Post 139: I - III - VI THE GEORGIA CHORD PROGRESSION IN JAZZ

Writing a popular tune is like playing a game of chess. There are recommended moves and gambits, on top of which you need flashes of the unorthodox.

As in chess, there are standard openings. For example, there is the We’ll Meet Again, Don’t Know Where, Don’t Know When harmonic opening. It's known to jazz musicians as the 'Georgia' progression.

For example, it is used in such tunes as It’s Only a Shanty in Old Shanty Town, Basin Street Blues (main theme), The Charleston, Has Anybody Seen My Girl?, Clarinet Marmalade (main theme), Daddy's Little Girl, Martha, You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You, Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone, Do Your Duty, Darkness on the Delta, Black Bottom Stomp (introduction), That Da Da Strain (main theme), I've Heard That Song Before, If You Were the Only Girl in the World, Hey Look Me Over, Whenever You're Lonesome, Give it Up, Lover Come Back to Me, I'm Alone Because I Love You, 'Taint Nobody's Business if I Do, Barefoot Boy, All of Me and Who’s Sorry Now.

The chord progression was very common in the 1920s, especially in Charleston-style numbers, but it also works well in slower tunes.

What do they all have in common?

Yes - like We'll Meet Again - they all start on the chord of the tonic. Then they change to the chord of the third note in the scale and then to the chord of the sixth note in the scale (sometimes major, sometimes minor). So in the key of C, their first three chords could be:

In many cases, such as All of Me and Who’s Sorry Now?, we have two bars of each chord.

Here's Georgia itself. The progression of course appears at the start of all three eight-bar sections other than the Middle Eight.

Post 13: SIMPLY THE BEST - SHOTGUN PLAY 'WHENEVER YOU'RE LONESOME'

In March 2016, correspondents Bill Stock in England and Dave Menashe in California alerted me to a short new video. They thought I would like it. They were so right!

It's The Shotgun Jazz Band playing Whenever You're Lonesome, filmed in the New Orleans Radio Station WWOZ studio on the morning of Tuesday 8 March 2016. You can watch it by clicking here.

To my mind, this is as near perfect as traditional jazz gets. The performance is relaxed; it makes everything sound simple (which of course it is not). It is tasteful and relatively quiet: we can hear all the instruments very clearly. In the third of the four choruses, Marla sings the vocal with passion.

For the occasion, the band was without a trombone or drummer, but they had Ben Polcer on piano. Marla states the melody with minimal fuss on the trumpet, and James Evans on clarinet provides lovely decoration. John Dixon and Twerk Thompson are - as ever - absolutely solid 4-to-the-bar. Ben and James take half each of a sweet solo chorus. Marla's playing in the final chorus is a model of how to do it. (You can study her fingering - and use of the bowler mute - in close-up.) And, interestingly, she sings out just the penultimate 8 bars - something unusual and effective that perhaps the rest of us should think about doing.

As a little bonus, the performance ends with a moment of comedy from Ben.

Whenever you're lonesome,
just telephone me.

For those who like to know such things, I believe the song was composed in about 1922 by Pete Wendling and Max Kortlander. The Shotgun Band plays it in the key of C. The song's pleasant effect depends very much on its use of The Georgia Chord Progression (about which I have written HERE - CLICK ON TO READ).
But enough from me. Enjoy the video for yourself.

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P.S. Chris in Sheffield has sent me this:
Hi Ivan, I couldn't agree more about your comments. It is a really great performance. Chris
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The book 'Enjoying Traditional Jazz by Pops Coffee is available from Amazon: