Wes Montgomery: Sunny (Alternate Take) Melody Statement

In a prior post I laid out a framework for comping chords (here). In the last post (here), I used the comping chord forms to transform a typical lead sheet into a jazz ballad solo. I also made the assertion that we could get a long way with comping chord forms, single note and octave playing. Let's see if we can take an actual Wes Montgomery chordal solo and use comping chord forms to play the entire song, from melody statement through improvisation.

Sunny provides an interesting place to start. First, I have been unable to find transcriptions either in print or on the Internet. Second, there are two versions of Sunny from the California Dreaming Album (above, if the video gets taken down you can find the re-released California Dreaming album on iTunes here). There is a "commercial"(?) octave version and then there is a chordal version,  Sunny (Alternate Take) which is selection seven on the re-release album. The original album, released in 1966, only contained the octave version of Sunny and provides an example of the controversy surrounding over-use of octaves. The record was considered "pop fluff" by critic Scott Yanow as were many of the A&M records, although California Dreaming did reach #1 on Billboard Jazz Album Chart.

For the jazz guitar student, there is a lot to learn from every recording we have a Wes Montgomery. From all we know, Wes took every performance seriously (see for example Tom Fitzgerald's interview with jazz piano player Harold Mabern in 625 Alive: The Wes Montgomery BBC Performance Transcribed: "He put a lot of time on the instrument" p. viii) and Wes put everything he knew at that moment in time into every performance (from the same interview "Whatever you can hear, you can have, because tomorrow, he's going to doing something else. And you'll always be chasing him." p. ix). The critics have a point but for the jazz guitar student, don't get put off from studying these performances because of critical comment.

If you'd like to download the transcription up to the first key change you can click here to download the PDF file.

There is certainly a lot to learn from transcribing either the octave or the chordal version of Wes Montgomery playing Sunny. The sheet music above is not a precise transcription; it's a first pass. There's lots of different opinion about how to transcribe jazz solos (I'll get into this in a future post). I tend to keep iterating, improving my transcription over time rather than trying to get everything right the first time. This is just my boredom again. The minute I think I "get" a part of the solo, I want to go off and play it and then I get other ideas and just keep playing until its time to quit. There are lots of great transcriptions of Wes Montgomery solos (I'll make a list of the ones I know in a future post). Each one requires a lot of study and a lot of listening. Someday, I'll work my Sunny transcription up to this level. For this post, it seemed better not to hide the process from readers.

For example, in the first few measures after the four-measure vamp introduction, a better (second pass) transcription would the the one presented above. Wes uses emphasis (accent marks), grace notes, glissandos and tremolos in his actual solo to provide a bluesy feel. It's enormously important to understand Wes' use of the blues in everything he plays. On the other hand, it doesn't actually change the notes being played and, on first pass, that's what I'm trying to capture.

In the spirit of trying to capture Wes' fundamental ideas rather than the exact feel at first pass in the transcription, notice the use of counterpoint in the bridge. In the two measures above, I've pulled out the chords Wes is using between octaves in a call-and-response form (the octaves provide the call and the chords provide the response here, sometimes he uses the reverse). Notice that the lead melody note stays the same throughout this portion of the bridge while the chordal harmony and the octaves move underneath the melody. 

Finally, after playing the melody through once, Wes moves the key up a half-step to start the first improvisation. The last two measures of my first-pass transcription show the key change to C#m/Emaj with the line Wes uses to make the transition. The critics may think that Sunny is pop fluff, but Wes takes the music to a new level. How many jazz musicians will play anything in the key of C#m/Emaj? Here's another quote from the Mabern interview: 

You see, the music was challenging. See, it was about the music. It wasn't about anything else. Everything he threw at me, I tried to meet the challenge. It was a challenge, too, because of the fact that keys didn't matter to him. F# minor, F# major, Db. You'd be surprised… a lot of cats don't play in Db even now. Or A major. (p. viii)

Do I need to say more. In fact, the shift to C#m/Emaj is quite hard to play. It really tests my concentration and knowledge of the fingerboard. I find it easier to shift up a whole step and, in the couple of measures above, I give you a Wes Montgomery-style line to do the transition. If you also find the shift to C#m/Emaj a little bewildering on first try, do the whole-step key change first. But, you'll eventually have to figure out the half-step changes because Wes does a few more before he gets to the end of the song.

If you thought that John Mehegan's comment on page 32 of Jazz Improvisation that "…learning to play in twelve keys is so important to jazz improvisation…" was just some obscure academic idea, Wes' approach to Sunny should disabuse you of that notion. The solution to the problem of playing in twelve keys is, in John Mehegan's view and in my view, Figured Bass (or more specifically abstract harmonic analysis, the "Abstract Truth" of jazz). To go any further with Wes Montgomery, I need to present this area of abstract music theory in the next post.

As an obvious aside, it was quite a joke for me to pick up a piece of "pop fluff" like Sunny forty years ago thinking it would easier than anything else Wes might have done. It took me many years to realize it wasn't.

EXERCISES

1. Play either the Wes Montgomery melody statement above or my earlier melody statement (here) in twelve keys using Wes' octave line to make the transition each time.

2. Start transcribing the first Wes Montgomery improvisational solo for Sunny (use either the Octave or the chordal "Alternate Take" version) in the key of C#m/Emaj.

3. Invent your own transition lines and play Autumn Leaves (here) and Giant Steps (here) in twelve keys.