ʻSo This Guy Walks Into A Bar...ʼ - Great Intros I Have Known (Blog 3/8/11)

I recently read an interview (http://www.jazzwax.com/2009/04/interview-billy-taylor- part-1.html) with jazz piano great Billy Taylor, reposted as a memorial (Taylor died on December 29th of last year). In it, Taylor mentions how, as a young pianist, he used the chord voicing from Duke Ellingtonʼs piano intro to ʻIn A Mellow Toneʼ as his ʻbasis for harmonizing behind horn playersʼ and ʻbuilt a whole style on that approachʼ which eventually got him a gig with Ben Webster. This reminded me of how piano intros in the jazz tradition often encapsulate important concepts, and how often theyʼve helped me learn and re-learn chord voicings. I originally learned the ʻMellow Toneʼ intro on quartet gig with tenor saxophonist Alex Stewart, who gave me a written score for it. Itʼs been more than ten years since that gig, but thanks to Alexʼs score, Iʼve played the intro from memory many times when the tune has come up on gigs. The Taylor interview, along with a revisiting of the original recording, made me aware that while my memory has retained the chord structure of the intro, Iʼve been doing a different voicing than Duke. The intro in its original form can be turned into a useful exercise for practicing 3-7-9 voicings of dominant chords in all keys, descending chromatically from A flat.

Here, in no particular order, are piano intros which have contained valuable lessons to which Iʼve returned over and over:

- The Richie Powell intro to Clifford Brownʼs Joy Spring: this is a kind of etude in the major 6th voicing, which Powell moves through seven different transpositions before running a series of major 6ths alternating with dominant chords (Eb6-D7-Db6-C7b9) which, coincidentally, form the basis of another great intro:

- Wynton Kellyʼs intro to ʻOn Green Dolphin Streetʼ on Kelly Blue. This intro uses the same root motion as the progression mentioned above, but voices the chords following the Eb as dominant chords. It also extends the progression by two more half steps, so that it becomes (Eb6 / D7+9 / Db7+9 / C7+9 / Bm7 (did Wynton intend a dominant here?) / Bb7). Wyntonʼs intro to Green Dolphin, like the Joy Spring intro, is a musical statement clearly separate from the tune. This sets his version of the tune apart from the arrangement of it that he played with Miles Davis on In Person At The Blackhawk, where the intro is simply the first four changes of the tune, with the length of the first two changes cut in half. Wyntonʼs intro to ʻGreen Dolphinʼ on Kelly Blue also bears a distinct resemblance to the descending half step progression that begins the tunes Peg and Deacon Blues on the album Aja by Steely Dan. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker proved their chops at stealthy appropriation of ideas from Horace Silver and Miles Davis on ʻRiki Donʼt Lose That Numberʼ and ʻBodhisattvaʼ respectively. I heard through one of my adult students who is versed in entertainment law that Steely Dan was successfully sued by yet another jazz luminary...I can only imagine that the lawsuit must have involved a tune where the appropriation was more detectable than it is on the aforementioned tunes, where I think Fagen and Becker do a pretty good job of making someone elseʼs spare part look like a natural component of their vehicle. - Red Garlandʼs intro to ʻBye Bye Blackbirdʼ on the version from the Miles Davis album of the same name. This is a mini-etude in minor seventh chords voiced in what Phil DeGregʼs Jazz Keyboard Harmony calls ʻfive voice shell extensionʼ. Again, an example of using material from the tune to create a separate musical statement. Although in some cases, intros like the one from ʻIn A Mellow Toneʼ were copied by players of a younger generation, in other cases intros were sometimes spaces in which a younger pianist in a high-profile group (like Herbie Hancock with Miles Davis) could distinguish himself from previous occupants of the piano chair in the band - listen to the difference between Herbieʼs intro to ʻGreen Dolphin Streetʼ on Live at the Plugged Nickel and the Kelly intro to the same tune on In Person at the Blackhawk, or compare Kellyʼs intro to Bye Bye Blackbird on In Person at the Blackhawk to Garlandʼs original intro.

- Dodo Marmarosaʼs intro to the Charlie Parker tune ʻRelaxinʼ at Camarilloʼ. This tune became a staple of Tommy Flanaganʼs trio repertoire, and he always included the Marmarosa intro, an example of how distinctive piano intros often become a part of a tune. This intro is an etude in major 7th voicings which include an added 6th. It runs this voicing through a pattern which mostly descends by whole steps and concludes with what I call the ʻson of the four lickʼ (i.e. a truncated version of the ʻ4ʼ lick from the series of standard bebop gestures which Barry Harris teaches [he names each one after the scale step which precedes its first descending interval]).

