How To Play Save The Last Dance For Me
By Emmylou Harris

On this page Im going to explain how to play Save The Last Dance For Me by Emmylou Harris. When I say "by Emmylou Harris" of course I mean in her style,as she herself did not write this song.

Save The Last Dance For Me was written by a white blues singer from the 1950's by the name of Doc Pomus. He teamed up with a pianist named Mort Schuman to write this song which was recorded first by Ben E King with the group The Drifters.

Pomus and Schuman compiled many great songs including, Suspicion, Teenager In Love, Surrender, Little Siter and others, many of which Elvis recorded.

Because Pomus had Polio and used crutches to get around, it's believed he wrote the song for his wife. She was an actress and dancer on broadway. She was encouraged to have fun on the dance floor when they went out to socialize, but dont forget who's taking you home and in whose arms you're goona be.



The Drifers released the song late in 1960 and had a #1 hit on both the pop and R and B charts with the song. Ben E King sang lead on the song. But in May 1960 he left The Drifters due to a contract dispute,and embarked on his solo career as Ben E King (his real name was Benjamin Earl Nelson).

In 1983 country singer Dolly Parton took the song to #3 on the country charts and to #45 on the Billboard Top 100. The album was called The Great Pretender and featured all cover songs from the 1950's and 60's. Dolly usually only recorded her own songs but this album is unique and peaked at #7.

The album is a bit of a collectors item as it was never released as a CD. It's only available on vinyl or as a casette.

In 1960 R and B singer Damita Jo released a version along with Harry Nilsson and The Defranco Family, both in 1974. And crooner Micheal Buble had his take on the song back in 2005. He released two versions. A remixed version and one off of the album for radio.

In the right hand menu is a clip from a concert held at Wembley Stadium in the 1980's. Ive listed to a few live performance clips and this one is the best IMHO.



This song I like to play with Capo on the 3rd fret as you can see. The chords are pretty simple G, D, D7, G7, C and then we do a key change to E7 and A, Bm, A7 and the D chord again.

As you'll notice the Bm minor is a bit of a walking Bm on the G string as I slide down one fret at a time on that string. The ending chord is a variation of the A7 chord two frets past the double dots on the G string, and the bottom 3 strings 1 fret further up.

                 

Free Tab Available


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Full Tutorial - .wmv format - 8 min 58 sec

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You have two options when playing rhythm on this song. In the video I'm using a rake pattern by playing Note-Dn-Up-Note-Up-Dn-Up. Or you can use a bit of a shuffle pattern by playing Note-Dn-Up-Dn-Up-Note-Up-Dn-Up. These patterns along with the picking riffs are fully explained in the full instructional tutorial available from the link above.

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