Improvising on “It’s A Raggy Waltz” in root position

“All Blues” is a blues, but because it’s in 6/4 it feels a bit stretched out. For example the first G7 seems to go on for quite a long time before we get to the C7 in bar 5. “It’s A Raggy Waltz” is - at least in the A section - a blues in waltz time. So it’s more compact as a blues. It’s actually a B structure which is ABA - A is a 12 bar blues in G, is an 8 bar middle section and then A is a 12 bar blues in G again. The structure ABA, ABA, ABA repeats. It’s rather disappointing but there isn’t an Aebersold playalong for this tune.

There is a Dave Brubeck volume but it doesn’t include this tune - even though it was very popular - and it has some more obscure tunes on it. I don’t really know quite why that is, which is why I wrote out for you this solo piano version of it where we’re mostly playing sevenths in the left hand,

but we have this rising inner voice: root and fifth, sharpened fifth, sixth, flattenend seventh. Then on the second line a seventh, C sharp diminished, seventh, then a third because the seventh is in the tune, seventh, seventh and then an Amen.

Most of the middle section is sevenths in the left hand. Those rising voices are made to agree with the tune as you will see, but we can use this same approach to improvise over and then we can just make the rising take place at the beginning of each bar (chorus).

This gives us a device for soloing. I’ll more or less play the same left hand - I might vary it a little bit. As we have in this solo version I’ve done for you then we can actually improvise on this - like this.

1,2,3,2,2,(3).