Wednesday, February 24, 2010

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

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for this. I love this arrangement of Summertime.
    Cheers.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. What did I say that was offensive?

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