The "Chain of Dominants" Progression

Recently I received a comment on this post concerning the bridge to George Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm." The harmony to the bridge is a classic instance of the "circle of dominants," also called the "chain of dominants":  2 bars each of D7, G7, C7, F7. Each dominant chord resolves into the next, but a stable tonic is not established until the chain comes to rest on a major or minor chord -  in this case Bb, the first chord of the last "A" section.

Here's the comment (thanks, Mark B.!):

I've been reading up on popular music harmony recently. The chain of secondary dominants seems to start with Liszt - at least the earliest example I've seen cited is from him. Ragtime used chains of dominant chords in threes and fours regularly, and they also show up in early Tin Pan Alley tunes from the 1890s, although not in a bridge like this example. The old-time barbershop singers consider this progression their own, calling the dominant chord 'major-minor' - the added b7 being the 'minor.' And I think you'll find them in Sousa's marches as well...

I am not an authority on classical harmony, but I just couldn't believe that the "chain of dominants" started with Liszt. I had always assumed that it was a common classical device. I thought I recalled hearing it in Mozart and Bach, but couldn't cite specific instances. I did a little more internet research on this question, and talked it over with my sister, Dr. Laura Spitzer, a fine classical pianist who teaches at New Mexico State University.

About terminology: I've always called this the "circle of dominants"; I picked that up from my college teachers. "Chain of dominants" is a term that may have been coined by theoretician Allen Forte.

Forte also uses the term "chain of fifths," to describe progressions that may be partially or entirely diatonic. I call that the "diatonic circle of fifths." We are talking here about something different, a device that uses all-dominant chords.

Another term for the same device is "extended dominants." Here's the Wikipedia entry on "extended dominants."

An extended dominant is a non-diatonic secondary-dominant seventh chord that resolves downwards to another dominant chord. A series of extended dominant chords continues to resolve downwards by perfect fifths until they reach the tonic chord. Most common is the tertiary dominant, which resolves to a secondary dominant. For example, V/V/V (in C major, A(7)) resolves to V/V (D(7)), which resolves to V (G(7)), which resolves to I (note that V/V/V is the same chord as V/ii, but differs in its resolution to a major dominant rather than a minor chord). Quaternary dominants are rarer, but an example is the bridge section of the Rhythm changes which starts from V/V/V/V (in C major, E(7)). Though typically used in jazz, extended dominants have been used in other contexts as well.

Chains of three or more dominant chords are common in songs from the "Golden Age" of American standards (roughly the 1920s to 1940s), and in tunes composed by jazz artists. Here are just a few:

Sweet Georgia Brown

A Flower is a Lovesome Thing

Prelude to a Kiss

Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You

Yesterdays

I Got Rhythm
Five Foot Two

Charleston

Jordu (the bridge consists of two "chains," six dominant chords in each)

After looking a little deeper into classical usage, it appears that secondary dominants and "tertiary" dominants are pretty common, but longer chains are less so - as Wikipedia notes, chains of 4 or more are rare. However, there are instances well before Liszt. Some examples:

Luca Marenzio (late 1500s) - This madrigal cycles through almost the complete circle of fifths, using triads, not dominant chords. There is no reason to think that this was common practice at the time - but yet, there it is.

Rameau (1760) - In a treatise on keyboard accompaniment, he suggests learning to make modulations by practicing playing chains of dominants.

Mozart - Walter Piston, in his 1941 text Harmony, cites an example from K. 283 that cycles through what Piston anlyzes as V of II, V of V, V, V of IV, IV. The piece is in G; in letter names these chords would be E7, A7, D7, G7, C. Piston did not use the terms "chain" or "circle of dominants." Rather, he just thought of this sort of sequence as a series of "secondary dominants." Piston is credited with coining the term "secondary dominant."

Mozart - An instance in K. 586 that cycles through six dominant chords, interpolating a few other chords between the dominants along the way (thanks, Laura!)

The Liszt example that Mark B. mentions may be Nocturne #3, Liebestraum - a dominant sequence begins in bar 2, on a IIIdom chord. You could play the "Charleston" or "Five Foot Two" on top of this progression.

I'm sure someone more knowledgeable than me, and/or with more persistence, could find many more examples in classical music. But for my own purposes, it looks pretty clear that although the "chain" device was known to classical composers, it is employed far more often in American jazz and popular styles.

Getting back to another part of Mark B.'s comment - It does seem to be at least plausible that barbershop singing had something to do with the use of chains of dominants in late 19th and early 20th-century popular music. A similar argument, asserting that barbershop may be one significant reason that blues evolved into a form that uses dominant chords on the I and the IV, is presented in Vic Hobson's book Creating Jazz Counterpoint: New Orleans, Barbershop Harmony, and the Blues.

Here's my review of Hobson's book. Highly recommended!

"Play That Barber Shop Chord": A Case for the African-American Origin of Barbershop Harmony is an influential 1992 paper by Lynn Abbott (click to download). It's a great read - thoroughly researched, and completely convincing. The paper stops short of detailed musical analysis, but it seems quite clear that early barbershop harmony (perhaps as early as the 1880s) had a large improvisational element, and that part of the practice was addition of flat sevenths over major triads. This, of course, could result in secondary dominants, as well as flat sevenths on the I and IV chords.

"Aquarela do Brasil" and "Song of India"

I'm certainly not the first person to notice similarities between Ary Barroso's "Aquarela do Brasil" and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Song of India," but I can't resist yet another tune-detective post.

