More Jobim Tunes With Borrowed Chords

This post is a sort of necessary follow-up to Jobim’s “Out of Nowhere” Tunes (March 28). There are a few more early Antonio Carlos Jobim tunes with chord sequences borrowed from the “Great American Songbook.” If you are a jazz player, you might be interested in this info just from a theory angle; but knowing this stuff also has the practical value of helping you to insert silly quotes into your solos. Here are the tunes:

Girl From Ipanema (1962): The A section harmony is borrowed from “Take the A Train,” with tritone substitutions for the V chords. Here’s a clip of Jobim playing his own tune, and quoting “A Train.” This is from an all-star jam at a tribute to Jobim. The date is listed as 2002 on the YouTube clip, but I think it was really 1993 (Jobim died in 1994).

The “Ipanema” bridge is harder to solo over than one might think. My solution is to see the bridge as a series of Imaj7 to IVdom chords: Gbmaj7 to B7, then A6 (disguised as F#m7) to D7, then Bb6 (disguised as Gm7) to Eb7, followed by a turnaround in F to set up the last A section. Each of these Imaj7 to IVdom sequences can be treated in a blues sort of way, with guide tones Bb to A, then C# to C, then D to Db. Try thinking of it as three blues sequences, with the guide tones indicating the major third of the key to the minor third of the key. The progression makes more sense that way, and you can get some blues mileage out of it. Jobim inverted the chords to create a more interesting bass line, which obscures their functional logic. (Well, that’s my take, anyway.)

So Danco Samba (1962): This tune has an “A Train” A section, and a “Satin Doll” bridge. (And of course, the A section of “A Train” was itself borrowed from the earlier “Exactly Like You.”)

Wave (1967): The 12-bar A section is a disguised blues, crammed with extra changes. The I and IV are right where they should be in a blues (bars 1 and 5), and the Dm7 G7 dorian vamp in bars 11 and 12 is right where a blues would have had a return to the tonic D7. These “landmark” spots in bars 5 and 11 are each prepared backwards with a series of dominant chords or II V’s that, when played forwards, resolve nicely into each other. It’s the same compositional process as Charlie Parker’s “Blues for Alice,” with a different end result. As in “Blues for Alice,” the I and IV are major 7 chords. Note the blues lick in bars 10-11 of the A section.

One-note Samba (1959): The A section is “I Got Rhythm,” with each chord 4 beats instead of 2 beats, and tritone subs in bars 2, 4, 6, 8, 14, 15, 26. 28, 30, and 32. The last A section has a clever alteration in the last 4 bars. Actually, to be a bit more accurate, it’s based on “Rhythm changes,” i.e. the chord changes evolved by jazz players to make the original Gershwin tune more improv-friendly. The melody of the A section is very likely inspired by the verse (introduction) to Cole Porter's "Night and Day."

Chega de Saudade (1958): A great early composition, sometimes called the first bossa nova tune. The A section uses essentially the same chords as the 1944 choro “Saxofone, Porque Choras.” The B section (where it goes into the key of D major) is “When You Wish Upon a Star,” from the Disney movie,"Pinocchio." This borrowed chord sequence goes for 16 measures. You can amuse your audience and your fellow band members with this lengthy quote, at least until everyone is thoroughly bored with hearing it. Then you can keep doing it, like telling a bad joke over and over again. The shape of the melody in bars 1-6 references “Bye Bye Blues,” although “Chega” is in minor, and the chords are completely different.

There’s also “How Insensitive,” which is partly based on Chopin’s Prelude #4 in E minor. I only mention this to round out this article. I’m not sure how to get a good quote out of it.

And don’t forget the corny “Star Trek” quote that you can use on all of those “Out of Nowhere” tunes (see the March 28 post).

Late addition: "Este seu olhar," which pretty much follows the harmonic template of Rodgers and Hart's "Bewitched" - see this post. Another Jobim tune, "So em teus bracos," isn't too far off.

Another one: Jobim’s “Andorinha,” bars 17-24 and again in bars 33-40, uses the progression found in “Stella by Starlight,” bars 25-32.

Jobim's "Out of Nowhere" Tunes

Antonio Carlos Jobim was the most recent major composer in the tradition that ran through Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and Jimmy Van Heusen. Jobim was a great songwriter, standing on the shoulders of other greats. He assimilated the harmonic devices of those who had come before, and building on those, created a unique and beautiful personal style. There were other key elements: a rhythmic/melodic vocabulary that incorporated Brazilian traditional styles, a classical education, and a great gift for melody. 

In this post, I’d like to talk about the harmony that underlies a certain group of his tunes, which share a template that seems to have been borrowed from the American standard “Out of Nowhere,” by Johnny Green. Here's Charlie Parker playing it.

Jobim certainly knew the Great American Songbook. Early in his career, he logged perhaps thousands of hours accompanying night club singers in Rio, at a time when American standards were popular. 

Johnny Green’s “Out of Nowhere” begins with the chords:

 || Gmaj7 | Gmaj7 | Bbm7 | Eb7 |

| Gmaj7 | Gmaj7 | Bm7 | E7 |

| Am7 | etc.

