band as a bass player and toured with his band known at time as the Cherokee Cowboys.

Oddly enough, Price released an album in 1962 called Nightlife and three singles from the album. But the song Nightlife was not one of those singles.

It wasn't until 1979 when Willie teamed up with Danny Davis And The Nashville Brass did he create a single of his own song. The song peaked at #20 on the US Country charts and #9 on the Canadian Country charts.

Did you notice something different about these two above album covers? The spelling on the Ray Price album is "Night Life" and on the Willie Nelson album it's "Nite Life". So if you conduct any searches for these on youtube, you'll get different results.





As you might have guessed if you listened to either of the versions above, there are more than 3 chords in this country song. The intro chords Im using in my version below are C, C#, Dm and G7 or a sliding Dm chord.

As you progress thru the verses you'll need to use a C, Gbm, C7, F, A#7, C, C#, Dm, G7 and repeat the intro. Towards the end of the verse I slip in an Fm, but that's not required.

                 

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When you reach the chorus ... "listen to what the blues are sayin'" your on C7 and then down to an F7 and finally back to a G. At the very end of the song I slide the C7 chord down a fret and then back into it.

Now as you'll notice in this section Im playing some riffs here which I fully explain in detail in my full version instructional tutorial (link is below). The url displayed in the video will bring you back to this site.

You can play this as follows if we take the intro as an example.
Dn - Up - Slap - Up - Dn (chord change)
Dn - Up - Slap - Up - Dn (chord change)
Dn - Up - Slap - Up - Dn (chord change)
Dn - Up - Slap - Up - Dn (chord change) (without the sliding Dm chord).

Or if you wish, you could play all down strokes (replace the Up with a Dn in the above line). But you'll find it flows much better if you choose the former pattern over the latter. Now when you get the chorus in the song, then you can move to an all down stroke pattern or Dn - pause Dn-Up-Dn-Dn pattern.

I hope you found this How To Play Night Life by Willie Nelson useful and informative. Feel free to tweet about it (bottom of the page), like it on Facebook from the "Like" button above or below as that is also most welcomed.

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How To Play Night Life By Willie Nelson

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