C r y B a b y C r y - The Beatles (John). From the album 'The Beatles' ("The White Album"), Nov, 1968. In Em / G, as recorded. At standard pitch, more or less. REFRAIN (most of it): G Am F G Cry baby cry... make your mother sigh Em7 A7 F She's old enough to know better... Em/e Em/eb Em/d [see chord notes below] 1. The king of Marigold was in the kitchen Em/c# C7 G cooking breakfast for the queen Em/e Em/eb Em/d The queen was in the parlour playing piano Em/c# C7/c For the children of the king REFRAIN: G Am F G Cry baby cry... make your mother sigh Em7 A7 F G She's old enough to know better... so cry baby cry 2. The king was in the garden picking flowers For a friend who came to play The queen was in the playroom painting pictures For the children's holiday ... REFRAIN 3. The duchess of Kircaldy always smiling And arriving late for tea The duke was having problems with a message At the local bird and bee... REFRAIN 4. At twelve o'clock a meeting round the table For a seance in the dark With voices out of nowhere put on specially By the children for a lark... REFRAIN three times, ending on Em. Note how the repetitions overlap. Play along with the recording to get it right. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Editor's Notes: LYRICS: Verified against the recording, and against other transcriptions. 99% confidence. For me, these are among the most charmingly ambiguous and cheerful lines ever to spill out of John's imagination. I did a bit of research on one little point: "...the local Bird and Bee" - a typical-sounding name (The Bird and Bee) for a local pub, in this case an imaginary one to fit the imaginary kingdom about which Lennon writes. It's also common to use the term "the local" for same, as in "I'm just off down the local for a quick half" ( = half-pint of beer, lager, bitter, etc.). - courtesy BRITGUIDE---an introduction to Britishisms in the Beatles' Lyrics, written by Harold Somers, harold@ccl.umist.ac.uk, and edited by saki (saki@evolution.bchs.uh.edu) Copyright 1992, 1993---no unauthorized use permitted - http://www.recmusicbeatles.com/public/files/faqs/britguide.html CHORDS: The refrain is clearly in G major, whereas the verses are arguably in E minor (the relative minor of G). Using C7 as a hinge back to G major is a stroke of troubled naïve genius. C7 would ordinarily function as the V7 chord leading back to tonic F. C (without the 7th) is often used, as the IV chord) to gently precede tonic G. Using C7, though, pulls toward G in a very rude manner - its 7, bb, is the blue flatted 3 of G. You can hear George sharply echo this interval from time to time with a muscular Gibson-esque riff. This bb conflicts sharply with the b natural of the following G chord. It all sounds all the more alarming because of the complete absence of this interval heretofore, and especially because of the playful childlike lyricism of the verses. It's almost as if John is making it clear: "This is not a Paul song.". As Alan W. Pollack points out: "The home key is established by the modal flat-VII-I [F to G] cadence; there's no V chord to be found in the entire song." Note that F is closely related to its relative minor Dm, which, as Dm7, would've provided a more traditional Vm7-I cadence. John loved that flat-VII chord, though. Even though the refrain has been very much in G all the way along, John closes out on the Em (relative minor) chord, which is not at all strange, but... he appears to sing his closing three-syllable '..cry' as the the phrase a b a, leaving it suspended on that final a (the 4 of the Em chord). Somehow, it all fits together... It's hard to tell what John's strumming for verse chord changes (on his Gibson J-160, presumably) but the standard first-position options would be as one transcriber suggests: Em: 0 2 2 0 0 0 Em-maj7: 0 2 1 0 0 0 Em7: 0 2 2 0 3 0 Em6: 0 2 2 0 2 0 C7: x 3 2 3 1 0 e eb d c# c This may be a reasonable approach for a rhythm guitar if there's a bass player or keyboard player involved. These changes mask, though, the prominent descending chromatic bass line by shifting it up an octave mid-stream, at Em7. Here's a way to play in first-position that keeps the line