Can anyone offer up suggestions on playing 12 bar blues in Eb around 150 bpm
in a band setting. The song is Sweet Home Chicago.
hand positioning, suggested riffs, etc would be useful. I looked for an Eb recording of this but it seems it's mostly done in sharp keys.
I was trying this with LH root fifth-root 6th pattern since it's not a jazz song.

I would just focus on playing blues fills in your right hand. If you play them up high they will cut through nicely. I could suggest some classic fills but it's hard to write it here. Can you transcribe a couple from a recording?
If you have to play your left hand maybe just use either inversion the 3rd and 7th in the appropriate range of the piano (around or just under middle C) You can add a 9 on top of that.

What else is in the band? It could be that your LH doesn't need to do anything!

Yes, what Wombat said! Quite possibly no-one would hear your LH anyways.

Bass, drums, guitar whenever I solo.

What is the musical focus of your Band? Is it a Blues Band, or what?

Try playing the licks you know with the Cm blues scale against the chords in Eb. Because you are in the relative major key some very nice things can happen without changing up your R.H. positions.

I can usually follow a recording and pick up people's riff's but I don't
usually write them out. I feel I must use my LH even when it's not
perfect.

Not quite sure what this means? If this band has a bass player, you needn't play the bass line. (More than that, you SHOULDN'T play it.) If there's a guitar comping on the chords, you need to keep out of his way too. Don't "feel". WOrk out what's needed and do it!

I can't agree with that, because my guitar player and I both comp chords, back and forth, and quite often together.

And you don't keep out of each other's way?

I think it's possible for guitar and piano to play at once, especially in that kind of setting. For example if one of you plays a steady rhythmic pattern the other can comp as they wish.

This is what I would do, and have done for this tune:

Rootless voicing in the LH. Eb7 will be voiced as follows:
G3 C#4 F4 .. Ab7 will be Gb3 C4 F4 etc.

Rhythmic pattern of 1 and the "&" of 2

(These are "jazz chords" and they work nicely in this situation)

For the RH: Mix up the Eb blues scale and other riffs native to Eb7. Put it up high on the keyboard. If you can use two notes at once your riff will sound even better.

You can play around with this on Eb7 (the 3rd note in each chord is just an extra one you can add for a different thing)

Db Bb F (chord) to C Ab Eb (chord) to Eb G Db (chord)

Make a tremolo out of (A) Bb - Db or (A) Bb - Eb

The note A is a major pivot point in the scale that you can play around with emphasizing..

Anyways, I hope that helps! It's a fun tune to work through and gives you the chance to really shine through.

Nope . . . it works fine. Sometimes we both play exactly the same thing, sometimes we play slightly different things, sometimes it is point - counterpoint, and so forth.

The thing is that Blues rhythms have multiple "slots" in each measure, or even in each beat, that multiple instruments can play chords or notes in those slots. But it has to be the right thing or it sounds bad.

When I have a recording in one key (E) and want to play in another key (Eb) this is the one time when I will use the transpose button on my DP. I transpose the keyboard up 1/2 step to practice against the recording in E while playing the notes from the Eb scale on my keyboard. When I perform with the band I never transpose, just when practicing and I need to change keys. Most riffs can be transposed easily enough but there are a few where you slide from a black key to a white key that don't translate perfectly so I would make some minor alterations in those cases.

The rootless chords make a l ot of sense to me, as a matter of fact
that might be my natural inclination. I guess i'm trying to do something
that stays within the blues genre. The guitarist and I seem to do ok.
Working around each other. The band is a "variety" band that trys to play
everything from Watermelon Man to Crocodile Rock and Jazz Standards
but they seem to do this one song as a closer a lot and I would like
to sound competent.

Playing blues in the context of a band situation is different than playing solo blues for sure. You have to decide whether you want to play blues like an authentic "blues player" or a jazz player playing the blues. In a blues band,you gotta keep it simple as for harmonically playing straight ahead blues for sure. If you stray away from the traditional I-IV-V with constant substitutions etc.you won't cut it in a traditional blues band. Since there is only 3 chords most of the time, blues is a GROOVE thing.You gotta rythumically be on top of all your grooves so to speak.ex. slow blues,shuffle,mambo etc. There are traditional blues,R&B,groove etc.tunes that are literally one chord only so....if you can't creatively play one chord throughout the entire tune, again you're not gonna cut it. It is intersting that playing a one chord tune is literally more difficult than constant changes throughout a tune. Sorry for the derailment but I have played behind national blues artists that don't care if you can play Oscar Peterson transcriptions. It's that groove thing first.

One last note.

You will find out that if one plays in a traditional blues band,many many tunes are guitar oriented so...you end up playing in E and A. When Jazz players play the blues you play in F,Bb sometimes in Eb because of horns.. All blues bands and or jazz bands play blues in both C and G.

Just a trivia note straight from the horse's mouth. Jimmy Smith refused to play in the key of A.

Who said anything about Oscar Peterson transcriptions or chord substitutions?

The point I was trying to make is the distinction between the traditional unsophisticated blues player vrs. a jazz player playing the blues in the context of a straight ahead blues band. Playing blues in a wedding band /casual is the furthest from a authentic blues band. Again sorry for the derailment.

Another note. On a tonal perspective,I think it is not a good thing to rely on the transpose function in that ex. one would improvise quite differently whether playing in C or A or ?.One wouldn't want their soloing to sound the same in every key.

Playing Oscar Peterson againest Stevie Ray Vaughn would be a little disjunct in my profesional opinion.

Pete the Bean makes a good point about using the C/Cm blues scale as a basis for fills and solos. It depends how you want to sound, though: playing the Eb blues scale would sound quite aggressively bluesy (it's the flat fifth that does it). Playing the blues scale based on the sixth note of the scale (C) takes that down a notch.

Also, lot of R'n'B type blues often uses the pentatonic as much as the classic blues scale of the key.

When you're comping, "less is more" is the best rule - keep it simple, maybe with "stabby" chords in the right.

The debate about LH is an interesting one: if I'm playing classic blues in a band I'll often play an LH pattern even though there's a rhythm section behind me. I might keep it a bit lighter (don't want to muddy up the bass), but I find it helps the drive. In a more jazzy blues context I'd lay off the left a bit more.

You can clearly hear the piano in this band's uptempo version of Sweet Home Chicago. There is no dominant guitar player. It seems the pianist's left hand comps very lightly and it's mostly right hand work. If there were a guitar player then the piano should fill more sparsely while trying to fit in the little gaps and not overcrowd. That's is basically how I too would approach it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKXhIfiXNUc

Actually the guitar player does not come across as a dominant figure because the piano player is overplaying to the point that he is borderline soloing throughout the entire verses. Now if you are Jerry Lee lewis and are the main event or focus than that's probably kosher with the rest of the band.

Only Oscar Peterson could get away with that.

I was rereading some of the replies on this thread and watched the video of Sweet Home Chicago which was performed in the key of C. So I dont think this would be a problem. What I find is playing a Blues/Rock pattern in Eb is a challenge. Especially since we dont perform it as a swing but more of a shuffle. So I guess it's a matter of interpretation.mnnn

Eb is a terrific blues key. You can slide off notes more.

ok,
what notes do you slide from into.
Thanks