Summertime chords

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Summertime | Chords + Lyrics

Intro

Verse 1

Verse 2

Solo

Verse 3

Summertime’s chords and progressions

There have been so many modifications done to poor Summertime’s chords that it is impossible to say what they are. Everyone you ask will give you a different answer.

Let’s go back to the source so to speak and see how Billie Holiday played it and make sure you get that right first.

I’ll give you a bit of a guide to how she got there as well. Let’s start with the bare bones, a 16-bar minor jazz blues that has a major turnaround. In its simplest form, it would look like this:

The F and Bb in brackets are very important, it’s the bass that goes down to the 5th. Without this, it just feels wrong. Make sure you can play the 16 bars above and see how using roman numerals, they are:

VI – II – IIIx – VI, or Bbm7 – Ebm7 – F7 – Bbm7 for the first 12 bars. The major turnaround is:

I – VI – II – V, or Db – Bbm7 – Ebm7 – Ab7. This is only difficult because of the key, you’ve played plenty of pop songs with this movement.

The final two bars are I – VI again, Db – Bbm7, still very basic. It’s the last bar that breaks the rules as we go Cm7 (VII) to F7 (IIIx). Although when looked at in isolation like this, it’s clearly just a II – V in Bb.

In Jazz, we tend to throw in a lot of II – V’s and that’s how she has developed Summertime’s chords. Let’s look at each section and how it goes from basic jazz blues chords to Billie Holiday’s Summertime chords. Here’s line 1:

Basic: ||: Bbm7 (/F) | Bbm7 (/F) :||
Billie: ||: Bbm7 F7b9/C | Db6 F7b9/C :||

This is the basic chord riff, what has happened is that instead of Bbm7/F, we play an F7b9, remember, F is chord III, Phrygian has a b9, hence F7b9.

To give this Bbm7 – F7b9 a cool bass line we play F7b9/C. Finally, instead of moving back to Bbm7, we put the m3rd in the bass and get a Db6 chord instead. We could have called it Bbm/Db, same thing.

Some people scrap the b9 and just play F7/C. This is the same as a Cm6, so you often see Bbm7 – Cm6. Sometimes, they go even further and play Bbm6 – Cm6.

But as I mentioned earlier, let’s stick to what Billie Holdays’ Summertime chords are! Here’s line 2:

Instead of just going to the 5th of the Ebm7 (Bb), we move up to the m3rd (Gb), back down (Eb), and then continue down to the b7 (Db).

This brings us nicely to a C bass note for the F7b9/C. The Gb7 is a tritone substitute, we finish on F7.

Line 3 is the same as line 1. Finally, the major turnaround. If we started in Bbm (VI), we now go to Db (I).

The main thing that has changed is that there are more dom7 chords. In the second to last bar, we continue the cycle of 4th movement, so Gb7, not Bbm7.

You could probably do a college degree in how many ways it’s possible to play Summertime’s chords, maybe even learn how to play Jazz by doing so.

Your next step would be to take Ella Fitzgerald‘s version apart and study the differences.

Then there are versions by Sam Cooke, Eva Cassidy, Charlie Parker, Dizzy, Willie Nelson, Julie London, Chet Baker, Norah Jones, and don’t forget Youtube sensation Chad LB. All are available in the playlist!

Before you dig that deep, I suggest you learn how to play Billie Holiday’s Summertime chords first by simply using the chords, lyrics, and original recording above.