Playing the Beverly Hillbillies Theme on Guitar
The Beverly Hillbillies Theme Song Chords are straightforward, which is probably why everyone who's ever tried to learn this song on guitar gets through it in an afternoon. It's in G major. The main progression cycles through G, C, and D7 with some Em tossed in for the bridge section. Not much decoration needed. Here's the basic layout. The intro and verse share the same chord movement: G -- C -- G -- D7
G -- C -- G -- D7 G -- G7 -- C -- Cm F -- Bb -- C -- D7
That Cm in the third line is the turning point. It's a minor plagal surprise that drops you into the F and Bb section — the part where the melody lifts up. Then C back to D7 resolves it to G, and you're cycling again. The chorus melody ("Well, they struck a rich strike of oil...") sits on roughly the same progression but with a simpler rhythm. G to C to G to D7 for four bars, then G to G7 to C to D7 to close the phrase. Nothing exotic. I ran into a problem early on that nobody seems to mention. When you strum those C to D7 changes quickly during the intro riff, your ring finger wants to fly off the fretboard because D7 is a tight grip and you're already committing to C. I spent weeks trying to force smooth transitions until I realized I should be using a partial C shape — just the top two strings free and letting the bass note on the A string slide into the D7 root on the open D. It's not the full chord voicing but it keeps the harmony correct and makes the whole thing playable at tempo. If you're playing fingerstyle, this shortcut becomes essential rather than optional.
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The bridge section — the F, Bb, C, D7 part — trips people up because they try to play full barre chords on F and Bb. You don't need to. Drop F to a simple three-finger shape on the top four strings and use a Dsus4 to D7 movement on the bottom three strings for the turnaround. It sounds cleaner and the melody sits on top without fighting the strum. One thing beginners consistently mess up: the timing on that G7 going into Cm. It's not a quick passing chord — it holds for a full beat before you move. Play it too fast and the whole descending chromatic feel falls apart. Mark it explicitly in your practice notes or you'll keep rushing it. The tempo is about 120 BPM, 4/4 time. Play it with a light syncopated strum pattern — down on 1 and 3, up on the "and" of 2 and 4. That gives it the right bounce without sounding like you're playing a folk ballad. This is a drive-song rhythm, not a campfire song.
If you need a downloadable chord chart, Transcribe.com andUltimate-Guitar both have reliable versions, though they occasionally mislabel the G7 as just G, which throws off the voice leading. Double-check against the original record by The Chad Mitchell Trio if you're unsure — the G7 to Cm movement is the signature moment of the piece and getting it wrong makes the whole progression sound flat. The song runs about 2 minutes 15 seconds on the original recording. The full arrangement includes a banjo intro, the main theme, a brief instrumental break that follows the same chords, and a final tag that repeats the G-C-G-D7 ending twice before cutting. That's it. No complex modulations, no extended harmony, no trick progressions hiding in plain sight. Learning this won't make you a better guitarist, but it will give you a reliable warm-up piece that reinforces your G-major scale patterns and gets your left hand comfortable with common chord transitions at moderate speed. I use it myself when I need to loosen up fingers before tackling something more demanding. Takes about ten minutes to get clean at tempo if you already know the shapes.