descending all the way to its ultimate destination: the b of the G major triad that starts the refrain: Em: 0 2 2 0 0 0 Em-maj7: 0 2 1 0 0 0 Em7: 0 2 0 0 0 0 Em6: 0 4 2 0 0 0 C7: x 3 2 3 1 0 e eb d c# c On the recording, the descending bass line is carried by Paul's romping bass and by someone on piano. Here's another way to play it against a continuously-sounding Em triad. In this case I've revised the nomenclature to correspond to the more obviously 'in the bass' position of the line (not that it's actually any lower), and to emphasize that what we have here is more a bass line moving across a static Em chord, than a set of alterations to an Em chord. Em/e: 0 7 5 4 0 0 Em/eb: 0 6 5 4 0 0 Em/d: 0 5 5 4 0 0 Em/c#: 0 4 5 4 0 0 C7: 3 3 5 3 5 x e eb d c# c Slightly easier fingering can be had by leaving string 3 open. This will introduce another g (flat-3) to the Em triad, at the expense of one of the b's (5). For the C7 to G change at the end of each verse couplet, there seems to be two good options. At the recommendation of JimR, I'm preferring C7:33535(3) to G:35545(5) for the end of the first couplet, because it makes it easier to re-grip Em/e:075400. For the end of the second couplet, I'm using C7:x32310 to G:320001, and then on to first position Am:x02210. Here's just one more, completely different, way to play these verse chords, aside from whatever George plays. It's what I play together with a friend who plays them as above (Em/e: 075400, Em/eb: 065400...). They're essentially the same thing, but up an octave. They make for a broad bright sound when combined with the lower-register chords above, and they lead nicely into that tart treble lick that George rips a couple of times, which turns out to be the cross-picked C7 chord in the tab below (bottom option). Note how those three notes are picked out of order: string 3, string 1, string 2 so cross-pick, don't sweep-pick, them: Em [strum or pluck] /e /eb /d /c# C7 G 1--|--7-7-7-7--|--7-7-7-7--|--7-7-7-7--|--7-7-7-7--|--6-6-6----|--3-3-3----|-- 2--|--8-8-8-8--|--8-8-8-8--|--8-8-8-8--|--8-8-8-8--|--8-8-8----|--3-3-3----|-- 3--|--9-9-9-9--|--8-8-8-8--|--7-7-7-7--|--6-6-6-6--|--5-5-5----|--4-4-4----|-- 4--|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|--5-5-5----|-- 5--|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|--5-5-5----|-- 6--|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|--3-3-3----|-- ...or... Em [sweep-pick as arpeggios] /e /eb /d /c# C7 G 1--|------7----|------7----|------7----|------7----|----6------|--7-7-7----|-- 2--|----8------|----8------|----8------|----8------|------8----|--8-8-8----|-- 3--|--9-----9--|--8-----8--|--7-----7--|--6-----6--|--5--------|--7-7-7----|-- 4--|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-- 5--|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-- 6--|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-- ^-- George's cross-picked lick For more on the structure of this song, and dozens of other Beatles songs, see Alan J. Pollacks' 'Notes On' series, at http://www.recmusicbeatles.com/public/files/awp/cbc.html - Transcribed by WA, 2001. Last edited 13 Oct 2002. Formatting last tweaked 13 Oct 2002. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bonus track: 'Can You Take Me Back?' - Paul [found attached at the end of the .mp3 for 'Cry Baby Cry'] Fm Can you take me back where I came from, can you take me back? Can you take me back where I came from, brother can you take me back? Can you take me back? Oh can you take me where I came from, can you take me back? This is an entirely separate songlet, from Paul. It appears "between the tracks" after Cry Baby Cry and before Revolution 9. As a coda to Cry Baby Cry, it could be played against the latter's final Em chord. ...and what's that little apology to "George" all about, after the fadeout...? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From WA's Songs Transcriptions page: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/warrenallen/songs.htm Several more transcriptions are available there, most in three formats: HTML, plain text, and an 'illustrated' MS Word doc formatted for readability and to fit on two or three printed pages.