David's Tip of the Day: Just Your Fool, Part 3 (Dropped 2 Beats) - Blues Standards

To understand the two dropped beats at 1:44 you'll need to listen to one of the other verses for his vocal phrasing. Listen at 2:02 and you'll hear that he starts his vocals on the "and" of 3 leading into the next verse. Listen back to 1:44 and you'll notice that he starts his vocals on the "and" of 1 leading into the vocal verse after the bridge. The pickup to the vocal verse is two beats early.

Did Walter mess this up? Maybe... or maybe he was purposefully moving the vocals around for rhythmic interest... no one doubts that Walter had killer rhythmic phrasing. Either way, the result was that the band went to the IV Chord two beats earlier in order to match past rhythmic vocal phrasing and the end result is seamless... don't you wish you had a band that listened to you that closely!

If you would like to change that verse to a 8 bar (I recommend you do, you're just asking for grief otherwise), have the vocalist add two beats of rest before starting that verse.