Here's the first recording of "Aquarela," by singer Francisco Alves (1939), with an arrangement by Radames Gnatelli, using big-band instrumentation with samba percussion:

Many of the accompanying riffs in this arrangement, which I'm guessing were written by Gnatelli, have become an integral part of the song as it is usually performed. Click the link above for more about Gnatelli; he was an accomplished composer, arranger, and performer, who had a distinguished career in both popular and classical genres.

Wikipedia has a nice article on "Aquarela," including Ary Barroso's story of how it came to be composed, its path to success, and some notes on the political aspects of the song:

This song, because of its exaltation of Brazil's great qualities, marked the creation of a new genre within samba, known as samba-exaltação (exaltation samba). This musical movement, with its extremely patriotic nature, was seen by many as being favorable to the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas, which generated criticism towards Barroso...the Barroso family, however, strongly denies these claims...

Anyway, back to the similarities. Here's Rimsky-Korsakov's "Song of India," more properly called "Song of the Indian Guest," from his opera "Sadko":

1) Compare the theme at 1:00 in "Aquarela" with the theme at 2:54 in "Song of India."

2) Compare 1:22 in "Aquarela" with 3:30 in "Song of India."

The themes in 1) above are more obviously similar, but the themes in 2) show a resemblance also - a high held note on the fifth of the key, chromatic descent of a third, then the held note and chromatic line repeated twice more.

There was an earlier instance of the use of Rimsky-Korsakov's piece in popular music. In 1937 Tommy Dorsey released his big-band version of "Song of India":

In Dorsey's song, the theme I have called "2" is the featured melody; you can hear references to theme "1" in Bunny Berigan's trumpet solo. Dorsey's bridge uses yet another theme from Rimsky-Korsakov's piece (this one is not found in "Aquarela").

This recording, with "Marie" on the flip side, was a major hit for Dorsey.

As a side note, Wikipedia cites "Beautiful Ohio" (1918), the Ohio state song, as borrowing a motif from "Song of India." I hear it, but Barroso's use of the theme in "Aquarela" seems a lot more obvious. On the other hand, the reference in "Ohio" to Stephen Foster's "Beautiful Dreamer" is pretty blatant.

There have been countless versions of "Aquarela," but one of the most subtly perfect interpretations has to be Joao Gilberto's:

Paul Pone, clarinetist

A few days ago I received an email with a subject line reading “Paul Pone,” from someone I didn’t know. I took private lessons from “Mr. Pone” through middle school and high school, back in the 1960s. All I knew about his background was that he had received his musical training in Italy, and had come to the United States as a young man. He passed away in 1984 at the age of 90.

The email was from a local guy, Dave, who had acquired some of Paul’s personal documents at an estate sale (not Paul's estate, though). Dave thought the documents should go to Paul's family, but he had no luck locating them (Paul had no children). On my studio website I had listed Paul Pone as one of my teachers, so Dave contacted me, and decided I should have the documents.

The documents are really interesting - in particular, a two-page memoir that Paul typed up in 1977. He wrote about both his family background, and the story of how he came to the U.S. and became a music teacher. It’s a great story. Here’s a summary:

Paulo Pone was born in 1894. The Pone family lived in Pacentro, Italy. Paul was one of five children. He attended school through high school, also apprenticed to be a tailor, and studied music at the Sulmona Conservatory. After high school he studied in Naples at the Music Conservatory of San Pietro A Majella, and also studied tailoring in Naples at the “Italo-American School of Cutting.”

When he got back to Pacentro he decided he didn’t want to stay. Two of his sisters had emigrated to the United States. His mother told him that he could go to the U.S. also, as long as he stayed with his sister Christina and her husband Joe. Paul embarked for the U.S. from Naples in March, 1913.

Joe lived in a coal mining camp in Brilliant, New Mexico. The camp supplied coal for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad (Brilliant is now a ghost town). Joe was working as the manager of a company saloon, but had bought a saloon in Suffield, Colorado, and was about to move. Paul describes his work:

I began to work with Joe in the saloon, from 7 am to 10 pm, first had to put beer on tap then fill bottles of liquor to serve, put bottle beer on ice, two different kinds, then sweep the saloon, wash and clean spitoons, wash all glasses behind the bar. The saloon was about a quarter of a mile North from camp in the valley close to the railroad track. I slept in it at night. I used to hear bumps and knocks on the door at night, but I was not afraid…had two .45 pistols with me.

After about four months in Suffield the 1913 miners' strike now known as the Colorado Coalfield War occurred, culminating in the Ludlow Massacre. Joe, Christina and Paul moved again, to Raton, New Mexico, where Joe opened up another saloon. Paul was in debt, and worked even longer days for Joe, including playing a show at the saloon until 11 at night:

…got up at five and did the same job, janitor and bartending, for 50 per month…sweep and wash the floor with the rest of the work, also wash the big mirror back of the bar, 5 to 7 a bite to eat and then play the show at night till 11, then to bed and up at 5 the next morning. By working day and night I paid my bills and sent money to mother and dad in Italy.

When the US declared war in 1917, Paul "thought I should do something for my adopted country." He joined the Army, and was assigned to an Army band. The armistice was signed in 1918, so he never was sent overseas. He was discharged in 1919, and at the suggestion of a fellow musician, came to San Francisco.

Through the 1920s and 1930s, Paul played in Bay Area theatres, with the Golden Gate Park Band (it still exists today), and in occasional radio performances. He married his wife, Edith, who I remember, in 1923.

