Blue Bossa Chords & Backing Track

Blue Bossa is a popular bossa nova standard written by Kenny Dorham and made popular by Joe Henderson on his album Page One (1963). It was written after Dorham visited the Rio de Janeiro Jazz Festival in 1961.

Blue Bossa is a good song for beginners to practice improvisation over chord changes because it's slow and has an easy to follow harmony (including a modulation).

Here are the chords:

| Cm7         |             | Fm7         |             |
| Dm7b5       | G7alt       | Cm7         |             |
| Ebm7        | Ab7         | Dbmaj7      |             |
| Dm7b5       | G7alt       | Cm7         | Dm7b5 G7alt |

Harmonic analysis

| Im7         |             | IVm7        |             |
| IIm7b5      | V           | Im7         |             |
 --> modulation to Db major:
| II          | V           | I           |             |
 --> back to C minor:
| IIm7b5      | V           | Im7         | IIm7b5   V  |

• Blue Bossa is in the key of C minor.
• On bars 1 to 8 and 13 to 16 use the C minor scale (C Aeolian) or C blues scale.
• On the G7 alt you can play a C harmonic minor scale or a G altered scale.
• There's a modulation to Db major on bar 9 that lasts until bar 12. It's a regular II V I, you can play the Db major scale there.

Blue Bossa Backing Track Video (130 bpm)

Related Lesson:

• Latin Guitar

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