TT 548: Original Sheet Music to Two Dozen Standards

Back to School, part 3, with new bonus material on "Body and Soul" and tonic minor

(Compiled by Ethan Iverson and Mike Kanan. Dropbox link includes the PDF. DTM readers will recognize the content from the original post in 2021, but there are new comments on “Body and Soul” at the end.)

Most jazz standards were originally pop songs written for musical theatre, movies, and other kinds of general entertainment in the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s. At that time, sheet music was a thriving business, and nearly all these songs were published in piano/vocal scores, often as a stand-alone folio of two or three pages adorned with a colorful cover that related to the musical or film, like “I Should Care” shown above.

Around 1900, many music publishers were crammed on top each other on 28th street in New York City like tenement housing. This street was designated “Tin Pan Alley,” and in time “Tin Pan Alley” would also simply refer to the thousands and thousands of pop songs churned out in sheet music form in the first decades of the century.

photo (probably circa 1900) from webpage “Mapping Tin Pan Alley” .

Bill Evans called himself a “Tin Pan Alley pianist.” Evans was surely being self-deprecating, but if you want to learn something about how Bill Evans used harmony, then a stack of old-time American sheet music is a good place to start.

Mike Kanan and I share an interest in Tin Pan Alley sheet music. Over the years, Mike has given me a lot of harmonic “secrets” lurking in original published scores. Together we came up with the following casual selection originally posted in 2021, available as a PDF at this dropbox link under “Original Sheet Music of Two Dozen Jazz Standards.” Mike had most of the songs in his extensive collection, contained in anthology songbooks or photocopied from libraries.

The geographical location Tin Pan Alley is long gone, so are all the publishers in the Brill Building. In my lifetime—before it closed in 2012—we used to be able to go to Colony Music and get nearly any song as a single sheet or in an anthology. Their massive inventory was cross-indexed in a huge tome only accessible when visiting the store.

Colony opened in 1948, so it easily could have been the shop where McCoy Tyner found source materials on the way to recording John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. In pictures from the session, single sheets are spread out over Rudy Van Gelder’s piano. To make the obvious inference: Tyner looked at the sheets, and then made up reharmonizations that fit the style of the session at hand.

The sheet music is just one reference. It’s no “urtext” of a song in the manner of European classical music. Some of the composers may have been more like a folk composer, such as Irving Berlin, who apparently could not write out a piano score. Other prolific composers may not have overseen each piece of piano/vocal sheet music. (Back when every pitch had to be written out and double-checked by hand, a composer might only notate the full ensemble version of a song before moving on to the next task. It was a never ending production of paper. Since a finished/edited piano/vocal score was usually not required on opening night, it might have been a bit further down on the “to do” list, and in fact it might never have gotten done until a staff arranger took it on later.)

More tangibly, a comparison of the sheet with a historical “straight” (non-jazz) performance on record or in a movie may show many differences.

Still, the melody and the lyrics are probably correct on a piece of published sheet music. And the harmonies themselves are also a valid opinion, an opinion that does not rehash the received wisdom of jazz lead sheets generated since the ‘70s.

In The Story of Fake Books: Bootlegging Songs to Musicians, Barry Kernfeld explains how chords symbols first came from ukulele charts. There was a big ukulele boom in the 1920s, and publishers added ukeulele chords to the piano scores in an attempt to generate more sales for Tin Pan Alley. There was no reason to include the bass motion in a ukulele chart, and this absence of proper bass motion still haunts lead sheets to this very day. Inversions are important. Not everything is in root position!

Some of the composers actively disliked jazz. (According to legend, Jerome Kern threatened to sue Dizzy Gillespie for an album of Kern songs done in a jazz manner.) Ironically, most of these tunes are still around thanks to the many jazz cats who have endlessly reinvented these themes with improvisation and an African aesthetic. (A typical American story.)