Around 1940, with music jobs scarce due to the depression, he drew on his tailoring training, and took a job as foreman of the clothing factory at Alcatraz Penitentiary for a couple of years. During WWII he worked at the Oakland shipyards. In 1943, Paul saw a notice in the AFM Musician paper advertising a teaching position with the San Francisco School District. He auditioned for a professor at SF State, obtained an emergency teaching credential, and “that was the beginning of my teaching career.”

Paul's memoir ends there. When I studied with Mr. Pone in the 1960s, he had moved to Los Altos, and had a busy private teaching schedule. I'm pretty sure that he still played with the Golden Gate Park Band in SF on Sundays.

Paul was a fine classical clarinetist. He showed me the basics of saxophone, and could read jazz charts well, but classical clarinet was really his forte. He was an incredibly patient teacher, and never gave me a hard time for a bad practice week. 

San Francisco State University offers a scholarship for talented music students called the "Paul Pone Forgivable Loan." I'm guessing that he endowed this program in his will. I recall that Paul liked to play the stock market; I think he started early.

It was pretty amazing that those papers found their way to me (many thanks, Dave!). The company that staged the estate sale had no idea how the papers came into their possession.

Update 1/2/18 - I was able to contact Joe's granddaughter, and have sent her the papers. I was able to find her through one of those unlikely connections - I told this story to the mom of one of my students. Her mother lives in Santa Fe, and she in turn knew someone from Raton. This last friend had gone to high school with several people from Joe's family, and put me in touch with the granddaughter. 

I also received an email from one of Paul's students, who had seen this post. He mentioned a story that Paul had told him - Benny Goodman apparently once came to Paul for help in preparing a concert of classical music. Paul had never told me that story, but it's not impossible. Benny did aspire to being a classical performer. His first classical recording was in 1938; he might have met with Paul in the '30s while in San Francisco for a concert, when Benny was starting his classical project. 

Charlie Parker's "Cool Blues" and Bizet's "Carmen"

Charlie Parker's "Cool Blues" is a "riff blues" in C, first recorded in 1947. 

The riff itself was in Parker's vocabulary at least as early as his March 28, 1946 recording session in Los Angeles for Ross Russell's Dial label; he uses the lick in his "Yardbird Suite" solo. About a year later, on February 19, 1947, Russell set up a recording session with Parker, pianist Errol Garner, and Garner's rhythm section. Parker had recently been released from Camarillo State Hospital. He was relaxed and refreshed, and playing beautifully. One of the tunes recorded was "Cool Blues," a setting of the riff as a 12-bar blues. Here are the four takes from this session:               

These recordings of "Cool Blues" were titled differently in various Dial releases: "Cool Blues," "Hot Blues," and "Blowtop Blues."

In the biography Charlie Parker: His Music and Life, author Carl Woideck mentions some possible sources of the "Cool Blues" riff. One possibility is the very brief use of a similar lick in Duke Ellington's "Blue Ramble" (1932). The riff occurs at 1:40 and 1:58:

Woideck also quotes Phil Schapp's liner notes for The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings of Charlie Parker as stating that "Cool Blues" is "similar to a set-closing theme...reportedly used several years beforehand by bassist John Kirby's sextet." In a telephone conversation with Woideck, Schaap also mentioned that "at least one musician who remembered the Kirby theme sang it to Schaap in a way similar, but not identical to, Parker's version."

A footnote in Schapp's liner notes:

Bird told Benedetti that his title for "Cool Blues" was "Blues Up and Down." This same blues theme was used earlier by the John Kirby Sextet to take the "Biggest [Little] Band in the Land" off the stand. Bird learned it by hearing the Kirby Sextet and through his friendship with Russell Procope, that group's alto saxophonist.

This speculation on the origin of the tune does seem credible. However, there is another likely source, in Georges Bizet's opera, "Carmen."

The "Cool Blues" riff shows up briefly, but unmistakably, in Act 2 of "Carmen." In this recording, it occurs from 1:16:22 to 1:16:52:

Woideck added the Bizet information in the (later) Italian edition of his Parker biography, mentioning also that the Kirby group was known for its jazz interpretations of European classical music. The Italian edition also mentions that "[the Kirby set-closing theme] does not appear in any of the official records of the orchestra for various labels, and the search for live performances and radio tunes for the band has not identified any version as yet."

Schaap makes a good case that Parker might have adapted the Kirby melody. But Parker might equally well have lifted the theme directly from "Carmen" - he was definitely a classical music fan. Or both, or neither. The Ellington fragment is pretty fleeting, and seems less likely as a source.

Quite a few recorded live versions of "Cool Blues" exist; below are four from Youtube:

With Fats Navarro and Bud Powell (1950):

 "The Washington Concerts" (1953) (note the "Habanera" quote):

"Summit Meeting at Birdland" (1953), with John Lewis:

With a very young Chet Baker (1953):

Review: "Choro: A Social History of a Brazilian Popular Music"

Since this blog is primarily aimed at jazz players, I am guessing that some readers may have some familiarity with choro, others perhaps not. Choro is a Brazilian musical genre that - like jazz - began to take shape in the late 1800s, evolved stylistically over the years and through several periods of popularity, and continues today. It has always involved an element of improvisation, and incorporates Afro-Brazilian rhythms. Choro as performed today may take a form that is traditional (that is, retrospective to some earlier period in its evolution), or may take a more modern direction.

Here is Anat Cohen and the group "Choro Aventuroso," with a modern take on the 1937 standard by Severino Araujo, "Espinha de Bacalhau":

Although this book came out in 2005, I had not gotten around to it until just now: Choro: A Social History of a Brazilian Popular Music, by Tamara Elena Livingston-Isenhour and Thomas George Caracas Garcia. It's a well-written and well-researched account of the origins of choro and its evolution over the last 150+ years, with particular regard to the place of the genre in Brazilian culture, including a discussion of the role of historical Brazilian attitudes towards race and popular music.

