The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    There's another venerable thread on tunes you should know, but I thought it would be interesting to list tunes that it would be embarrassing not to know.

    So, to take perhaps the most obvious example, Autumn Leaves. If you present yourself as a jazz musician you have to know this tune. Otherwise, the other players will look incredulous and think, or say, "he doesn't know that??"

    So, here's my initial list. I took out of a lot of tunes that are important and tried to leave only the ones that it would be shameful not to know.


    1. All The Things You Ar
    2. Autumn Leaves
    3. Blues changes and Rhythm changes - any key
    4. Black Orpheus
    5. Blue Bossa
    6. Bye Bye Blackbird
    7. Days of Wine and Roses
    8. How High The Moon
    9. Just Friends
    10. On Green Dolphin Street
    11. Satin Doll
    12. Stella By Starlight
    13. So What
    14. Take The A Train
    15. The Girl From Ipanema
    16. There Will Never Be Another You
    17. Out of Nowhere

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  3. #2

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    Shameful??? This is the 21st century, not 1959.

  4. #3

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    I still haven't learn the Days Of Wine And Roses. I'm sooo embarrassed!

    Screw that. The only embarrassing tune not to know is Happy Birthday. And I saw that's happened a few times.

  5. #4

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    I know all of those so I can make everyone else feel ashamed.

    Shame on you!!!! Shame!!! Great shame!!! You bring shame on your family!!!

    DW&R is kind of lame. Except when Wes plays it. Terrible lyrics too.

  6. #5

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    Thing is this is all relative. You might think you know the jazz repertoire and go and hang out some other gang of dweebs and they have a whole different bunch of tunes they were ordered to learn at mode school.

    By far the worst for this are, however, early jazzers. What do you mean you don’t know ‘it ain’t no sin’, ‘figgety feet’, ‘my little eggcup’, ‘do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?’ and ‘button up your overcoat’? FILTHY BOPPER!!!!

  7. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    I know all of those so I can make everyone else feel ashamed.

    Shame on you!!!! Shame!!! Great shame!!! You bring shame on your family!!!

    DW&R is kind of lame. Except when Wes plays it. Terrible lyrics too.
    DW&R aint bad, I played it a few times from the charts, just too lazy to memorize. That and I'm not too keen on ballads.

    ATTYA is a required standard, ok, I can play it, but why would I? My definition of a perfect musician- one who knows how to play ATTYA, but doesn't.

  8. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Thing is this is all relative. You might think you know the jazz repertoire and go and hang out some other gang of dweebs and they have a whole different bunch of tunes they were ordered to learn at mode school.

    By far the worst for this are, however, early jazzers. What do you mean you don’t know ‘it ain’t no sin’, ‘figgety feet’, ‘my little eggcup’, ‘do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?’ and ‘button up your overcoat’? FILTHY BOPPER!!!!
    Say what you want about the early jazzers, but the tunes are great. I love most of them, and rather play that than freaking Jeanine or Beatrice or what have you. You can tell I was at a 'serious' jazz jam session recently.

  9. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
    I still haven't learn the Days Of Wine And Roses. I'm sooo embarrassed! .
    It is not a big problem to play it just by ear on the spot (once you know how it sounds of course)... and after one or two takes you just play it...And think this is more important skill than learning all the songs)))

  10. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    By far the worst for this are, however, early jazzers. What do you mean you don’t know ‘it ain’t no sin’, ‘figgety feet’, ‘my little eggcup’, ‘do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?’ and ‘button up your overcoat’? FILTHY BOPPER!!!!
    I remember quite long ago I got a CD with early Billie Holiday and Lester Young sessions and I think I could not identify anything except a few songs like Georgia, All of Me, They Can't Take That Away From Me and maybe a couple more... and I thought I knew standardsand not only the names but they also all souded to me the same song with minor variations...

  11. #10

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    Black Orpheus? Samba de Orfeu or Manha de Canivale I assume?I "know" every song on that list...theres also a few I haven't played voluntarily in 10 years

  12. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    DW&R is kind of lame. Except when Wes plays it. Terrible lyrics too.
    I love to hear Herb Ellis play it.