A verse sets up the song. Sometimes a wordy verse explains the narrative a bit in a Broadway show, not unlike recitativo in opera. One of the selling points for a sheet music song was the verse, for it made for a few more measures in a relatively short score. While the verses are included in the PDF, common practice instrumental jazz has mostly done away with the verses; exceptions include “Stardust” and “Lush Life,” two compositions where the verse is mandatory. Still, a few singers and pianists still present many verses. They vary in quality: some of the verses are little gems, some are clearly an afterthought.

1. After You’ve Gone (Turner Layton & Henry Creamer). Turner Layton was an African-American composer. In 1918 New York was still a segregated society, and the thriving black musical theatre world was totally separate from nascent Broadway. Spreadin’ Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters, 1880-1930 by David A. Jasen and Gene Jones is a helpful book when trying to assess this era. Layton’s bass inversions in “After You’ve Gone” are essential to the harmonic structure; this song was also one of the first that jazzers began playing as “double time.”

2. All of Me (Gerald Marks & Seymour Simons). Some nice inner voices and a melodic A-flat four bars from the end that is rarely played.

3. All the Things You Are (Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein II). For all its familiarity, a song hard to harmonize comfortably, as the melody is frequently parallel. The really surprising chord is the last bar of the bridge. I still play C7 myself, but there’s certainly an argument for the alternate. One time at a club, Barry Harris called Mike over and asked him, “What is the last chord of the bridge of ‘All the Things You Are?’” Mike said, “As far as I know, it’s A-flat augmented.” Barry exclaimed in response, “A-ha! I just knew it wasn’t C7!”

4. April in Paris (Vernon Duke & Yip Harburg). Vernon Duke was a serious classical composer and “April in Paris” is one of the most outlandish pieces in this collection. Just awesome. I can hear the future Thelonious Monk in this 1932 song — and, of course, nobody played “April in Paris” better than Monk.

5. But Not For Me (George & Ira Gershwin). Many jazz performances start on F7, but Gershwin just wrote E-flat — which then sets up a change to F7 (in second inversion) on the next phrase. Unlike most of the composers collected here, Gershwin’s idiosyncratic harmonic language has been influential on the very content of jazz. A few years ago I ran into Bill Charlap at the Met, where we were both attending the latest production of Porgy and Bess. I joked to him, “I bet you are checking out these voicings.” Bill replied seriously, “Porgy and Bess has every voicing you will ever need.”

6. Bye Bye Blackbird (Ray Henderson & Mort Dixon). Included because there is no single agreed upon set of changes, which is part of its charm: In the hands of Miles Davis or John Coltrane, “Bye Bye Blackbird” is almost “modal” in a tonal context. I had never seen the original sheet until Mike produced a copy, and it wasn’t quite what I expected.

7. Come Rain or Come Shine (Harold Arlen & Johnny Mercer). Arlen worked at getting some kind of synthetic “blues” in his pop songs, a proposal unhesitatingly accepted by many of the greatest black jazz musicians. The piano part here is quite difficult, more like reading a Bill Evans transcription with rootless voicings than a standard pop song. Arlen’s original rich progressions are far from being common jazz practice for “Come Rain or Come Shine.”

8. Gone With the Wind (Allie Wrubel & Herb Magidson) Not related to the Max Steiner music for the famous movie. Jazzers like this one for the pleasant II/V’s, but the original piano score is a dramatic tone poem.

9. How Deep is the Ocean (Irving Berlin). Great set of lyrics (it’s always good to notice the lyrics). This version offers more unique bass motion than we are accustomed to today.

10. I Could Write a Book (Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart). Fred Hersch told me, “Nobody got more out of a major scale than Richard Rodgers.” The even plain of C major is interesting, jazzers usually fill in the spaces with turnarounds, but then the move to G major—in first inversion, thank you very much—is pure drama.

11. I Fall In Love Too Easily (Jule Styne & Sammy Cahn). An unusually short ballad, just 16 bars of rarefied beauty.

12. I Hear a Rhapsody (George Fragos, Jack Baker & Dick Gasparre). A vague disquiet always hangs over this song at a jam session. It’s fun to blow on, but do those familiar changes really fit the melody? Aha! The sheet has interesting answers.

