I wouldn’t be able to follow a shuffle beat if someone whacked me on the head with one…but when I think of shuffly music, I think of J. J. Cale.
“For You Blue” by the Beatles and “Truckin’” by the Grateful Dead.
One thing I’m taking from this thread is that “shuffle” means different things to different people! To me, it means a triplet-feel beat, and is synonymous with “swing”.
I would describe it not too differently from you - take a “one-and-uh two-and-uh” rhythm, where the “one”, “and”, and “uh” each occupy the same amount of time. Then replace all the “ands” with silence of the same duration, so you’re left with “one… uh two… uh three” etc. That’s a shuffle, and the notes on the "uh"s are swung notes.
Gillian Welch’s “Pass You By” is a favorite of mine.
“From a Window (To a Screen)” – The dB’s
An unjustly overlooked mid-tempo shuffle, complete with snare-brush strokes.
“The Passenger” (live) – Iggy Pop & The Stooges
A classic faster shuffle song, proving shuffles don’t have to be slow or sedate.
The Iggy song yes, but I’m not hearing any shuffle in the dBs’ song.
Excuse the hijack, but could a rhythmically knowledgeable person tell if there’s a label for the beat of Dire’s Straight’s Walk of Life? It kicks in a little past the 30 second mark.
That’s just a simple backbeat.
Thank you.
“Band on the Run”
? Not only is that song not a shuffle, it’s not slow either. Man, this OP has been wildly misinterpreted by many people.
These are classic pop shuffles, although I suspect the tempo is going to be a little too fast for what you’re looking for:
Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears
Rosanna by Toto
The Way You Make Me Feel by Michael Jackson
Yeah that first one is a great song. A bit faster than what I meant, but a very good example of the shuffle beat.
And, of course, one of the all-time famous shuffles, at least among musicians and drummers (although the “Rosanna” beat also qualifies) is the Bonham cough Bernard Purdie cough shuffle on Led Zeppelin’s Fool in the Rain.
Peggy Lee’s “Fever”?
Don’t know how to discern and actual “shuffle”, but that has the same feel as the OP songs to me.
And BTW…Talking Heads version of TMTTR…my all-time favorite.
Just listened to that song. The beat is pretty much in straight eighths, not a shuffle. There’s funky, syncopated bass stuff going on, but it’s not really shuffle-like to me.
I would definitely classify “Fever” as a type of shuffle.
I think that song, one of my favorites by L.Z., is a little more complex than a traditional shuffle, which has a pretty repetitive bass and drum line. Maybe it’s technically a shuffle but to me it sounds like its own unique rhythm. That song, by the way, has one of the best prolonged solos completely in a major key, which is another topic for a thread I plan on starting.
Yes, the Purdie shuffle is far more advanced that a standard shuffle. Purdie is on YouTube walking you through. Good stuff.
Melissa Etheridge’s “I’m The Only One” is one that came to mind.
It’s probably not really a pop song, but Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason” is a classic blues shuffle. The grammy it won was for “Rock Song”, though. (Do they not have a Blues category?)
Found this interesting video in which Jeff Porcaro describes where the Rosanna beat came from.