blame it on the bossa nova

All I used to know about Eydie Gorme was she was the punchline to a really lame joke told in the movie 'Good Morning Vietnam', until I found this record in a bin somewhere.
It is pretty cheesy but hopefully some of you might dig it.
@320
http://rapidshare.com/files/357261098/edgormboss.rar

Summertime (Coltrane changes)

Summertime from Porgy and Bess may be a classic song, but its simplicity has attracted many novices,(particularly girl singers), to it and has often resulted in some over-estimations of competence by said novices.
If it's not Summertime it's Fever.
I don't have anything against the inexperienced taking a turn at the mic,(we all start somewhere), but given the amount of song options in the Real Book which are well known and easy for beginners,(All Of Me, It Don't Mean A Thing, All Blues, God Bless The Child, Quiet Nights, etc...), calling Summertime demonstrates a severe lack of imagination.
Unless you happen to do an interesting arrangement...
By 1961,(if not sooner), musicians were already bored as shit playing this song, and John Coltrane decided to turn it on its ear, when he recorded it for his 'My Favorite Things' album.
In his version, the melody stays more or less the same but the chords underneath are changed, resulting in a darker, more dissonant song which is less intuitive to solo over.
Any jazz musician or afficionado worth his or her salt should own and be familiar with this recording.

Either way, if you ever wanted to try it out but didn't have the chords, now you do.

Interestingly, Summertime isn't in the Real Book at all, making it one of the very few jazz jam standards which are ubiquitously played by memory

Billie Jean

I wrote out Billie Jean years ago for a jazz gig where we did all Michael Jackson covers.This was was my favorite arrangement of the night. We did it as a waltz and I took some liberties with the chords. In particular, the 'James Bond' sounding Dmin to Dmin#5 to Dmin6 and back down again for the verses works quite well with the melody.It's too bad I don't have a recording of it, if I ever make one i'll post it.After Michael's untimely death, I dug this out and brought it to a jam.It went over quite well and some people knew it sounded familiar but couldn't place it.Given the historical significance of this song, it totally deserves inclusion into the jazz canon...or you could just play Billie's Bounce for the millionth effing time.

.MUS file is here for Finale users.

http://rapidshare.com/files/353904138/billie_jean.MUS

Toxic

I remember where I was when I first heard 'Toxic' by Britney Spears.
Driving a truck on an early Saturday spring morning in 2004 with the top 40 station on the radio.
The song grabbed my attention immediately.
Great production evoking classic Bollywood and spagetti western soundtracks, as well as good chords and a catchy melody, I couldn't believe it was coming from a manufactured, Disney-spawned, flaky, piece-of-ass-plastic like Britney.
And so I kept my interest in the song to myself. Then, covers started to pop up and it seemed I wasn't the only one who noticed.
She even won her,(only), Grammy for it,(her and the actual composers of the song of course).
Eventually I wrote it out and have played it a few times with mostly positive results.
I like to do it as sort of a badass tango but here is a cool version done in sort of an uptempo car-chase-music style by the Yaron Herman Trio


The MP3 for that version is included with the .MUS file here
http://rapidshare.com/files/352109137/txc.rar

Don't stop there though, cool cover versions of Toxic abound, spend some time on Youtube or wherever and check 'em out then come up with your own version.
Forget the Britney association, it's a cool tune that deserves to be played, stick it in the setlist and put Autumn Leaves in the mothballs where it belongs.

Nude by Radiohead

It's easy to forget that in the past, it was common practice for jazz musicians to perform and record cover versions of the popular pop songs of the day, in fact, you could argue that the jazz idiom defined itself by this practice to a certain degree.
Remember that many of the songs that we all know as jazz standards started out as Broadway show tunes.
In the era before fake books, jazz musicians who got together to jam were confined by the limitations of what repetoire they all had in common. Given that they all made their living playing popular songs for dance crowds, these songs were the ones that jammers could all be expected to know.
Freed from the confines of entertaining a room full of drunk squares at a wedding, these early pioneers could experiment with longer, more elaborate solos and faster tempos, all based on the framework of songs like 'All the Things You Are', 'I Got Rythym' or 'Cherokee'.
As a result, pop standards became jazz standards and the canonical list of jazz songs began to be established.
The emergence of the Real Book coincided with an elitist perspective among jazz musicians which held that as practicioners of a 'Serious American Artform', they should be excempt from having to debase themselves by playing the music of the common folk.
With their new guidebook in hand they didn't have to. And the working musician pool split between jazzers and players of popular music,(rock and/or R&B), the latter taking over most of the wedding/dance-club work and even to this day, learn their songs by ear,(to my knowledge, there are no universal pop/rock/R&B fake books out there).

Blah blah blah, to the point, every once in a rare while a popular band comes along that is so good that it transcends those barriers and jazz players are forced to take notice.
Radiohead is one of those bands.
Ever since Radiohead's brilliant OK Computer came out in 1997, Radiohead covers have been popping up in jazz recordings all over the place.
Brad Meldhau has covered at least four Radiohead tunes.
And Robert Glasper came up with this amazing arrangement, mashing together 'Everything in Its Right Place' with 'Maiden Voyage'.


Here is a chart for Radiohead's 'Nude' which was written in the late 90's but didn't make it onto a record until 2007's 'In Rainbows'.
Click on the picture, or download the .MUS file for the chart and a cool, spooky, dubby remix of Nude taken from a white-label vinyl of unknown origin originally posted by nodata.tv as well as the album version.
http://rapidshare.com/files/352084397/nude.rar


By the way, feel free to leave a comment, and check back later. Coming up next...a Britney Spears chart

imperial march from 'Empire Strikes Back'

OK, here is my first shot in the dark.
"The Real Book", is the de-facto Bible for working jazz musicians.
Created in the early 70's by a mysterious group of Berklee music students, it was supposed to be their answer to the problem of assorted, poor-quality 'fake books' in circulation at the time.
Fake books were alphabetized, phonebook-sized compilations of lead sheets to the popular songs of the day, simplified so that a musician could sight-read them and be able to 'fake it' when the band leader called a tune which the musician was unfamiliar with.
As the repetoire for working musicians broadened to the point that one could not be expected to know all of the possible songs which might be requested at a jazz club, cocktail party or bar-mitzvah from memory, such books became indispensable, but they all suffered from varying flaws ranging from unreadable notation to lame song choice.

In response to this, the Real Book authors compiled a book full of transcriptions which appealed to their,(frankly), jazz-snob inclinations, many of which were,(and still are), totally useless in the context for which fake books are commonly used.

Nonetheless, their book caught on.
Complicating matters was the fact that most fake books at the time did not secure copyrights to the songs they contained, and were published and distributed on a semi-underground level.
The Real Book was no exception, which is why no one has claimed responsibility for creating it.
Distribution of the book was done secretly through a network of musicians and local music store owners.
by the late 70's, it had become the universal fake book, and it remains so today.
All other attempts by newer books to knock it from its pedestal have failed.
This means that when you go to a jazz jam or wine and cheese party, the music being played is all at least 30 to 40 years old and has been utterly done to death.
In reaction to this situation, I offer my first of,(hopefully), many addendums to that infernal book's pathetically dated repetoire.
A classic melody from a classic film, inspired by my then three year old daughter's surprisingly strong interest in Darth Vader.

I've played it as a bossa and it works, although the chords are a little weird to solo over.
If you have any versions of Finale or Printmusic, download this
http://rapidshare.com/files/351694655/Copy_of_imperial_march.MUS

You will be able to transpose it or do whatever you want.
Otherwise, here is a jpeg. Print off a few and bring 'em down to the gig and have a laff. And check back here for more.