Caravan

In memory of Bill Keith, whose recording of Duke Ellington’s Caravan on his 1976 album “Something Auld, Something Newgrass” introduced the tune to the world of bluegrass banjo and gob-smacked me when I first heard it.  The tab I have posted in the Tab Archive is based on Keith’s arrangement, and it is mostly the way I have played Caravan for the last few decades.  It is not a note-for-note copy of Keith’s version, but I did include a number of his nifty ideas, or at least my interpretation of them, that are worth examining.   Note that in live performance Keith would start the tune with some appropriate noodling, and I have included a fragment in the tab.  Note also that the Intro includes the banjo’s alternating between G7 and Ab Dim, whereas the backing instruments alternated between G7 and Ab7 throughout  Part A of the tune.  Finally, in his Outro to the tune Keith used a Keith tuner on the 4^th string to go from D to C.  If you don’t have a Keith tuner on your 4^th string, you can just end it with a C note on the 2^nd string 1^st fret.