Cool Blues (Charlie Parker)

Cool Blues is a jazz blues composed by Charlie Parker in 1947. It’s a blues in C and one of Parker’s well-known heads built on a simple, catchy idea.

In this lesson, you’ll learn the theme of Cool Blues, a solo chorus based on Grant Green’s recording, and one chorus of my own.

Recommended listening:

• Charlie Parker Quartet featuring Erroll Garner – Single (1947)
• Sonny Stitt – Sonny Stitt (1958)
• Grant Green – Born to Be Blue (1961)
• Lou Donaldson (with Grant Green) – Here ‘Tis (1961)

 

 

 

The melody of Cool Blues is built around a short lick that is repeated three times.

Characteristic is the natural 7 (B) over the C chord instead of the expected b7 (Bb). This sound points toward the Bird Blues, where the first chord is often maj7 rather than dominant 7.

 

Grant Green’s solo starts in bar 13 with a chromatic descending line between the b7 and the 5 of C7, combined with a pedal note on C.

 

In bar 15, he plays the Honeysuckle Rose motif, a well-known jazz guitar pattern named after the Fats Waller tune.

This phrase became a staple of the jazz guitar vocabulary and appears in the playing of many bebop-era guitarists. I cover this pattern in more detail in my Jazz Guitar Patterns & Phrases course.

 

In bar 17, Green plays an Ebmaj7 arpeggio over F7, a common substitution that highlights the b7, 9, #11, and 13 of F7.

Wes Montgomery used this sound frequently. I use a similar idea in bar 33 of my solo, where I play Fmaj7 over G7.

 

Ebmaj7 arpeggio	Eb	G	Bb	D
Played over F7	b7	9	11	13

 

In bar 20, he outlines a C#dim7 arpeggio over A7, implying an A7b9 sound.

 

C#dim7 arpeggio	C#	E	G	Bb
Played over A7	3	5	b7	b9

 

In bar 23, he plays a chromatic cliché moving from the 3rd of C7 to the 5th, an idea I also use in my solo in bars 27 and 29.