13. I Remember You (Victor Schertzinger & Johnny Mercer). Jazzers play a big Tadd Dameron-style II/V in bar two, and that’s great, but it’s interesting that Schertzinger simply wrote a diminished chord over a pedal point.

14. I Should Care (Axel Stordahl, Paul Weston & Sammy Cahn). Like “April in Paris,” I can draw a straight line from this spectacular 1944 sheet to Thelonious Monk, who repurposed the song to such surreal effect.

15. It Could Happen to You (Jimmy Van Heusen & Johnny Burke.) Playing through Van Heusen’s sheet in G is so sensible compared the mess in E-flat I’ve perpetrated at so many casual sessions over the years…

16. I Wish I Knew (Harry Warren & Mack Gordon). Harry Warren wrote a lot of hit tunes ranging from dramatic ballads to novelty numbers like “We’re In the Money.” He was jealous of Irving Berlin’s status as “America’s songwriter,” and the story goes that when watching a documentary on WWII (a decade after the war was was over), he told the room, “They bombed the wrong Berlin.” The impressionistic piano part to “I Wish I Knew” foreshadows Gil Evans.

17. Just Friends (John Klenner & Sam M. Lewis). The sheet music is not that surprising until the end—where I finally understand the melody correctly for the first time in 30+ years. Drat!

18. Just One of Those Things (Cole Porter). The end of the bridge is interesting, a moment where even professionals can be at a loss. Porter ends in C and simply restarts. Cedar Walton would harmonize the C (in the melody) with G minor, certainly a valid choice.

19. Lush Life (Billy Strayhorn). A 1948 recording exists of Strayhorn and Kay Davis performing this most epic of epic ballads “as is” (following this chart closely) at Carnegie Hall.

20. Memories of You (Eubie Blake & Andy Razaf). Blake had a unique two-part career, first as a song composer, then as a ragtime pianist. “Memories of You” has been recorded over 700 times.

21. My Ideal (Newell Chase, Richard A. Whiting, & Leo Robin). This short number is surprisingly popular with students. I was curious to see the original sheet, and it proved to be a delectable confection indeed.

22. Prelude to a Kiss (Duke Ellington, Irving Gordon & Irving Mills). Generally, the Tin Pan Alley sheet music representations of Duke Ellington’s sublime output are lightweight or even simply incorrect. Either the composer didn’t offer any oversight, or he didn’t want anyone to learn his music accurately from a chart. (Ellington was a master of hoarding secrets.) “Prelude to a Kiss” is better than most, although it feels awkward to read through the whole 32 bars with no variation, for that simply isn’t the Ellington style. Still, this is a better starting point than the lead sheet I first learned from the Real Book.

23. Stella By Starlight (Victor Young & Ned Washington). I believe Bill Evans gave us the standard changes we all use for “Stella” on a wonderful 1958 record with Miles Davis and John Coltrane. The later Miles records with Herbie Hancock also use the “Bill Evans changes.” Among the many other truly great versions of “Stella” following the Davis/Evans/Hancock thread include two trios from 1985, Joe Henderson/Ron Carter/Al Foster and Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack DeJohnette.

All that is to say that I am not against jazz “common practice” chord changes. Those jazz changes are frequently there for a reason.

However, in 2025, there may not be too much room left for just going for it on “Stella,” jam-session style, in the vein of the 20th-century jazz masters. The published Victor Young chart of “Stella” is older than the Bill Evans changes, but, paradoxically, that Tin Pan Alley version may sound fresher to us today.

24. Willow Weep for Me (Ann Ronell). Ronell’s immortal song is the only “blues ballad” in this selection. It might feel like a blues ballad is more like a folk tune, but as a serious composer, Ronell thought long and hard about each note. As with Harold Arlen, heavy black practitioners accepted Ronell’s gloss on the blues: “Willow Weep for Me” is one of the most-recorded blues ballads of all time.

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NEW: Body and Soul. (Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, Frank Eyton, & Johnny Green).