The book is meticulously organized, which makes a review pretty easy. Here are the chapter titles, with a few comments on the contents:

1) Introduction

An overview of the book. Describes the defining features of choro in terms of style, melodic characteristics, bass, rhythm, and spirit ("malicia").

2)  Race, Class, and Nineteenth-Century Popular Music: The Modinha, the Lundu, and the Maxixe

These were the musical antecedents of choro. The modinha, a sentimental song genre, contributed lyricism to Brazilian popular styles, and contributed the basic instrumentation to choro: the "terno" of guitar, flute, and cavaquinho. The lundu was an African-influenced rhythmic dance and music style; the maxixe was a popular dance and music style that began in the 1870s. "Some believe the maxixe to be the link in the stylistic continuum between the old lundu dance and the modern urban samba."

3) The Roda de Choro: Heart and Soul of Choro

The "roda de choro" is a informal gathering to play music - a jam session - a tradition that began long before choro reached the "respectability" of recordings and radio broadcasts. The roda de choro is still an essential part of the choro ethos. A quote from Villa-Lobos biographer Vasco Mariz: "The chorão [choro devotee] had a deep feeling for spontaneous improvisation. He would put his entire soul into playing. He had a true religious feeling for the cult of choro, in which one lives to play, compose, and sing."

4) From Plantation to the City: The Rise and Development of Early Choro in Rio de Janeiro (1870-1920)

Many black musicians received musical training as slaves, in order to serve in plantation bands, which were a status symbol for the owners. After Brazilian emancipation in 1888, former slave musicians moved to the city, combining their talents with city musicians. It was in this period that the music and the term "choro" developed. Although many musicians today believe that "choro" derives from "chorar" (to cry), the authors believe it derives from "choromeleiro," a type of ensemble in colonial Brazil.

In Rio de Janeiro, choro developed as a middle-class music. "The middle-class aspects of choro practice were several...in order to be able to buy an instrument, whether, flute, cavaquinho, or guitar, one had to have at lease a modicum of disposable income. Secondly, the locations where choro gatherings took place were characteristic of middle-class dwellings and venues..." In this environment, choro developed as a primarily instrumental music, based on the form and harmonic structure of the polka, played by terno-type ensembles, wind bands, or piano. Early published choros were called "polca serenata" or "polca ligeira"; the first use of the term "choro" in published music was in 1889. This chapter includes sections on several of the most important figures in early choro: Chiquinha Gonzaga, Ernesto Nazaré, and others.

5) From the Terno to the Regional: The Professionalization of Choro

The terno, a trio of flute, guitar, and cavaquinho, was the original core choro ensemble. With the advent of silent films (requiring theater musicians), followed by recordings and radio, professional groups were formed. Choros were written in a more technical style, to show off the virtuosity of the musicians. Groups were larger (this was the period when the pandeiro and seven-string guitar came to be a standard part of the ensemble); these groups were called "regionals." The career of the legendary choro composer and bandleader Pixinguinha began in this period, c. 1915. Under the regime of dictator Gétulio Vargas (1937-1945) choro was encouraged and promoted by the government, particularly on the radio, to instill a sense of national identity and pride.

6) The Velha Guarda in the New Brazil: Choro in the 1950s and 1960s

"Velha guarda" means "old guard." As American and American-influenced music increased in popularity in Brazil in the 1950s, choro came to be regarded by the general public as a music of the past. Bossa nova emerged in the late 1950s as a music of "modernity." In the 1960s, increasing social awareness led to an increased interest in "samba de morro" (samba of the favelas) and other "roots" music. "Choro is conspicuously absent from the cultural resistance movement even though it had been strongly accociated with Brazilian nationalism since the 1920s." The authors give several reasons for this: that "as an instrumental genre, choro could not serve as a vehicle for protest lyrics"; that as a middle-class music, "choro was not associated with an oppressed class of people"; that "the Americanized style and instrumentation in the late 1940s and 1950s had come to be viewed as mainstream music without political value."

At the same time, however, "velha guarda" figures such as Garoto, Jacó do Bandolim, and Waldir de Azevedo were pushing the choro genre towards "increasing professionalism," and adding new compositions to the repertoire.

7) The Choro Revival

The 1970s saw a return of popularity of choro among young musicians and listeners, including rodas de choro, and competitions with awards. The military government of 1964-1985 played a role in supporting the choro revival; as a mostly instrumental music, choro did not have a protest content. The authors discuss the nature of musical revivals generally, and why a choro revival came about at that point in time. This choro revival ebbed in the 1980s.

8) Contemporary Choro

"By the late 1990s, choro had rebounded with a force that still shows no sign of weakening." This chapter considers stylistic trends, choro publications, pedagogy, choro on the Web, and choro abroad. A description of then-current (2005) activity presents a snapshot of the revival at the time of the book's publication.

9) Choro and the Brazilian Classical Tradition

The Brazilian classical music culture before the 1920s looked to France and Italy for a stylistic model. Beginning in the 1920s, Brazilian composers began to look to their own rich national musical traditions, including choro. Co-author Thomas Garcia is a guitarist and Villa-Lobos scholar, and Villa-Lobos' work is covered in some detail.

If you are interested in learning more about this music, I highly recommend Choro: A Social History of a Brazilian Popular Music. Click on the link, and you can order it from Amazon. It's been especially valuable to me, since I don't read or speak Portuguese; I haven't seen a better English-language book on the subject.

