The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    I've been trying to work through what I know is a pretty simple song, but I'm quite new to this and to jazz guitar in general. I've got some of the chords, thinking it starts with an Ab Maj7, but I could really use some help figuring out the progressions if anyone is willing. Anything would be amazing. Thanks.


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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    Quote Originally Posted by AdrienL
    I've been trying to work through what I know is a pretty simple song, but I'm quite new to this and to jazz guitar in general. I've got some of the chords, thinking it starts with an Ab Maj7, but I could really use some help figuring out the progressions if anyone is willing. Anything would be amazing. Thanks.

    This is how I am hearing it. If any of these are different from what you have so far, let me know. Hope this helps.

    Abmaj7 Ebm7 F7
    Bbm7 Cm7 Dbmaj7 C7
    Fm FminMaj7 Fm7 Dm7b5 G7
    Cm7 Cdim Bbm7 Eb(9)

    Abmaj7 Ebm7 F7
    Bbm7 Cm7 Dbmaj7 C7
    Fm FminMaj7 Fm7 Fm/D*
    Bbm7 Eb(9) Cm7b5 F7
    Bbm7 Eb(9)**

    Abmaj7 Ebm7 F7
    Bbm7 Cm7 Dbmaj7 C7
    Fm FminMaj7 Fm7 Fm/D*
    Bbm7 Eb(9) Cm7b5 F7
    Bbm7 Eb(b9)** Abmaj7

    So the song form is two pieces where the second has a different last half. In the recording he sings through both, then repeats the second piece, first whistling, then switching back to singing to finish it.
    * Could also consider this as Dm7b5
    **He makes a change... the second to the last chord Eb(9) he changes to Eb(b9) for the very end of the song.
    Last edited by pauln; 10-28-2022 at 01:11 PM.

  4. #3

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    I hear in the first verse

    Abmaj7 C–7/b5/Gb F7

    4 x 5 5 x x

    2 x 1 3 x x

    1 x 1 2 x x

    B–7 C–7 Dbmaj7 Dbmaj7 C7

    x 1 x 1 2 x

    x 3 x 3 4 3

    x 4 x 5 6 4

    x 3 2 3 x x

    F– F–/E F–/Eb D-7 [no b5!!!!] G7

    x x 3 1 1 1

    x x 2 1 1 x

    x x 1 1 1 x

    x x 0 2 1 x

    3 ? ? ? ? ?

    [more to come]

    EDIT: That should of course have been a Bb–7
    Last edited by Bop Head; 10-30-2022 at 02:23 PM.

  5. #4
    Many thanks to you both. This has been extremely helpful so far.

  6. #5

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    I was thinking about "The Replacements"

  7. #6

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    The second chord's a Cm7b5 - x3434x.

    The chord after the Fm bit is Dm7b5 - x5656x - except he fudged it the first time :-)

    I think the rest of it's okay.

  8. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by ragman1
    The second chord's a Cm7b5 - x3434x. […]
    I clearly hear a Gb in the bass of the second chord and C — Bb — A as top melody for the first three chords.

  9. #8

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    x3434x Cm7b5 ?
    234x4x Cdim/Gb ?
    2x434x Gb(6) ?

    You mean Ebm7/Gb, it might be easier with the Eb on top.
    He strums twice, first time low strings, second time higher.
    Is it possible the two strums are fingered slightly different?
    It's easy to do this: (hold fingers 3 & 4 move fingers 1 & 2)
    as if the bass line was going Ab...Gb->C F->A Bb->C->Db

    Strum #1 234x4x Cdim/Gb

    Strum #2 x3434x Cm7b5

  10. #9
    Thanks to all, you've unlocked the song for me. I was sorry to see ragman's later posts, with the SC link, go, because I found those very useful. It is indeed an uncommon style for Alex, more or less, but actually the 1993 album Cliches, from which this song is taken, is my favourite of his. He used his own D-35 for the recording, which sounds sloppy and a bit weird, but for whatever reason it became one of most favourite guitar albums. He's definitely no Hank Garland, but I like him anyway! (And Strbender, I'm often thinking of the Placemats.)