At NEC last week I greeted my incoming students. One of the kids was playing something by Jerome Kern, and when I grilled them about their harmonization of the opening melody, they looked sad and said, “I probably should look at the original sheet music.”

It is inconceivable that a student would have uttered such a remark when I began at NEC almost a decade ago, also because I am far from being the only jazz educator flying the “original sheet music flag” these days. Indeed, my impression is the inoculation is in widespread effect, partly because the sheets are often easy to find online. (Sheet Music Singer is a good place to look.)

The moment after originally posting my PDF in 2021, I cursed myself. “Why didn’t I include ‘Body and Soul?’” This is one of the most popular ballads, on my big list it has the most recordings (over 2500), and the sheet is quite intriguing.

Johnny Green wrote three common practice standards in the 1930s; the other two are “Out of Nowhere” and “I Cover the Waterfront.” These are all juicy tunes; Green seemed to have quite a talent for creative chord progressions. His Wikipedia article is interesting, apparently Green was eventually part of the MGM team overseeing the production of many famous movies including West Side Story. (It is another typical American story: After writing amazing songs as a young person, a composer ends up getting paid top dollar for uncreative busy work within the studio system.)

At some point it became convention to play the opening chord of “Body and Soul” as an E-flat minor seventh.

From the REAL BOOK (5th edition) .

However, there is an argument for straight E-flat minor, without the seventh. Meaning: Eb minor is the tonic for two beats.

As Sherlock Holmes says: “It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.”

The first example is conventional current common practice and in all the fakebooks, the other two are tonic minor.

Coleman Hawkins, Art Tatum, and many other earlier jazz musicians do not start “Body and Soul” with a minor seventh. They start in minor.

(In tonal music, a minor seventh is a tension that must be resolved. In contemporary jazz, we frequently don’t play tonally, we play modally, and at times this leads to mixed results. On Kind of Blue from Miles Davis, “So What” is a grounded D minor seventh. Modal jazz is also in the lineage of various colorful ethnic folk music and impressionistic classical composition. I love modal music! But when jazzers transferred that vertical way of dealing with chords over to many tonal progressions, something could be lost. I’m not talking about John Coltrane or Joe Henderson or McCoy Tyner or anyone with a secure aesthetic hanging out at the top table. I’m talking about lesser lights who—in the wake of “So What”—casually assigned a scale to every chord whether it was modal or not. Defaulting to scale theory does not automatically make any given horizontal progression stronger.)

The composer, Johnny Green, answers our query with extraordinary vehemence. The sheet music is in C, so the debated opening chord is D minor or D minor 7. It turns out Green’s verse is in D minor and then—unbelievably—in D major! The beginning of the chorus sinks down to D minor from D major.

“Body and Soul” originally started with tonic minor. There is no debate.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t start with a minor seventh, or even go a step further to a dominant pedal point like John Coltrane. Looking at the original sheet music is just one way to explore true functionality within tonal harmony.

Much of modern jazz is successful vertically: Each chord is cool, each chord is hip. But when looking over the landscape from a bird’s-eye view, those cool modern chords may just be next to each other instead of bound together. The horizontal might be less compelling, with weak voice-leading and little interplay of tonal gravities.

If you a burgeoning jazz composer that never uses a key signature, I want you to meditate upon these questions: Are you really writing music with no key? If so, does that lack of key make your compositional journey distinctive? Or does that absence of tonality help foster a collection of chromatic yet inert pitches, the kind of blather that so many student composers fruitlessly enter into a computer notation program?

In terms of the horizontal, Johnny Green knew what he was doing—just like all the other composers on this page.

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(In my quick video below, I skip the first line, which seems like a cut and paste from the chorus.)

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Ethan Iverson Teaching PDFs [dropbox link]

includes

Original Sheet Music of Two Dozen Jazz Standards
Theory of Harmony
Bird is the Word
Doodlin’
Core Repertoire
21 Cramer Studies Taught by Beethoven
Bud Powell Trifecta
Trane ’n Me (by Andrew White)

(If you want to share the dropbox further that’s fine, just encourage the recipients to sign up for Transitional Technology)