  13. #12

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    Circumstances vary.
    If you're a solo guitarist (or doing ocassional solo guitar gigs), you need to know some tunes people who are willing to pay to hear a solo jazz guitarist will want to hear. But you don't have to know all of them. You need a few hours' worth that hang together. You can play lots of ballads or only one or zero---so long as the whole thing holds together. Some people lean toward romantic tunes, other toward novelty tunes, some lean toward blues and others toward simple standards (All of Me, Summertime) while still others like to take the familiar in an unexpected direction (as Blossom Dearie did by making "The Surrey with the Fringe On Top" into a ballad, practically a lullaby.) A lot has to do with what you can make come across. (What you can project on stage may not be the same thing you most enjoy hearing while home alone, either.)

    If you front a contemporary band and compose a lot, you'll play mostly your own stuff and are likely to play only standards. that fit in with the rest of the set. (Sonny Rollins played "I'm An Old Cowhand", for godsake, and it was great fun to hear him do it.)
    If you're a sideman looking to get called as much as possible for gigs, then you can't know too many tunes.

    How you like to improvise matters a lot too. Some people love to blow over rhythm changes while others avoid them. If you want to play in a sparse, moody, melodic way, you'll probably want tunes with fewer changes (and slower tempos.)

  14. #13

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    Quote Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
    DW&R aint bad, I played it a few times from the charts, just too lazy to memorize. That and I'm not too keen on ballads.

    ATTYA is a required standard, ok, I can play it, but why would I? My definition of a perfect musician- one who knows how to play ATTYA, but doesn't.
    Yeah, I think we may be of the same mindset there HTTJ. Not too sure about a musician who hasn't attempted to drowned a broken heart in alcohol.

    I'll add INDIANA to the list but like the man says...just know it don't call it.

    Here's my remedy for ballad indifference: For All We Know, Solitude, Two For The Road, Your Face Before Me...well you get the idea.

  15. #14

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jonah
    I remember quite long ago I got a CD with early Billie Holiday and Lester Young sessions and I think I could not identify anything except a few songs like Georgia, All of Me, They Can't Take That Away From Me and maybe a couple more... and I thought I knew standardsand not only the names but they also all souded to me the same song with minor variations...
    In the 30s and 40s, there really weren't vocal 'standards' in the way we think about the Great American Songbook tunes now (there a few chestnuts that lots of singers kicked around, but not a whole accepted body of songs that formed some kind of canon). The folks controlling the recording sessions for singers like Billie and Fats Waller were just looking for hit records, or looking to do favors for songwriters or exploit songs that they had a financial stake in. So you get Billie and Fats singing this endless string of forgettable songs (well, we remember them today only because Billie recorded them) until the record companies realize she's not going to sell a million records, and then she spends her last decade recording great standards for Norman Granz. It was true for lots of other artists too, including "Mr. Standard-maker" himself, Frank Sinatra, whose Columbia recordings from the 1940s are about 2/3 forgettable turkeys.

  16. #15

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    As a non-gigger I'm curious: does anyone care to hear these standards besides older folks? Is there much of a demand for such tunes?

  17. #16

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    I still like DoWaR and Stella.

  18. #17
    A couple of months ago, I had the opportunity to play in a jam with a master pianist from another country. Everyone deferred to him. He wanted to make sure that everybody would know the first tune, so he started playing Autumn Leaves. I thought, it would be embarrassing not to know it. This tune made no real sense in the context of the music he was teaching -- it only made sense insofar as everyone could reasonably be expected to know it. That's where I got the idea for the thread.

  19. #18

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    Far be it for me, a mere semi-hollowist, to disagree with Christian77 (I assume the 77 is his level of mastery of all taste in the universe), but there is nothing better in said universe (or some universe, anyway) than Pat Martino's version of DoW&R



    John
    Last edited by John A.; 10-14-2019 at 04:24 PM.

  20. #19

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    Quote Originally Posted by zdub
    As a non-gigger I'm curious: does anyone care to hear these standards besides older folks? Is there much of a demand for such tunes?
    I think it depends what you do with them. I’ve just been listening to Common Practice, the newly-released cd by Ethan Iverson 4tet with Tom Harrell — reinventing the chestnuts in delightfully intriguing ways. Or listen to the Inside Out recordings with Lorne Lofsky if you require guitar content. It’s not the meat—it’s the motion!

