Season 413: Jazz up you Standards

Ladies and Gentlemen,
This season is all about jazz standards. As you might know, I am a lover of these old songs myself and won’t miss the chance to sneak one into a season now and again and now I am giving you the chance to brush up on those old jazzy Major7 chords.

Bring me any jazz standard, there are plenty to chose from, with or without singing.

If you would like to be inspired then I recommend to search for Lyle Ritz who has played a lot of ukulele jazz, and also published books full of amazing arrangements. There is also a lot on youtube by Glen Rose who teaches jazz on the ukulele; Paul Hemmings, a New Yorker who has migrated from jazz guitar to ukulele and plays some superb chord melody instrumentals, and obviously you can find tutorials by the late great Ukulele Mike.

To get you going, here are some links you might find useful:
List of Jazz Standards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_jazz_standards
Jazz tabs for ukulele: https://ukutabs.com/genre/jazz/
The real book as a pdf (The real book is THE book for jazz musicians, containing chords for most if not all the old jazz standards: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B48okE6igcdfbEg2dVZkdWRJdXc/edit

Hope you have fun and let me see those jazz hands in action.

If you would like to write original songs then please do so in the spirit of these old standards and please remember to include some jazzy chords such as Maj7, Min7, Min7b5, Aug7 and Dim and some II-V-I progressions. NO need to include ALL these chords in the same song but you are welcome to give it a try .

Usual rules apply… The season starts as usual sunday 12am Hawaii time and ends by the end of the following sunday. Ukulele to be present but other instruments welcome. No song limit for the time being. Have a listen to each other and have fun out there.

PLAYLIST

PS. The will be a musical price for the winner, chosen by yours truly.

Remember, there is still a day and a bit left of Ryan’s 27 club season.

Happy Jazz'ing
Mads

This will be a lot of fun.One of the reasons I got interested in uke was after seeing some YouTube’s of people doing jazz standards on uke...and how good they sounded.
A good site that has uke chords for many standards is Dr Uke. Another is the French site Tontonremy.I also second Mad’s referral to Glen Rose’s tutorials.

Great theme! The Firehouse Jazz Band Fake Book might also be useful.

Thanks for taking a turn at the helm sir, and I expect it to be a season of discovery for me. While I love listening to these old standards, I haven't invested much time in learning a lot of these chords or patterns. Thanks for all of the links to help us get started ~

I learned 20 years ago that if you sit there in a public place and play nothing but major 7th and minor 7th chords in any totally random order, someone will tell you that it sounds jazzy.

Play a note wrong once and it is a mistake.
Play it wrong twice and it is Jazz.

The line in this song which is an absolute delight is that when words in the melody
goes "from major to minor" then the chord change corresponds to the words in
the song going from C major to C minor. Bloody genius

Well before Michael Buble was a thing another popular musician got me into Big Band music. Robbie Williams released an album full of standards around the turn of the century and it rarely left my mums car. This is one of my favourites, featuring lots of mistakes jazzy improvisations.

it's on the wiki list of jazz standards but there's no pesky jazz chords … and for good measure I decided to change the location …

This won the Academy song award in 1962, written by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer . Great movie too, with Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. Days of Wine and Roses. Based on a Glen Rose arrangement.

quick rough one taker

They can't take that away from me.

Hello, Mads! Most excellent choice of subject and not a Stevie Wonder or jet plane in sight! This song comes from 1928. I associate it more than anything with one of my favourite films ever "Bringing Up Baby", in which Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn had to sing it at regular intervals to a "pet" leopard called "Baby", as it was the only way to pacify it. (I have a feeling that nobody will have the faintest idea what I'm talking about here ... but, if you haven't seen it, it's a great film.)

The nearness of you

Hoagy Carmichael song not Cole Porter... I get confused at my age.

Could'nt resist this one.Great version by Ella

I have arrived back in the UK and the playlist is now live. I have had a quick listen and already some very fine uke standards up there...

Flatbaroque said:

This will be a lot of fun.One of the reasons I got interested in uke was after seeing some YouTube’s of people doing jazz standards on uke...and how good they sounded.
A good site that has uke chords for many standards is Dr Uke. Another is the French site Tontonremy.I also second Mad’s referral to Glen Rose’s tutorials.

Click to expand...

I will make sure to check those sites out...

thank you for this week Mads
this, an improvisation on concert ukulele

this, an improvisation on baritone ukulele