Welcome to my Stand By Me Guitar Lesson which is free here on this page.
This song made many millions of dollars in royalities alone for the writers Ben E King, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
Ben E King had this song on the charts twice. Once in 1961 when it reached #1 and again in the 1980's when it reached #9. John Lennon covered the song in 1975 and Mickey Gilley did his version in 1980.
As you can see I'm playing with a capo on the 2nd fret but that's always optional. You can play with a capo or in a different position to adjust for your vocals.
The four chords you'll need here are:
The rhythm here is mainly a root down up down up root up down up and repeat. A few instances near the end of the verse where you transition into the chorus you can chop it with some downstrokes on the Dsus, G and A7 chords as you'll see in the demo portion.
In the 2nd verse there is a few slides to augment the singing and later there is a picking breaking following the melody which is explained in the lesson here.
Thanks for dropping by this Stand By Me Guitar Lesson page and I hope this page was helpful.