Cleanup Woman Bass Tab (Betty Wright)

Clean Up Woman is a very funky tune off Betty Wright’s second solo album. It has a great guitar part that stays in your head forever. The bassline is not really difficult, but still very fun to play. As is the entire song if you play in a band.

Cleanup Woman

The main riff throughout the verses is quite simple, but involves some hammer-ons. If you look at the tab underneath you will see that the 10th note on the E-string (D), reoccurs constantly. This note should be hammered on. This keeps the flow and the rhythm of the song going on very nicely and makes life a little bit easier for you. The riff can be repeated endlessley, until the singer of course wants to go to the bridge.

G|—————————————————————
D|—————————————————————
A|–8—————-8—————-8—————-8–10–8–
E|—–8–10–8–10—–8–10–8–10—–8–10–8–10————

The other part of the song is the bridge section. A couple of chords are played during that section (Am, Dm, Gm, Bb) and you can accompany those chords by playing the next couple of notes. You can hold each note till you play the next one, to get a nice flow going. It also creates a good change from the more snappy verse groove. The last four notes build up to the return to the verse and you can put a little emphasis on them.

G|———————–5——————————–
D|——–5———–7—–7–5——–5—————–
A|—–7—–7–5–5—————–5—–5—–8—–8–
E|–5—————————–3———–6—–6—–

These two riffs are basically all there is to it. The real difficulty of the song does not lie in the notes itself. They are pretty basic in the key of F. The real difficulty lies in maintaining a steady groove and then mixing the style up for the bridge. This makes the song great. Of course you can add little fills in the main groove, but that’s totally up to you. The above tab is just my interpretation of the song and what I think is nice to play. I think it strikes a good balance between ease of playing and maintaining a steady groove.