[Dixielandjazz] Fw: Discrepancies in Tune Chords

[philwilking]

I play tenor banjo, mostly chords.

When I want to work up a lead sheet, I try to find the earliest published
version of the piano/vocal sheet music I can and use the chords of the piano
part. I assume that a tune by Irving Berlin published by the Irving Berlin
Music Publishing Company very probably has the piano playing the chords Mr.
Berlin intended and I want to use them. Ditto for Ray Henderson, ditto for
the von Tilzers, Harold Arlen, McHugh and Fields, Walter Donaldson, Harry
Warren, etc.

Very rarely, it will happen that changes in the original chords have become
standard and may even sound better than the originals. "China Boy" is an
example. The original chords for bars 27 and 28 of the chorus, "keep" of
"while their watch I keep," are one bar each of G9 and Bbm. Almost everyone
uses a two bar glissando on an Fdim there.

Sheet music from the 1930's and later frequently has chord names or guitar
diagrams about the vocal line, but these always should be checked against
the piano part.

One last point: Frequently, especially in more recent tunes, the chord
specified over the staff will be something no practical person would touch.
It may even be in the piano part. Bb9-flat 11-flat 13, or some such, under a
melody C. Phooey: let the rhythm section pay Bb7, the melody C is the 9, and
let the flat 11 and flat 13 stay in the college classroom. This is
traditional or dixieland jazz, not some be-bop theory class.

Does my prejudice against dissonance for its own sake show?

Phil Wilking - K5MZF
www.nolabanjo.com

Those who would exchange freedom for security
deserve neither freedom nor security.

-----Original Message----- 
From: Chuck Stewart

I have been writing tuba parts for an Arizona Jazz Band using their lead
sheet.  I am using Finale notation software.

In the past 4 years, using Finale, I have created almost 1500 lead sheets
from various handwritten lead sheets and fake books I had accumulated in the
past 50 years.

Hoping to use my existing Finale files to create tuba parts for the band, I
discovered that almost every lead sheet that they use has different chords
that my Finale files.

This brings up my topic for discussion.
It seems to me that the lead sheets that we all have were created in
different ways.
I think the majority were done by piano and banjo players who listened to
recordings and wrote down what they thought the chords were.  Other lead
sheets were created from piano sheet music.  Still others we done by people
who didn’t like the chords they heard and “enhanced” them with chords like
C#dimolished13 and the like.
I learned to play tuba by playing along with my recordings and playing their
chords.  But where did they get their chords?  Is there a “correct” source?

I just saw that someone thought the DJML had run out of topics.  Let’s hear
what you think.