Gospel & Blues
I have long been a lover of gospel sounding chords, but I didn’t really know what it was exactly that was giving me those happy feels.
So, this week in piano lessons we talked about gospel and the blues.
Listening:
Some peeps I’ll be listening to this week:
Gene Harris
Benny Green
Oscar Peterson (particularly Hymn to Freedom)
Playlist in case you’d like to join me: Bluesy & Gospely Spotify Playlist
Some Facts About These Artists:
Oscar Peterson: 1925- 2007
Active 1945-2007.
Canadian jazz pianist & composer. Started as a classical pianist but got interested in jazz, ragtime & boogie-woogie.
Child prodigy, won CBC national music competition at age 14. He then dropped out of school to go pro
Documentary video: Music in the Key of Oscar:
1953-1958: Peterson had a trio: Herb Ellis, and Ray Brown. Their last recording: On the Town with the Oscar Peterson Trio, recorded live at the Town Tavern in Toronto, is notable.
When Herb Ellis left the trio in 1958 they replaced him with a drummer, feeling that no guitarist could compare to Ellis.
Oscar performed the interval act for the Eurovision Song Contest in 1978
In the 1980s he played in a duo with Herbie Hancock. In the late 1980s and 1990s he played with protege, Benny Green.
Peterson was very impressed and inspired by Art Tatum. When he heard Tatum’s, Tiger Rag, he quit the piano for several weeks. Peterson also referenced Art Tatum’s influences- like piano concertos by Sergei Rachmaninoff.
His accompaniment to Ella Fitzgerald’s singing is also highly praised.
Oscar wrote Hymn to Freedom in response to the Civil Rights movement in the US. Here it is being played live in Denmark in 1964:
Benny Green:
Born April 4, 1963, in NYC (but grew up in Berkeley CA).
American, hard bop jazz pianist.
He spent some time in San Fran but eventually came to NYC to further his career.
He joined Betty Carter’s band in 1983 and it 1991 he formed his own trio.
Here he is, performing in Ann Arbor in 2016:
Gene Harris:
1933-2000
American jazz pianist, known for warm sound, blues & gospel, “soul jazz.”
One of his notable pieces was Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Additional Gospel Stuff:
it is common for the harmony to move with the bass
Chord progressions often walk up or down.. Instead of going from F-Dmin for example, it would go F—> A7/E —> Dm
(in short, gospel likes to tonicize the chord by placing a Dom V chord before it)
Gospel also likes to place a diminished chord 1/2 note below where you are going
The Plagel Cadence ( IV—> I) is comon, also the minor Plagel (min iv—> I)
It’s also common to have I —> ii —> I —> ii as inversions travelling across the keyboard. This can also be done with I and IV
Another common cadence is F—> F7 —> Bb/F —> Bbmin6 / F (Or one chord, dominate, resolves 5th down, then minor add 6. If you played this on piano you’d keep the F or the original tonic notes on the outside and only move the interior notes. I’ll paste and image below so it’s clear for future reference.
This is what I have to do this week:
1) I have a gospel lead sheet for Amazing Grace- I’ll write out the piano chords with just the bass note in my left and chords and melody in my right.
2) I should then get to work practicing this.
3) I need to create a lead sheet for Joyful Joyful (as made famous most recently by Lauryn Hill in Sister Act 2) so we can create gospel chords for that at our next lesson.
I should think about other songs I’d maybe like to do going forward in this style. Ideas include Battle Hymn of the Republic, You Are My Sunshine and the Preacher.
