Two of my greatest musical discoveries that resulted from ex-romances: Kenny Loggins and Ani Difranco. The girl that first showed me this song, I don’t see her too much anymore. This song is still one of my favorites, and it’s the song that introduced me to the genius of Kenny Loggins. I never heard of Kenny Loggins as a child, so I probably wouldn’t have discovered Kenny’s music at all without the proper introduction. I’ve found learning songs to impress girls does more for my musical knowledge than I ever expected it to; it just so happens that this song fills a perfect slot in the technical progression of pluck and chuck guitar. It’s a happy ending to a generally sad story…but I digress. Onto matters of greater importance to the guitar world.
“Return to Pooh Corner” is another song that uses chuck strums, but it’s a little more advanced than “Life is Wonderful” so it should provide some new challenges. It comes off the album “Sittin’ In” which came out in 1971. That makes this the earliest mainstream track I know of that used this technique. I’m always looking for other examples if anyone wants to help me out in the history department ; ) In particular, I chose to transcribe a live recording that uses a slightly different right hand technique than the album version. In fact, it’s just the live version that does the pluck and chuck technique. This is but another example of a trend in Pluck and Chuck guitar; it is primarily a tradition of live guitar playing. If you don’t see it yet, I’m sure you will see it as you go further in the series. Here are all the links below.