Post 164: 'ST. JAMES INFIRMARY' AND 'YOU LET ME DOWN'

Sometimes you find that two songs which - on the surface - seem quite different are in fact based a virtually identical chord structure. For example, the many tunes using the Bill Bailey chords are well known to all jazz musicians.

Similarly Please Don't Talk About Me is harmonically identical to Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue (Has Anybody Seen My Girl?).

But today I was listening to You Let Me Down written originally for Billie Holiday, I think, by Warren and Dubin in 1935. What struck me is that  this song - in a minor key - sounds harmonically very similar (almost identical) to St. James' Infirmary.

Post 163: FALSE FINGERING FOR CORNET AND TRUMPET PLAYERS

I'm going to say a few words about false fingering for the cornet or trumpet. This will be boring stuff for most of you, so perhaps you should switch off now and see whether there's a decent football match on TV.

For those still with me, I can tell you I was strictly taught that a cornet player should NEVER - absolutely NEVER - play any note by using the third valve by itself. The correct fingering for such notes as the lower 'E' and the 'A' within the stave was first and second valve combined. The reason for the ban on using the third instead was - I think - that the note would be very slightly out of tune.

But I noticed later in life that many trumpeters - particularly jazz players - habitually and instinctively use third valve alone. You may be surprised to hear that the third valve by itself gets you 'G' AND 'A' AND 'B' above the stave, which the classically-trained are taught always to play as an open note, 1st with 2nd, and 2nd respectively.

So you can go right up the C scale in the higher octave with this simple fingering: C = 0 / D = 1 / E = 0 / F = 1 / G = 3 / A = 3 / B = 3 / C = 0. What a useful trick!

If you find that hard to believe, just try it.

This example of false fingering now seems to me to do no harm and to bring the required result. Unfortunately, the discovery came too late to affect my own playing. The classical rules were ingrained and I was too old to learn new tricks.

Here's another example of false fingering. The higher 'D' within the stave is correctly played with first valve only; and that's how I was taught to play it. But you can also get it (ever so slightly sharp) with a combination of first and third valves.

The most interesting example of this that I am aware of occurs in the 1927 recording by Louis Armstrong of Potato Head Blues - one of the most important and influential recordings in the history of jazz. If you need to, you can find it on You Tube. Note the final stop-time solo (following the Johnny Dodds clarinet chorus) that Louis plays: in the 9th and 10th bars Louis produces an amazing flutter on that 'D'; and he achieves this by hitting the note ten times in a row, alternating the fingering between first valve and first with third.

As you probably know, when you use the second valve, you are lowering an open note by a semi-tone; when you use the first valve, you are lowering the note by a tone; when you use the third valve, you lower it by one and a half tones. This suggests that the third valve can at any time substitute for the first and second together, as either fingering lowers the note by one and a half tones. However, manufacturers do not make the third valve slide exactly the same length as the two other slides combined. That's why the tuning of falsely-fingered notes is not absolutely spot on.

Apart from most of the harmonics (notes played without depressing any valves) all notes in most keys are ever so slightly out of tune and there’s no way of avoiding this. The designers of brass instruments have to compromise in the lengths of the tubing (just as pianos are tuned by ‘equal temperament’).

But enough of this heavy stuff. If you want to study the subject further, start by looking up ‘equal temperament’ on the Internet.

I just want to make a point about the consequences for cornets and trumpets. For every note, we have a ‘correct’ fingering (making the best use of the instrument’s design) but most notes also have at least one ‘false’ fingering which produces the note very slightly sharp or flat – but only to the extent that a passer-by would hardly notice.

I said above that it is possible to play G and A and B above the stave all by depressing third valve alone. In fact you can get any of the following eight notes on a trumpet or cornet with third valve alone:

At a pinch, you can even get the high C above these notes with 3rd valve only.

But please don’t tell anybody this little secret. You would get me into big trouble with serious trumpet tutors. Let’s just keep it between ourselves.

It’s not just third valve that provides some useful false fingering, of course. Here are the third and fourth bars of the most famous cadenza in all jazz – Louis Armstrong’s introduction to West End Blues. I am showing here the classically-correct fingering for the bar of descending quavers.