- Two other intros which, like the ʻRelaxinʼʼ and ʻMellow Toneʼ intros, document the transmitting of information in the jazz world in the days before jazz education began to standardize the process, are Horace Silverʼs intro to ʻNicaʼs Dreamʼ and Monkʼs intro to ʻRound Midnight. In his autobiography, Letʼs Get To The Nitty Gritty, Silver acknowledges that the intro to ʻNicaʼs Dreamʼ - an etude in major/minor seventh chords - is based on chords Miles Davis showed him (presumably during the relatively brief period documented on Walkinʻ and Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants when Davis was Silverʼs employer). In the his recent biography of Monk, Robin D.G. Kelley recounts the story told by Dizzy Gillespie of how the A section of ʻWoody NʼYouʻ was based on a progression Monk showed him - and which Monk also used in the intro to his own composition ʻRound Midnightʼ. The intro to ʻRound Midnightʻ is one of many tunes where Monk seems to have set himself the challenge of starting with a progression that is sequential enough to sound like an etude and made it the basis of a memorable melody. ʻAsk Me Nowʼ and ʻWell You Neednʼtʼ come to mind as other examples of this kind of compositional feat.

I could also make a shorter list of intros from tunes outside the jazz canon which nonetheless played a significant part in the evolution of my jazz chord vocabulary. This list would probably include the intro to ʻMagic To Doʼ (from the Stephen Schwartz musical Pippin), Rick Wrightʼs intro to ʻBreatheʼ from Pink Floydʼs Dark Side of the Moon (strangely enough, one source claims Wright said that this intro, a repeated ii-V progression, was influenced by Kind of Blue, an album with no trace of a traditional ii-V progression, let alone a ii-V-I), and Ray Manzarekʼs intro to the Doorsʼ ʻLight My Fireʼ (like the Monk tune ʻSkippyʼ and the bridge of Duke Jordanʼs ʻJorduʼ, a circle-of- fifths tour de force). The Pink Floyd intro is a good example of how, when rock musicians appropriate jazz progressions, they often translate them into a root-position context. It would fall to hipper rock keyboard players like Donald Fagen in ʻBodhisattvaʼ to take advantage of the innovations jazz players made in chord progressions and voice leading. Iʼd be hesitant to mention any of these intros in the context of a discussion of jazz piano, but the relevance of learning non-jazz vamps to developing jazz chops was brought home to me when I had a lesson with the jazz pianist Harold Danko, who in the midst of demonstrating a variety of dorian-mode concepts played a flawless rendition of the intro from Michael Jacksonʼs ʻBillie Jeanʼ, complete with the bassline in his left hand and chordal vamp in his right (no doubt a Quincy Jones creation). It made me think that maybe it wasnʼt such a bad thing that I learned tunes like Joe Zawinulʼs ʻMercy Mercy Mercyʼ and Jimmy Smithʼs ʻBack At the Chicken Shackʼ in my high school jazz quartet before I started tackling Charlie Parker tunes. After all, even though a tune like ʻMercy Mercy Mercyʻ is really kind of an R&B tune by a jazz composer (if weʼre going to get overly categorical), at least in the version of it that I learned from Chuck Eller, and that I now teach, it introduces the right hand to the concept of voicing a chord without the root.

Occasionally the Mike Gordon band repertoire includes intros with the same kind of methodical sequencing as the jazz piano intros I mention above. Mikeʼs acoustic guitar intro to ʻAndelmanʼs Yardʼ on the album The Green Sparrow uses a series of augmented arpeggios descending by half steps, which seems to musically set the scene described in the song where the protagonist dreams that he ʻdig[s] a hole and tunnel[s] undergroundʼ in his neighborʼs backyard. As we have continued to play my tune ʻGod Bless These Crumblinʼ Bonesʼ, I have added an intro that uses a sequence of dominant chords moving through all twelve keys. I first used this intro on our November 2010 tour, in a show at the Crocodile Cafe in Seattle, WA. I have always been drawn to the sound of the dominant cycle, starting with hearing my dad play C.P.E. Bachʼs ʻSolfeggietoʻ and ʻSweet Georgia Brownʻ (and then learning it out of his fake book). I think my work teaching improvisation via Barry Harrisʻ method, in which the dominant cycle plays a central role, has planted this progression even deeper in my musical subconscious, leading me recently to seek out tunes like Thelonious Monkʼs ʻSkippyʻ (which Tom McClung once pointed out to me is a dominant-cycle reharm of ʻTea for Twoʼ), Hank Jonesʻ wondrous reharmonization of ʻItʼs Me Oh Lord, Standinʻ In The Need of Prayerʼ, and more recently Ron Carterʼs tune ʼ12+12ʼ.