    Thanks again everyone.

  11. #10

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    That's definitely the most obscure song on Clichés. If you don't already know, it comes from a 1977 movie starring Art Carney and Lily Tomlin called "The Late Show". Here's the original recording:



    Another obscurity is the arrangement of "Frame for the Blues," taken from the 1980 Hank Crawford album "Centerpiece". It's a bit funkier and more straightforward than the original recording by Maynard Ferguson.



    I would love to have had a record listening session with Alex. Just listening to the stuff he played and recorded ca. 1977-2000 has exposed me to lots of hidden treasures.

  12. #11
    100% agreed 44lombard. I think moving to New Orleans in the early 80s really opened him up to a wealth of great stuff, and he's taught me a lot about it by osmosis. I'm also glad to see that What Was is as obscure as it seemed to me to be, because all I could really find was what you'd linked there, only through song credits, and no one else doing anything whatever with it (which is romantic in its way). I'd not heard the Crawford before, though, so cheers for that. I love it.

  13. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by AdrienL
    100% agreed 44lombard. I think moving to New Orleans in the early 80s really opened him up to a wealth of great stuff, and he's taught me a lot about it by osmosis. […]
    English wiki: “Chilton grew up in a musical family; his father, Sidney Chilton, was a jazz musician”

    Not sure if it was necessary to open him up. Maybe his playing abilities were more than what one might have thought as well.

    Anyway, I always liked this song:


  14. #13
    Oh, of course I agree with you. Some of what I'm saying has to do with timing, which is the kind of music and style of playing you find him doing around the middle 80s, but then also this little interview he did with MTV in 1985
    where he speaks a bit about how his move to New Orleans really opened him up to new stuff. No doubt though he had a serious knowledge beforehand from his family (the compilation album from which What Was is taken in the first post I made, Songs from Robin Hood Lane, gives a nod to that). Incidentally, in the video above, he does a version of The Letter on a Martin, and he also does a bit from the equally excellent, for me, Neon Rainbow. Also maybe interesting is that in the Box Tops archives, you'll find Alex singing a Mickey Newbury tune (called Georgia Farm Boy, though Mickey's is obviously called Frisco Mabel Joy). Maybe it's not that interesting, but I've loved Mickey Newbury for a long time now and it's funny to hear one of his songs coming out of a teenage Alex. For me, anyway, with regards to his playing abilities, I think he's a great guitarist - not one of the greats, no doubt, but stylistically great and one of my favourites.

  15. #14

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    Mickey Newbury
    Ah, yes, Frisco Depot. Good song.

  16. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by AdrienL
    also this little interview he did with MTV in 1985 where he speaks a bit about how his move to New Orleans really opened him up to new stuff.
    Two New Orleans legends that, like Alex, played anything and everything on stage, genre be damned, were Snooks Eaglin and (to a lesser extent) Walter 'Wolfman' Washington. Supposedly Alex and Rene Coman caught a Wolfman set where he played "Save Your Love for Me" and they decided to learn it, using the Nancy Wilson arrangement as their template. Wolfman recorded a studio version in the early 1990s. And James Booker also had that same adventurousness in singing any tune that appealed to him. I don't know if Alex consciously decided to start putting together live sets and albums like Eaglin, Washington, and Booker were doing (it certainly wasn't the commercially optimal career strategy), or if he just kind of fell into it as his tastes changed in his 30s, but I can imagine those musicians rubbed off on him. And when he first started playing live again around the summer of 1984 in New Orleans (the summer of the World's Fair), he supposedly played a tourist bar that had lists of tunes on the tables, and the band played the requests the customers called out. Considering he'd been washing dishes and trimming trees just before this period, I guess it seemed like honest work and a step in the right direction.

  17. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by 44lombard
    That's definitely the most obscure song on Clichés. If you don't already know, it comes from a 1977 movie starring Art Carney and Lily Tomlin called "The Late Show". Here's the original recording:

    This is one of my very favorite movies. And, the song is terrific.