The tune “Everybody’s Song But My Own”

I’d like to finish off this session on the jazz waltz by playing for you this wonderful tune by Kenny Wheeler “Everybody’s Song But My Own”. I want to play it because it’s a super tune but also because John Taylor has played this at every solo concert that I’ve put on by him and he wouldn’t have done it unless it had great depth.

It is a complicated tune and it may be that you find it too much at this stage in which case, may I suggest, you just know it’s here and then you return to it when you feel ready for it - that’s if you like it. It’s structure is AABA prime or, more precisely, A1 A1 B A2. A2 because it starts off like A1 but then doesn’t end like it. A1 is 8 bars, B is a rather unusual length of 14 bars

and A2 is 20 bars which comes in 2 bits really: 12 bars on an extension of the tune and then 8 bars of vamp - waltz vamp - more precisely, a vamp over 2 chords. What are the 2 chords? Well they sound like this.

The very first chord is B flat major 7.

The second chord is B major7 but with a flattened fifth - or equivalently a sharpened eleventh - but over a B flat root. The B flat root links the 2 chords. You can either play the scales that match those chords over the top or just stay on B flat major7. Moreover, you can use this vamp, if you wish to, to set up the waltz - if you’re going to play it in waltz time from the beginning - or to transition from colla voce to waltz time (which I will do), or indeed to end on - you can do an extended vamp section.

The very end of this consists of 2 “pause” bars - as they’re called - bars where you have 1 chord in it, so there’s a pause over those bars. The first chord is E major7 and the second chord is E flat major7.