But if you have trouble playing that, just consider this: you can use first valve alone on five successive notes!

Reminder: don’t let anybody know I told you.

Post 162: WORLD'S BEST 'FRONT LINE' AWARD!

I remember seeing in a jazz magazine about thirty years ago a photograph with the caption 'The World's Best Front Line'.

It was a picture taken in a New Orleans bar and showed a trumpet player, with a clarinettist and a trombonist on either side of him, playing their hearts out and obviously pleasing the journalist or photographer.

I was reminded of this when it occurred to me that the World's Best Front Line Award for musicians active today could well go to Jonathan Doyle (left, clarinet), Shaye Cohn (cornet) and Barnabus Jones (trombone). When those three get together, there is no matching them for rapport, teamwork and musical brilliance.

Here they are at the 2014 French Quarter Festival, playing Willie The Weeper.

I'm indebted for the picture above to my British friend and traditional jazz enthusiast, David Wiseman.

How thrilling they can make any tune sound, even just a basic 12-bar, as in this recent video put up on YouTube by the generous digitalalexa, with Erika Lewis producing a terrific vocal as ever:

CLICK HERE TO WATCH.

Interestingly, of course, these musicians rarely appear literally as a 'front line' - preferring, when space allows, for their band to be spread out in a semi-circle, so that all the players can see each other and the audience can see all the musicians. It is also easier for signals to be given by the leader.

As I have said elsewhere, I wish more bands would adopt this formation.

And by the way, after I wrote the above, another sensational 'front line' emerged in New Orleans. It was The Shotgun Jazz Band's Haruka Kikuchi (trombone), Marla Dixon (trumpet) and James Evans (reeds).

My word, their playing is thrilling too! Try this:
Click on to watch them play 'Climax Rag'.
 .

Post 161: 'OWL CALL BLUES'

Photo : David Wiseman

Tuba Skinny have introduced a beautiful slow-paced song, Owl Call Blues, to their repertoire. It is gloriously sung by Erika Lewis. The melody was written during a tour in France by Shaye Cohn and the lyrics by Erika herself. What a team!

I'm pleased to say it is on their sixth CD, which is actually called Owl Call Blues and includes 14 other tunes, such as Dallas Rag and Oriental Strut.

I can tell you this haunting, melancholy tune immediately embeds itself in your mind. You will want to hear it again and again; and you will go around humming it for days.

It's not a 12-bar blues. It is a 16-bar tune that begins by working its way down a chromatic ladder of long notes. In general feel, it has something in common with Jelly Roll Morton's 1938 composition, Sweet Substitute, Fred Meinken's Wabash Blues (of 1921) and Alex Hill's 1934 song Delta Bound (which Tuba Skinny have also brilliantly recorded).

Tuba Skinny perform it entirely in Bb.

Erika's lyrics comprise two 8-line verses of mystic wistful, nostalgic, pastoral poetry. Both verses begin with the same four lines, but the second four lines are different.

Several readers have asked me to give them the lyrics. I may be wrong but, to my ear, they are as follows.

The valley wide, the valley low,
The ocean deep, the undertow:
I'd walk for miles; I'd walk for days
To feel again your warm embrace.
The clouds roll in to mask the moon.
The owl calls a mournful tune
To a fire that glows with sparks that fly.
I sit and stare, and wonder why.

The valley wide, the valley low,
The ocean deep, the undertow:
I'd walk for miles; I'd walk for days
To feel again your warm embrace.
So take me back to those good old days,

Of running free above the glades.

In tender years we danced and sang.

Our time will come to go away.

If, like me, you can't resist trying to play it yourself, you will probably be able to pick out both the melody and the chord structure (in the main it seems to be a three-chorder, though for the long note - E - in Bars 3 and 4 I settled on Bb diminished).

I first came across this tune in two YouTube videos. One was recorded inside a museum and the acoustic is inevitably resonating, bringing out the full glory of Erika's voice. The Band (with Shaye going for the higher octave) plays three choruses before Erika sings:

Watch it by clicking here.

