Cry Me A River (Julie London) Guitar Lesson with TAB

In this guitar lesson, you get TAB for how to play all sections of Cry Me A River on just one guitar. There are so many chords!

Cry Me A River | TAB

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just have a simple chord chart and come up with a bunch of variations, just like Barney Kessel does, seemingly in his sleep?

I’m right there with you my friend, but perhaps we should just look at the TAB and learn from what he did?

What I’ve done here for you is transcribe what Barney did, but since he’s got a bass player and we don’t, I’ve modified the chords here and there to include the bass. This makes it work better on one guitar with a singer.

Here’s the intro.

I suggest you hold the guitar up high, with the neck close to your ear so you can manage that initial stretch!

Here’s verse 1, it starts with what feels like a backward Ain’t No Mountain High Enough climb, I love it!

I could write a dissertation on these chords but it’s probably better if you spend your time just playing the TAB than reading it. Let me just point out a few things.

The C#m7b5 could be seen as an A9. Most chords are there to create minimalistic movement, like Bm7 – E7b9 – Ealt – C#m7b5.

Let’s look at verse 2, it’s played in a slightly different way.

The last bar is new, the rest is the same chords, just sometimes played in a new way, especially the first two bars.

The final chord F#alt is an F#7#9, followed by moving from #9 to b9, so I called it an alt which means altered (b5, #5, b9, #9, or any combination).

Here’s the bridge.

Again, I’m not gonna say too much here, just play the TAB, perhaps along with the original recording.

Verse 3 is the same as verse 1, apart from the last two bars which are as in verse 2, but without the F#alt.

The outro is like the intro’s first two bars followed by a loop, like this:

Transcribing this took forever, and it was much harder than just playing the TAB, hopefully, this is some sort of comfort as you try this, know it could have been much harder!

Cry Me A River TAB | Related Pages

Cry Me A River | Chords + Lyrics

You can learn how to play Cry Me A River by Julie London using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, a chord chart, and the original recording.

| Emadd9 Am7b5 | Em13 Em7 |
Now you say you’re lonely…

Five similar tunes | Chords + Lyrics

When you can play the TAB for Cry Me A River, try these five tunes from the songbook.

Julie London tunes

Julie London made Cry Me A River famous.

Most famous for singing Cry Me A River, starring in Westerns and in the TV series Emergency! Julie London also recorded many Jazz standards.

Tunes include Fly Me To The Moon, Dream A Little Dream Of Me, Bye Bye Blackbird, A Taste Of Honey, and Why Don’t You Do Right?

Julie London on the web

About me | Dan Lundholm

Dan Lundholm wrote this guitar lesson and TAB for Cry Me A River.

This guitar lesson by Dan Lundholm featuring TAB covers Cry Me A River. Discover more about him and how you can learn guitar with Spytunes.

Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not practising scales, and studying theory in isolation.