Janice and I come from years of playing 3-6 chord bluegrass, blues and classic country -- a lot of what is now known as Americana. Beyond that we get a bit lost with neither of us knowing any theory. We are working on a PD song published in 1914 called Ballin' The Jack. It introduced a new dance and has been done by everybody from Judy Garland to Dean Martin to Pearl Bailey to Fats Domino to show tune formats. We tried some of the very simple progressions but tend to like the more early jazz versions. Below is a 16 bar verse we found presented as being in G. The chords seemed odd but sound pretty good so I looked at more versions and many of them although in other keys were relatively the same as this.

So I'll show my ignorance (ample precedent) --- aren't the E, Eb and F# chords odd for the key? Thanks for any help and perhaps my ignorance has given you a good laugh!

J&B


E - - - /E - F#7 B7/C7 - - - /C7 - A7 D7/
Eb7 - - - /Eb7 - - -/C7 - - -/ C7 - B7 - /
E - - - / E - F#7 B7 / C7 - - - / C7 - A7 D7/
Eb7 - - - /Eb7 - - -/C7 - - -/ B - D7 - /

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