Far more importantly, though, you need to listen to this music. The history of recorded choro is on Youtube, and plenty of great contemporary performances. Here are just a few tracks, to get started:

A broadcast featuring some great players, playing Jacó do Bandolim's "Noitas Cariocas":

A backyard party, with Romualdo Costa (sax) and Leo Lima (accordian) playing "Espinha de Bacalhau":

Yamandu Costa and Dominguez, playing Pixinguinha's "Lamentos"

A classic video - Armandinho with the group Epoca de Ouro, playing Jacó's "Assanhado"

Review: "The Best 101 Children's Songs," arranged by Dr. Bugs Bower

Dr. "Bugs" Bower has quite a variety of musical accomplishments over his long career. He is the author of a number of printed educational methods, and as a record producer, has had eight million-seller "Gold Records" and two Grammies. He has produced jazz, rock and roll, Broadway, spoken word, and children's records.

One of his more recent productions is a 3-CD set called "The Best 101 Children's Songs." It's available on CD from Bugs' website. Amazon has it too, including an MP3 version and a streaming version.

At my music lesson business, Hope Street Music Studios, I'm the person assigned to answering email inquiries (when I'm not teaching saxophone or clarinet). We regularly get inquiries from parents of very young children, who want advice on how to get their kids started on an instrument. My answer is that the best thing they can do is to get the kids singing. It's the most natural way to begin making music - no matter how young - and will provide a foundation for any instrument they may choose later, when they are old enough (issues of coordination, hand size, and attention span are the reasons that school instrumental music usually starts in fourth or fifth grade...although with the right teacher, piano, violin, or voice lessons can be started earlier).

When I put up my last post, a review of Bugs' book of music biz stories, I sent Bugs an email as a courtesy, to let him know. The next day, I received an email back from him, thanking me for the post. Not long after that, I got a phone call from Bugs, and we had a nice chat. Among other things, he mentioned an idea he had: using childrens' songs to learn English (adults or kids). My reaction was, sure - why not? People often use comic books and sitcoms to learn foreign languages. Kids' songs use entry-level vocabulary and grammar, and are also a basic part of the culture.

Besides just about every well-known American kids' song and many folk songs, "The Best 101 Children's Songs" includes originals that use "finger games" to teach addition and subtraction, plus jokes and riddles here and there. The content is intelligent and educational, as well as entertaining.

Whether you use this with your kids or grandkids, or perhaps even as an aid to learning English, this is a great product. Here's a sample:

Review: "Nice Stories About Nice People," by Dr. Bugs Bower

I've been a fan of Maurice "Bugs" Bower's work for years, before I really knew anything about the guy. Back in the 1970s, a friend hipped me to his Bop Duets book, and I've been using it for teaching ever since. (I've also used his Rhythms Complete book).

Some years later, I got to know an older-generation sax player who, as it happened, had served in the 89th Infantry Division band with Bugs during World War II, and had a story about him (see this post). Subsequently, I learned a bit more about Bugs - he was not just the author of educational materials, but had been quite active in the recording business as a producer, with eight gold records (i.e., they sold a million copies each), and two Grammies.

So when I learned that Bugs had written a book of his reminiscences about the music business, I had to get a copy. It's called Nice Stories About Nice People. This little book (93 pages) is, as the title indicates, entirely positive and upbeat. It includes short chapters about recording with Cab Calloway, Perry Como, Kool and the Gang, and Steve Allen; the time he turned down a job directing merchandise sales for a rock group (they turned out to be the Beatles - but who knew?); the recording of "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini," which earned him a gold record as producer as well as royalties for the song on the flip side; musings about famous musicians with perfect pitch; his creative brainstorms for various commercially successful recordings (e.g., aerobics, children's records, "Tijuana Christmas"); and advice to the reader for a happy life and how to get started in the music business. It's a fun read.

Bugs' 95th birthday was this past July 16.

Here's a short video made for the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) Oral History Program, in which Bugs describes how he used the Schillinger system to write his "Rhythms" book in the late 1940s. I'm pretty sure he used the same approach in Bop Duets, as he often sets licks to varied rhythmic patterns. And actually, that's a great pedagogical approach in teaching students to read rhythms. It's also a great technique for jazz players: using different rhythms to get many different licks from one basic one.

Judging from the number of Youtube videos, Bugs' bop duets are still quite popular for teachers, on a number of different instruments. They were probably written originally for trumpet, as that was Bugs' main instrument, but they certainly work well for sax and clarinet.

Here's a link to an excellent article about Bugs in the Jacksonville (Fla.) Times-Union, with a lot more biographical information.

Here's a link to Bugs' own music book website.

Here's Cab Calloway at age 85, singing with a big band arrangement that Bugs did for a recording of Cab's, and that Cab used for years afterwards (the story is in the book) (BTW, I have a feeling that I've played a knockoff of this arrangement in some big band or other):

Finally, here is a 1964 recording by Donna Lynn of a tune written, and I assume produced, by Bugs: "My Boyfriend Got a Beatle Haircut." Cute, but it did not go gold.

Saxophonist Fred Staton

Check out this New York Times article on tenor saxophonist Fred Staton, still gigging in New York at age 102.

There are a few videos featuring Fred Staton on Youtube; here's a studio recording with vocalist Catherine Russell. Everyone sounds terrific. Fred was 100 years old at the time of the recording. What an inspiration!

Here's one with Fred talking a bit about his life:

Cole Porter's "Love For Sale" - What are the right changes?

