This is a classic D Minor blues tune, a great song for several reasons: it has a great melody, it’s fairly easy to improvise over it, and it’s suitable for practicing arpeggios and scales too. The amount of effort I’ve put into this lesson will really help your ability to solo over other minor blues songs as well, like for example, The Thrill Is Gone and many others. You can also view this course as a “light step towards jazz”, if you will, although I’ve not gone deep into jazz theory at all.

I went down to St. James Infirmary,
Saw my baby there,
Stretched out on a long white table,
So cold, so sweet, so bare.
Let her go, let her go, God bless her,
Wherever she may be,
She can look this wide world over,
But she'll never find a sweet man like me.