english blog

On George Colligan's Jazz Truth blog there is a group email sent out by a student who sounds nearly as dickish as I was in college, with the heading: The George Colligan Standards List...LEARN THEM IN ALL 12 KEYS! 1. Stella By Starlight 2. All The Things You Are 3. Autumn Leaves 4. What Is This Thing Called Love 5. There Will Never Be Another You 6. Tune Up 7. Cherokee 8. Beautiful Love 9. Alone Together 10. Body and Soul 11. Confirmation 12. Someday My Prince Will Come 13. Footprints 14. Bye Bye Blackbird 15. On Green Dolphin Street 16. There Is No Greater Love 17. I Love You 18. How High The Moon 19. Just Friends 20. If I Were A Bell 21. Night and Day 22. Au Privave 23. Moose The Mooche It's a fair college-level list. Traditionally in Portland we would substitute Scrapple From The Apple for Moose, and possibly Blues For Alice or Cheryl for Au Privave. I would get Softly As In A Morning Sunrise in there just because. And I guess they're assuming that everyone learned Blue...

Dear Old Stockholm is the English title of a traditional Swedish song, which, you are probably aware, has become a jazz standard. I don't know who first started playing it as a jazz tune, but Miles Davis's version (arranged by Stan Getz,  according to Wikipedia ) is to me the definitive one. Recorded by Davis in 1952, and again, with embellishments, in 1955, the arrangement has some bells and whistles, and tweaks to the tune's very basic original form, which is why we're talking about it today. So go ahead and  download and print out the pdf , and let's begin: Go ahead and give the recording a few listens-through with the printed pdf: After the break we'll get into this for real: It's important to know the simple AABA tune underlying all of this activity, so let's give this a listen: The form here is: A - 8 bars |  A - 8 bars |  bridge - 4 bars |  A - 8 bars  The Miles version modifies that with a little four-measure rhythmic figure (I'll refer t...