  21. #20

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    Quote Originally Posted by zdub
    As a non-gigger I'm curious: does anyone care to hear these standards besides older folks? Is there much of a demand for such tunes?
    There is not demand for specific tunes per se, apart from the occasional request from someone who knows the repertoire.

    I think these lists are hard. No one in my circles would ever call "Satin Doll", but, probably most people have played it and could definitely hear the changes after a once through. I agree very much this varies by region as well, I have a friend in poland and he said "green dolphin street" is super common because the composer is polish. When I used to live in SF I would hear "I'm getting sentimental over you" called at a jam I frequented, everyone knew it, I had never really heard this tune called before.

    For me, stuff like "I'll Remember April" and "Beatrice" and "I mean you" would definitely be on the list. Autumn Leaves is kinda exceptional because it is perhaps the most basic changes ever besides a blues: who can't hear a ii-V-I in the major and relative minor?

    Anyways I think lists like this are hard and always tend towards a long list of standards, but if they are also fun, then that's cool, too. Lately I just focus on the tunes I really like to play and hear, and hearing the harmony to these standard tunes just keeps getting easier.

  22. #21

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    For some reason this thread got me thinking about Joe Pass' album "Apassionato" which has a bunch of tunes that I had never heard of, all of which he plays wonderfully. "That's Earl Brother," "Red Door," "Stuffy," "YOu're Driving me Crazy"--alongside some universal favorites. I sometimes think of that album as an almost ideal set list.

  23. #22

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    Quote Originally Posted by lawson-stone
    For some reason this thread got me thinking about Joe Pass' album "Apassionato" which has a bunch of tunes that I had never heard of, all of which he plays wonderfully. "That's Earl Brother," "Red Door," "Stuffy," "YOu're Driving me Crazy"--alongside some universal favorites. I sometimes think of that album as an almost ideal set list.
    It's kind of an interesting exercise to look at the repertoire on your favorite jazz albums in general: when I do this, I see very very few albums that I know all the tunes from start to finish, and by most people's standards I know a lot of tunes. The "standard repertoire" is a lot of cherry picked songs, Ella's songbook series includes WAY more songs than most people play, for example, when's the last time you had anyone call "Early Autumn" or "This Time The Dream's On Me?"

  24. #23

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    Quote Originally Posted by pcsanwald
    It's kind of an interesting exercise to look at the repertoire on your favorite jazz albums in general: when I do this, I see very very few albums that I know all the tunes from start to finish, and by most people's standards I know a lot of tunes. The "standard repertoire" is a lot of cherry picked songs, Ella's songbook series includes WAY more songs than most people play, for example, when's the last time you had anyone call "Early Autumn" or "This Time The Dream's On Me?"
    Early Autumn gets called a fair bit around here. Maybe because we’ve been getting frost warnings for the last couple of weeks. I haven’t heard Blackberry Winter called in years.

  25. #24

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    I never play Bye Bye Bl. or Take the A Train very often so I probably can admit I would stumble for a few times. Otherwise I know the tunes but again is it just old guys like me approaching 60 an over who even care. Sadly I wonder if in fact due to age we just fall by the wayside playing to our own generation. I think it would be cool if younger fellow did this but guess not many. Maybe I am wrong about that but?

    These days the more I listen I just sorta of like nice chord melody and then maybe a chorus of solo that is interesting. So I am listening to Wes play ballads and out own Fred Archtop he has a perfect touch I just love the playing.

  26. #25

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    It's a good list of standards in the jazz culture I know, plus or minus a few. And yeah, some are overplayed to the point of cliche'.

    Not knowing some of them (or keeping them committed to memory) shouldn't be shameful. We all had to learn, and the jazz world can be a bit snobby about that.

    I still get a bit nervous going to a jam session and doing that little negotiation with people I probably haven't played with before, of who's calling what tune, hoping I'll know it well enough. And being relieved and bored if it's ATTYA!

    Just for kicks, something outside my usual bag, I started going to a bluegrass jam once in a while. It struck me how different it was, more relaxed & fun. Don't know the tune? So what, it's easy enough, just follow along, take a solo or not. No weird attitude or "you must know Orange Blossom special"