You'll find quite a bit of variation among different charts, and different recorded versions, in the chords to Cole Porter's "Love for Sale." I've often wondered which changes are actually "correct." Recently, I acquired a copy of the 1930 sheet music, showing Porter's original piano arrangement, along with chord symbols for guitar.

In sheet music of this period, it's usually better to look to the piano arrangement, rather than the chord symbols, as a guide to the composer's intentions. In this case, the chord symbols shown in the sheet music show harmony that is pretty close to the piano part, although the symbols do miss some bass lines and voice leading.

Below are the chord symbols shown in the original sheet music. I've omitted the introductory "verse," and made a couple of other small adjustments, such as leaving out a few bass notes indicated in the chord symbols (e.g., "Db/F"). Click to enlarge.

The form is verse A A1 B A2. The introductory "verse," not shown above, consists of two 10-bar phrases; each A and B section is 16 bars. The verse is a good one, and an integral part of the tune, but is often omitted, both in recordings and in published charts. The tune ends with an 8-bar tag, included above, but this is also often omitted both in recordings and in charts. Here's an Ella Fitzgerald version that sticks close to Porter's harmony. Ella includes the introductory verse, as well as a tag with vocal melisma (the tag is different from Porter's, in both melody and harmony):

Although the sheet music almost certainly represents Cole Porter's original intentions, it is not entirely improv-friendly. Jazz musicians want to conceive of harmonies in terms that are more formulaic. A good modern chart would need some alterations. The best modern fake book lead sheet I could find is in the Standards Real Book(Sher Publishing Co.). More about this chart later.

The most glaring harmonic disparities between different versions, both recorded and printed, come at the beginning of the three A sections.

Here's what Porter's original sheet music shows for the first 8 bars of each 16-bar A section (each box is a measure):

The tune is in Bb major overall, but frequently shifts to Bb minor. Eb is a IV chord, Bb or Bbm is tonic. It's pretty clear to me that Porter's shift from major to minor is "word painting" - using the music to reinforce or color the lyrics. Porter employed this sort of coloration in many of his songs. Just one example from "Love for Sale": Right at the beginning of the first A section, Porter harmonizes the first word, "Love," with a major IV chord (bright, happy), but when the lyrics continue "for sale," the resolution is to a tonic minor chord (dark, not so happy). At the end of the first A section the word "sale" is not only harmonized with a minor chord, but finishes on a low Bb, the lowest note of the song.

For an excellent analysis of the interplay of words/harmony/melody in "Love for Sale," check out this article by Michael Buchler. (Incidentally, a footnote in this article quotes another Porter scholar, Matthew Shaftel: "Porter was personally involved in nearly all levels of his sheet music publication including the correction of proofs...so that the printed versions differed only superficially from his own manuscripts.")

Although Porter's placement of tonic major and tonic minor chords was exact and intentional, recording artists have treated the first 8 measures of each 16-bar A section in a number of very different ways. Several different interpretations are listed below (I am looking here just at the basic tonalities of the Bb and Eb chords, and am not discussing any added 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, or 13ths):

Sidney Bechet (1947), George Shearing/Wes Montgomery (1961) - These recordings "bluesify" the tune by playing every tonic chord as Bb or Bb7, every IV chord as Eb or Eb7. Bechet's was the first recorded version to use this interpretation:

Oscar Peterson (1951) - Follows Porter's scheme for two choruses, but in the third chorus all the IV - I cadences except one go to Bb major.

Billie Holiday/Oscar Peterson (1952), Oscar Peterson (1953): Follows Porter except for the last A, which goes to Bbm both times:

Art Tatum (1953, 1955, 1956) - In all 3 recordings, Tatum uses Bbm in the first A section of the first chorus, but generally not after that, going with the Bechet scheme of all Bb major. In the 1956 recording he plays a fourth chorus that uses Bbm in the first A section, and in the last cadence of the last A.

Charlie Parker (1954), Ahmad Jamal (1955), Shirley Horn (1962), Dexter Gordon (1962) - These recordings resolve to Bbm every time. In Parker's recording, he resolves to a concert D note just once in his solo, for the fun of it, while the piano sticks with Bbm. Guitarist Billy Bauer does the same in his solo, with a "Jingle Bells" quote (the tune was recorded in December). In Dexter's recording, pianist Sonny Clark uses Bb or Bb7 through much of his solo. Here's the scheme:

Ella Fitzgerald (1956) - A Youtube clip is above. The arrangement follows Porter's version.

Miles Davis (1958) - A Youtube clip is below. This arrangement alternates minor-then-major tonic chords in every A section. In his solo, Miles insistently hits the major third of each Bb major chord.

Cannonball Adderley/Miles Davis (1958) - Seems to basically use all tonic minor chords on the head, going to all tonic majors for the solo. Soloist and rhythm section occasionally diverge from this pattern.

About commercial fake book charts: Different fake books show different harmonic interpretaions. You can play "Love for Sale" any way that you like, but don't expect different published charts to be compatible. Personally, I like the "Standards Real Book" chart. It sticks close to Porter's original harmony, adding sevenths to reflect modern preferences. Here is how Sher shows the first A section; compare it to the first 16 bars in the Porter chart at the beginning of this post:

The bridge from the Sher chart is shown below. Compare mm 45-48 to the sheet music chart above. The chords in the original chart may seem a bit irrational from the viewpoint of today's jazz players. The Sher chart shows a more modern, functional solution. Sher's version of these measures harmonizes the melody nicely, retains most of Porter's harmonic intent, and makes sense to improvisers.