The second, also filmed in the open air by the great video-maker digitalalexa [Al and his wife Judy], obviously has a quite different acoustic. You can watch it

by clicking on here.

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Footnote

The book Tuba Skinny and Shaye Cohn is available from Amazon.

Post 160: MIDDLE EIGHT OF 'MY BLUE HEAVEN'

Sometimes you come across a standard 32-bar tune in which the 'Middle Eight' follows a slightly uncommon pattern. I have noticed this can easily flummox jazz musicians - even very good ones  occasionally.

My Blue Heaven is a case in point. If you take it in the Key of Eb, then the Middle Eight - in simple terms - is:

one bar of Ab

one bar of C7th

two bars of F minor

two bars of Bb7th
one bar of Eb/Edim
one bar of Fm7/Bb7

The progression from the Ab chord to the C7th (it's the Georgia Progression) defies the usual 'circle of fifths' and that is what presents the challenge. So you have to be careful when improvising on this kind of tune and give it some thought while practising. This is the kind of improvisation that might result.

The music for My Blue Heaven was composed by the great Walter Donaldson in 1927.

He also wrote the music for - among others - My Little Bimbo, Oh Baby, Oh Sister Ain't That Hot, 'Taint No Sin To Take Off Your Skin, That Certain Party, Yes Sir That's My Baby, At Sundown, You're Driving Me Crazy, Carolina in the Morning, I Wonder Where My Baby is Tonight, Love Me Or Leave Me, Making Whoopee, and My Baby Just Cares for Me.

What a massive contribution to our music! Maybe one of these days I shall be able to persuade a band to give a concert entirely of Donaldson compositions.

Walter Donaldson was a New Yorker. He died in 1947 at the age of only 54.

Post 159: POPULAR SONGS WITH MIDDLE EIGHT KEY CHANGES

My friend John Burns suggested I should write something about classic songs that change key during the course of the melody.

This topic fascinates me but I wish I knew more about the theoretical aspects of harmony. John generously over-estimates my ability.

However, I am sure you would agree there are some songs that - when you first hear them - sound as though something weird or wrong has happened, usually at about the midway point of the chorus. You listen to them time and again until you discover the tune has embedded itself in your consciousness and the ‘weirdness’ begins to sound right. You then realise it’s the weirdness that gives the tune its memorable character.

Examples of tunes fitting this description (and I would be grateful if you would suggest any more) are When It’s Sleepy Time Down South, Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?, China Boy, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, Body And Soul, I’m Getting Sentimental Over You, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and Tea For Two. They all take us by surprise with the chords they use in the Middle Eight.

What seems to happen in these 32-bar tunes is: (1) we begin with two similar 8-bar phrases in the home key; then (2) in Bar 17 we switch into a different key before (3) finding the dominant 7^th in Bar 24 and so (4) returning to a final eight comfortably back in the home key.

As an example, consider When It’s Sleepy Time Down South. In the Key of F, its first two 8-bar phrases are not entirely orthodox. They begin on the chord of Bb major; but this is immediately followed by Bb minor, which takes us naturally into F in the third bar; and so we are comfortably rooted in F up to the end of Bar 16.

Then wow! We are suddenly in the Key of A, with the melody twice climbing the stairs and pottering around at the top of the stave.

But in Bar 24, we land on the A chord, which quickly transmutes into A7th sliding up to C7th – and so we are beautifully steered back into the Key of F for the reassuring final eight bars.

That is pretty much what happens in all these tunes. Probably the simplest is China Boy. It’s usually played in the Key of F but the Middle 8 is distinctly in Ab, with Bars 23 and 24 sliding us back into the comfort zone, via the chords of Ab and C7th respectively.

Then of course there is I Love Paris by the great Cole Porter. The chorus has 16 bars in the minor key followed by virtually the same melody in the major (achieving a sudden brightness from Bar 17). The first sixteen bars could be in C minor, the next sixteen in C major.

I may be wrong, but I think the proportion of classic songs using the harmonic key-changing trick is probably fewer than 10%. But they form an interesting group – offering so much more of a challenge to the musician and improviser than the hundreds of tunes with orthodox harmonic patterns.