The third verse that I'm going to show you for Reverend Gary Davis is hesitation blues features this really cool stop time with chords. Let me play it for you again and then we'll break it down. So it gets to the end of the previous first into the F. So what he's doing there, he's sliding into a C, played on the fifth fret, this is like an a shape C. So we've got an A chord here, at the second fret, we move that to the fifth fret, first finger getting the second, third and fourth strings and we've got a C, so we're sliding in from the fourth fret. And then downstroke came with the thumb and from there, we're going to add A diminished and the way I make this chord is I put my first finger on the A, which is at the seventh fret of the fourth string, my second finger on the seventh fret of the second string, my ring finger on the eighth fret of the third string and my pinky on the eighth fret of the first string.
That picking motion, I'm going to get the fourth string and the third string with my thumb coming down. Then I'm gonna upstroke with my first finger and then downstroke with my thumb, so it's a down up down motion with the thumb and the first finger alternating, so we've got this. Then he's gonna wait a beat and head into the single string round. And you can pick that with your thumb pick or use your first finger and the thumb pick however you want to do it. The notes you're playing, you're starting from the eighth fret of the first string, the fifth fret to the eighth fret of the second string and then getting an open first string. Check the tab on the first finger on the first fret of the second string.
Second finger on the second fret of the third string, so the whole motion with the thumb, I'm going to do this into the F, F CT. Check the tab to see which notes you're gonna get there. And then right here, we're back into our F Now I've tapped out for you kind of a really cool little bass thing that Reverend Gary Davis sometimes used in the song and this is from the instrumental version that I told you that I used to have. And in that one he cut he starts the verse with this but you could also do it here and the stop time and this is what I tapped out for. So you could do something like this. That's something Reverend Gary Davis would do a lot in mixing these bass string runs and single string runs with the chords and the alternating bass and all kinds of stuff.
The reason I'm showing this to you is not to not to intimidate you or scare you away. But if you start playing around with stuff like this, it may be rough going at first. But eventually you'll start developing that coordination with your first finger and your thumb picking single string notes, which is one of the funnest parts of playing this kind of guitar. So there you have all the verses that I'm going to show you with Reverend Gary Davis, hesitation blues, there are a lot more. In fact, any version you listen to he plays tons of different stuff. And maybe using these ideas that I've shown you here you can figure some of this stuff out for yourself.
And if not, there's a lot of great instructional videos out there on on Gary Davis style and this song in particular