To its credit, the Standards Real Book shows the introductory "verse" section for "Love for Sale." Unfortunately, it fails to show Porter's 8-bar tag at the end of the song. Most other modern charts skip both the verse and the tag, as do many recordings. The tag can be found in Dick Hyman's Professional Chord Changes and Substitutions for 100 Tunes Every Musician Should Know. Unfortunately, Hyman leaves out the verse!

For the historical background of "Love for Sale," check out this page on JazzStandards.com.

It's hard to say which version I like best. Here's the Miles version, recorded at the "Kind of Blue" session in 1958. Wonderful playing by everyone, particularly Bill Evans:

"It Don't Mean a Thing" - The chord changes

I've often wondered about the correct changes to Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing." One of the players in my Saturday adult combo class called the tune a couple of weeks ago (thanks, Mike!), which reminded me that various fake books conflict on the chords, and I really didn't know which were right, if any. So I finally got around to checking into it.

I have a book with reproductions of the original sheet musicfor many of Duke's tunes. Often the original sheet music will reflect the composer's intentions, so this seemed like a good place to start. Below is a clip from the sheet music for measures 1-10 of the main theme (click to enlarge):

As is often the case, the guitar symbols do not accurately represent the harmony in the piano arrangement. For example, the Gm7 symbol in measure 2 is there only for the piano's bass note F; bar 5 could have been C7/G; bar 6 might have been better expressed as Gb7b5.

However, the way Duke actually played "It Don't Mean a Thing" follows neither the sheet music chord symbols nor the piano notes. In a number of Youtube clips, he plays mm 1-8 more like this:

| Gm | Gm | Gm | Gm G7 | C7 | F7 | Bb | Bb D7#5 |

Note (among other differences) that the sheet music resolves to Bb in bar 8, while the sequence above resolves in bar 7.

Here is a terrific live version of Ella Fitzgerald with the Ellington band:

Some fake book charts show the first 4 bars as:

| Gm | Gm#7 | Gm7 | Gm6 |  (Sher New Real Book Vol. 2)

or

| Gm  Gm/F# | Gm/F  Gm/E | Eb7 D7 | Gm |  (Hal Leonard "6th Ed." Real Book, old Real Book, Hal Leonard "Real Jazz Book")

Although these alternatives both sound good, I don't hear Duke doing either one. I don't think there's a specific required bass line or moving "My-Funny-Valentine" upper line for the string of Gm chords in bars 1-4.

The most nearly-correct printed chart I found is in the Sher New Real Book, Vol. 2. A clip of mm 1-8 is below. Aside from the moving upper voice in bars 1-4, the rest of the chart seems OK, simple and uncluttered. You might add a G7 in the last 2 beats of m4.

The Sher chart also shows two sets of alternate changes (interesting, but not "vanilla"), for mm 1-8 and for mm 5-8:

mm 1-8:

| Gm  Gm/F# | Gm/F  Gm/E | Eb7  D7 | G7#5 |
| Em7b5  Ebm6 | Bb6/D | C7  F7 | Bb6  (D7#5) |

mm 5-8:

| C7  C#dim7 | Bb6/D  G7#5#9 | Cm7  Bmaj7 | Bb6  (D7#5) |

The bridge, by the way, is the often-used "Montgomery Ward" bridge, tweaked a little in the last 2 bars. Most charts agree on this:

| Fm7 | Bb7 | Ebmaj7 | Ebmaj7 |
| Gm7 | C7 | F7 | D7 |

Unfortunately, most charts leave off the lead-in introductory "verse," nicely performed here by Louis Armstrong:

Anyway, the bottom line is that if you are choosing a fake book chart for this song, I'd suggest the one in New Real Book Vol. 2 - pretty close to correct, and easy to work with.

"Theft! A History of Music" - A comic book must-read

"Theft! A History of Music" is a monumental, very cool graphic-novel presentation of music history, changing music media, borrowing, and copyright law, created by James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins, professors of law at Duke University. In 251 pages, it covers 2000+ years of music history, from Plato to rap.

You don't want to miss this.

Click here to view online, get a free download, or purchase a hard copy.

Here's a clip from the book's web page ("fair-use"!!):

The history in this book runs from Plato to Blurred Lines and beyond. You will read about the Holy Roman Empire’s attempts to standardize religious music with the first great musical technology (notation) and the inevitable backfire of that attempt. You will read about troubadours and church composers, swapping tunes (and remarkably profane lyrics), changing both religion and music in the process. You will see diatribes against jazz for corrupting musical culture, against rock and roll for breaching the color-line. You will learn about the lawsuits that, surprisingly, shaped rap. You will read the story of some of music’s iconoclasts—from Handel and Beethoven to Robert Johnson, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Ray Charles, the British Invasion and Public Enemy.

 To understand this history fully, one has to roam wider still—into musical technologies from notation to the sample deck, aesthetics, the incentive systems that got musicians paid, and law’s 250 year struggle to assimilate music, without destroying it in the process. Would jazz, soul or rock and roll be legal if they were reinvented today? We are not sure. Which as you will read, is profoundly worrying because today, more than ever, we need the arts.

See the video below for a lecture on the subject by co-author Jennifer Jenkins. I'd recommend that you read the comic book first, though.

New Feature at JazzStandards.com

If you are not already familiar with JazzStandards.com, you should check it out. Jeremy Wilson, who runs the site, has ranked the top 1000 jazz standards according to frequency of inclusion in currently-issued CDs by 700 jazz artists. Each song has a page; the first 300 song listings include notes on the song's origin, historical information, and analysis. Recently, Jeremy has added Youtube playlists of approximately 6 versions, for each of the first 300 songs.

