"Rhythm" Changes

[bluesForBartok]

I've also had a Rhythm Changes PL set up for a while now if anyone is interested in following.
 

 

[Mark Stryker]

On 8/25/2016 at 10:17 AM, JSngry said:

The way I had it taught to me was that you could take any note from an original chord, and then use that as a root for any other quality chord. You just needed a note (or a tritone sub of a note) from the original chord.

Davids Baker  and Liebman both taught this. Baker talked about George Russell's theory of note gravity, or whatever it was called, how every note has some kind of gravitational pull towards every other note, Liebman basically name-checked Bartok and let it go at that, but in both cases the gist of the matter was that anything can follow anything, notes or chords, so it's on you to provide the logic. If the logic is using major 7th chords as your "color" and you put your color into a symmetry that fits the space, then you have essentially chosen the color for the room, if you know what I mean.

Closing the circle on the set substitute rhythm changes that I always hear someone play with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra on "The Little Pixie." 

Major 7th chords descending by minor thirds in the first half of the A section starting on the tonic, Chromatically ascending ii-Vs in the bridge starting with III7. So in the usual rhythm changes key of B-flat

First four bars of the A section: B-flat major 7 / G major 7 / E major 7 / C-sharp major 7.  Bridge: A minor7 / D7 / B-flat minor 7 /E-flat 7  /B minor 7 / E7 / C minor 7/  F7.

Doing research for my book, I learned that they first appear on record on "Cotton Tail" on a 1956 recording, "Kenny Clarke meets the Detroit Jazzmen," where Pepper Adams plays them starting after the bass solo. I've cued it in the clip below. (Kenny Burrell has a crack at them too after Pepper.)

That kind of symmetrical movement in minor 3rds was some advanced shit for 1956, uncommon in jazz before Coltrane. The question is: Who came up with these changes? I had assumed it was Pepper, since he plays them on the record (and it was typically baritone saxophonist and Pepper-acolyte Gary Smulyan who played them with the Vanguard band.) However, Adams biographer Gary Carner told me that  Detroit bassist Ken Kellett once told him that they originated with Yusef Lateef.  Adams apparently told Kellett that he had gotten the changes from Lateef.

Still, I’m a bit skeptical that the whole story isn’t a little more serpentine. I don't know of any recorded  example of Lateef playing "Rhythm" changes with these chords. That's not an automatic disqualifier, but it would be odd if Lateef never used them himself. On the other hand, Lateef was studying at Wayne State in the middle '50s and could have been familiar with minor-third root movement from modern classical composers. I wonder what exactly Yusef told Pepper. Did he in fact present this chord progression as a literal substitute for "Rhythm" changes or did he merely indicate he was exploring major 7th chords moving by minor 3rds in some other  context and then Pepper himself made the leap to apply them to songs like "Cottontail" that are based on "I Got Rhythm”?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 14, 2021 by Mark Stryker