That is, two bars of the tonic chord (Gmaj7), then a II V in Ab (Bbm7 Eb7), then back to the tonic for two bars, then a III chord (Bm7) that is a pivot, serving also as the first chord in a II V (Bm7 E7) pointed at the II, then the II (Am7). Jobim seems to have borrowed this 9-bar section for at least six of his tunes. They are listed below, with links to some youtube versions:

“Look to the Sky” aka “Olha Pro Çeu”  - from Jobim's album "The Composer of Desafinado Plays" 

“Vivo Sonhando” aka “Dreamer”- Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto

“Meditation” - Joao Gilberto and Caetano Veloso

“Eu Preciso de Voce” - Sylvia Telles

“Fotografia” - Barbara Casini and Phil Woods
"Triste"- Elis Regina

You have to think of bars 3 and 4 of these tunes as using a “harmonic departure” of one kind or another - not necessarily the exact device Green used. If you look at the tunes this way, they all begin with very much the same 9-bar template, before continuing on in various different ways.

Most of these tunes are in 32-bar ABAB¹ form (no bridge), as is “Out of Nowhere.” “Meditation” adds a bridge: ABABCAB^1.

Below is the start of each of the Jobim pieces: 

“Look to the Sky”:

|| Ebmaj7 | Ebmaj7 | Ebm7 | Ab7 |

| Ebmaj7 | Ebmaj7 | Gm7 | C7b9 |

| Fm7 |  etc.

Here, the “departure” in bar 3 is a I to IV in Eb dorian (see “Triste”). Note the similarity to Miles Davis/Eddie Vinson’s tune “Four”.

“Vivo Sonhando”:

|| Gmaj7 | Gmaj7 | Ebmaj7/G | Ebmaj7/G |

|| Gmaj7 | Gmaj7 | B-7 | E7b9 |

| Am7 |  etc.

The key is G major, as in the Green tune. Bars 3-4 use Ebmaj7, a VI chord borrowed from the key of G minor (parallel minor to G major), with G in the bass.

“Meditation”:

| C6 | C6 | B7sus4 | B7 |

| C6 | C6 | A7 | A7 |

| Dm7 |  etc.

Here the “departure” is to a dominant chord a half step down from the tonic (see “Whispering” and “Groovin’ High”). Bars 7-8 simplify the II V approach to bar 9, using just a V of II rather than a II V approach. See the note at the bottom of this post regarding the tune "Bye Bye Blues."

“Eu Preciso de Voce”:

| Cmaj7 | Cmaj7 | Ab7 Ebm7 | Ab7 |

| Cmaj7 | Cmaj7 | A7b9 Em7b5 | A7b9 |

| Dm7 |  etc.

Another simplified “Out of Nowhere” form (again, see note regarding “Bye Bye Blues”). Here bars 3 and 7 have the II chord inserted in the second half of the bar, changing the harmonic motion just a little.

“Fotografia”:

| Cmaj9 | C6/9 | F7sus4 | F7 |

| Cmaj9 | Cmaj9 | Em7b5 | A7b13 |

| Dm9 |  etc.

Here the “departure’ in bars 3-4 is a blues-style IV dominant chord, with a suspended fourth moving to a third, to give some harmonic motion.

“Triste”: 

|| Bbmaj7 | Bbmaj7 | Gbmaj7 | B7 |

| Bbmaj7 | Bbmaj7 | Dm7 | G7b9 |

| Cm7 |  etc.

In this tune, the “departure” in bar 3 is a VI chord borrowed from the parallel minor (Gbmaj7 is a normal VI in Bb minor), moving in bar 4 to the next stop on the circle of 5ths (B7), which conveniently is a subV approach to the Bbmaj7 in bar 5.

In the second A section, the “departure” in bars 19-20 changes to Bbm7 Eb7, which we can analyze as a I to IV in Bb dorian - a sort of parallel minor. This is the same device used in “Look to the Sky.”

"Triste" is the most harmonically complex of these songs, as it continues. It was written later than the others, in 1967.

You can see that these 6 tunes share a template. In case you think I’m imagining the “Out of Nowhere” origin of these tunes, check out Jobim’s piano solo on “Vivo Sonhando” from the “Composer of Desafinado Plays” album, where he begins by quoting “Out of Nowhere.” 

I think it’s quite possible that Johnny Green wrote his tune (1931) around an elaboration of the chords to “Bye Bye Blues” (1925). Here’s the beginning of that one:

|| C6 | C6 | Ab7 | Ab7 |

| C6 | B7 Bb7 | A7 | A7 |

| D7 |  etc.

BTW, if you didn’t already know it, the entire “Out of Nowhere” harmonic template was also used for the theme to the original “Star Trek” TV series, by Alexander Courage (c. 1966). The Jobim tunes were all written between 1959 and 1967.

Note: These songs are sometimes played in other keys, or with chord variations. For the purposes of this post, I have used these sources - Real Book (bootleg or Hal Leonard) for “Triste,” “Look to the Sky,” and “Meditation,” and Songbook Tom Jobim (pub. Lumiar Editora, ed. Almir Chediak) for “Vivo Sonhando,” “Eu Preciso de voce” and “Fotografia.”

For a listing of all (or most) of Jobim’s compositions, see this page.

Some other Jobim tunes with borrowed chord sequences are discussed in a later post on this blog - click here.