A couple of years ago, Jeremy invited me to write some theory pages for the site. I wrote up seven: Theory Overview, Performance Practice vs. Composer's Intention, Harmony and Form, Blues, Rhythm Changes, Modal Jazz, and Bossa Nova. The theory pages are getting some great page view counts, and I hope they are proving useful to readers. I tried to write them in a way that would be useful to musicians but at least somewhat understandable by non-musicians (i.e., not overly technical).

A couple of weeks ago, Jeremy wrote to ask me if I'd like to come up with some video playlists to enhance the theory pages. Criteria, as per Jeremy's suggestion, were: live performance if possible, good camera work, good sound, and of course interesting performances. So far I've come up with playlists for the Performance Practice vs. Composer's Intention, Blues, Rhythm Changes, Modal Jazz, and Bossa Nova pages, with 6 videos per list. It's been fun researching the video selections, and I'll be doing the remaining two theory pages soon.

Check out the playlists! I've discovered some outstanding performances on the pages that Jeremy curated, and in the process of putting together my own five playlists. The home page of the site is here: JazzStandards.com; the theory pages start here: Theory Overview.

That "A Train" Lick, Part 3 - Jelly Roll Morton's "Jungle Blues"

My friend Adam has run across another, even earlier instance of "that A Train lick." In previous posts, we had it traced back to 1929. But here it is in 1927, in Jelly Roll Morton's "Jungle Blues."

The lick as used in "A Train":

You can hear a very similar phrase in "Jungle Blues" at 1:54, 2:37, and 3:09.

Here are links to my two previous posts on our "tune detective" project regarding the A Train lick:

That "A Train" Lick, Part 1 - Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, Billy Strayhorn, and Tiny Grimes

That "A Train" Lick, Part 2 - Jimmie Rodgers!

In "Jungle Blues," another interesting melodic phrase is the one played at 1:40 and 3:00. This is the same lick that was the basis for the first published blues, "I Got the Blues" (Anthony Maggio, 1908). These notes are repeated over and over:

 The sheet music for "I Got the Blues" and some history are in this post:

"I Got the Blues" (1908), the first published blues

The "I Got the Blues" lick was subsequently appropriated by W. C. Handy for the third section of his "St. Louis Blues" (1914). It's kind of archetypal - b3 to 3 to 1. I'm sure it goes back a lot further than 1908. Here's how Handy used it in "St. Louis Blues":

"I Got the Blues" (1908), the first published blues

Here's the original sheet music for the first published "blues" tune - that is, the first published music that 1) had "blues" in the title, and 2) used what we now call a 12-bar blues progression, and 3) had blue notes (i.e, b3) in the melody. I found it online at the Tulane University library.

Some things to note:

• many b3-to-3 blue note licks in the melody
• G7 chord (V of IV) in bar 4 of the first repeated section - this became a basic feature of blues
• C#dim7 chord (#IVdim7) in bar 6 - this too became a standard harmonic feature in many later blues
• rhythmically and structurally a rag, but with a 12-bar blues progression in the first section, and a 12-bar "minor blues" in the second section

Here's a nice, straight reading of the sheet music by Marco Fumo:

In his book Creating Jazz Counterpoint, Vic Hobson quotes a 1955 article by the composer, Anthony Maggio, a "classically trained musician of Sicilian descent." Maggio writes about how he came to write the tune, in 1907:

I took the ferry boat from New Orleans across the Mississippi to Algiers. On my way up the levee, I heard an elderly negro with a guitar playing three notes for a long time. I didn't think anything with only three notes could have a title so to satisfy my curiosity I asked him what was the name of the piece. He replied, "I got the blues."

Hobson comments, "...why the elderly guitarist on the levee in Algiers chose to call the tune "I Got the Blues," we are not told. It may have been just a reference to his own state of mind, or it may have related in some way to "I've Got De Blues" (1901), the first major hit for the African American vaudeville entertainers Chris Smith and Elmer Bowman." [Smith and Bowman's tune, however, was not what we would call a blues.]

Maggio continues,

I went home. Having this on my mind, I wrote "I Got the Blues," making the three notes dominating most of the time. That same night, our five-piece orchestra played at the Fabaker Restaurant (in New Orleans) "I Got the Blues" which was composed with the purpose of a musical caricature, and to my astonishment became our most popular request number. 

During this time people asked me for copies, but I had only my manuscript. I had no intention of publishing it because my interest in music was entirely classical. However, the people's demand by now was so overwhelming that our first violinist, Barzin (later to play first violin with Toscanini, at the Met) persisted until I finally consented to publish 1000 copies for piano, 500 for band and 500 for orchestra...This took place in 1908. The copies were sold in a very short time. I wasn't interested in another edition for the reason already explained.

The chord progression was not original with Maggio; similar 12-bar harmonic sequences had been used before in "Just Because She Made Them Goo-Goo Eyes," a 1900 hit tune by Hughie Cannon, and also in other tunes by Cannon. Similar 12-bar progressions had been used even earlier in the folk tunes "Stagolee," "Frankie and Johnny," and "The Ballad of the Boll Weevil."

The early history of blues is hazy; it's not clear if 12-bar tunes specifically called "blues" were being played in New Orleans or in rural areas previous to this. Certainly the 12-bar sequence was being played, and certainly blue notes (b3, b7) were a common feature of Southern popular music. "I Got the Blues" represents the first time that these elements came together in published form, under the title "blues."

Some other posts on early blues:

Early Blues, blue notes, and blues scales
"St. Louis Blues" and other early published blues