Hank Garland - It's Love, Of Course

[jazzbender]

Does anyone know the chord progression for the bridge? The standard "I Got Rhythm" bridge doesn't seem to fit the melody.

[FCAFlyer]

That's just a standard 3-6/ 2-5 turn (numbers indicating relation to the root - in Bb, 3 or 3rd chord is a D of some sort, 6 is a G) What George Gershwin is doing is just modifying those chords around the simplest of melodies possible. Try playing just the very basic chords, starting in Bb, but you can transpose it later to any key you want) D7 to G7, C7 to F7 to get your head straight. Then start modifying; adding the 4th, major to minor, using the minor7 flat 5. He's changing the color of the chord with each note of that bridge by shifting to adding a 4th, making it minor7 and flatting the 5, making it a 9th chord. You can modify and change/substitute these chords in almost limitless ways, but start simply at first. Use your looper to lay down the chords in a bunch of different ways. That's typical Gershwin. He had a wild way of hearing things, didn't he? Goodness! I'm always blown away by his stuff.
Chris

[jazzbender]

I think I figured it out. It's in Eb and the B section was tweaked as such:

G7|G7|G7|G7|C7|C7|F7|Bb7|