Why this tune?
Tunes on Tuesday returns to the jazz standard repertoire this week with “Yesterdays,” written by Jerome Kern and lyricist Otto Harbach for the 1933 musical Roberta. That show also included the classic “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.” Before the end of the decade the song was adopted by swing and jazz musicians, including Artie Shaw (1938) and Billie Holiday (1939). Since then it has been recorded over 850 times with and without the lyrics.
This tune is another jazz gig and jam session favorite. It’s short (only 16 bars) and has plenty of complexity in the chord progression that appeals to improvisers. Even though Kern and Harbach wrote it as a melancholy nostalgic ballad, many instrumental players take it at a faster tempo.
Coincidentially, my last post was a new melancholy nostalgic ballad about days gone by, “Tell Me About Yesterday.”
I played around a bit with the chords and rhythm in my version, but tried to stay reasonably close to the melody.
Tunes On Tuesday Reel
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Billie Holiday (1939)
Lennie Tristano and Warne Marsh