The old illegal Real Books had the philosophy, "If the chord is good enough to be played, it's good enough to be substituted" and unfortunately these changes became the lingua franca of jazz musicians. I'm not fond of many of the substitutions, but that's personal.

Hal Leonard is now publishing legal descendants of those Real Books and they claim to have corrected the errors in the old books. I wouldn't take them as the gospel truth either but I haven't used them very much.

I also sell fake disks with chord changes by Dick Hyman and Frank Mantooth. The books I used to compile these disks listed the "correct" chords in black ink and the substitutions in red ink. Both authors use good substitutions to give the standards a more contemporary sound. I like the Dick Hyman approach better.

Unfortunately many of the older standards didn't have the correct chords notated on the sheet music, but instead simplified the chords for ukelele players. In addition, no slash/bass chords were used, because the music was intended to be read by a pianist from the sheet music, perhaps with the ukelele player looking over his/her shoulder playing the simplified chords.

And to analyze the notes of the original sheet music to denote the chords is no sure way to do it either. After all, was that note in the melody supposed to be denote an add 13 or just a note in the melody over a 7th chord? Was that a passing tone or a short duration chord variation? So many things in music can be interpreted more than one way.

I have a friend with absolute pitch who rarely calls complex chords by their common names, but will call a C11 chord a Bb chord over a C chord or something like that.

Also thought the ages, many of the standards have been re-harmonized for more contemporary tastes.

So there is a lot of play with chord changes. To say any one set of chord changes is correct, is more often than not a false statement. It should be expressed as "These are the changes I use for the song."

If you have more than one fake book, or more than one musician playing chords in the band, decide on which ones you are going to use, which ones sound best to your collective ears, and just go with them.

I tend to avoid playing with people who say "My way is the right way" and are not open to suggestions by other musicians in the band. I use the Count Basie approach, a capable musician with a good attitude is more valuable than virtuosity with a bad attitude.

That's my 2 cents.

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

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