52nd Street Blues - Introduction and Head
Lesson time: (0min 29sec)
Ollie Weston introduces 52nd Street Blues, a 12-bar bebop head named after the New York street of jazz clubs, walking through its harmony before you play the melody.
Course preview
This lesson is part of the course Exploring Jazz Saxophone: Part 2 - Soloing on Songs and Chord Sequences
Watch a preview of the full course below.
Lesson transcript:
Exploring Bebop: 52nd Street Blues
So the first tune we're going to use to explore bebop is a song called 52nd Street Blues.
About the Song
- Named after a street in New York where a lot of jazz clubs were in the 1940s.
- This is where Parker and Gillespie would have played their music.
Musical Style
- We're still in a blues style.
- It's a 12-bar blues, so it does have some reference to earlier musical forms.
Listening Activity
See if you can hear the 12-bar form in this head.
Here's the head of 52nd Street Blues.
About the instructor
Since graduating from the Leeds College of Music (BA Hons) and the Guildhall School of Music (Post Graduate Diploma in Performance), Ollie has built a busy and varied career in music. As a saxophonist he has performed in live and studio settings with artists as diverse as Amy Winehouse, Tim Minchin, Bonobo, Frank Turner, the London Jazz Orchestra, the Hackney Colliery Band, the Ambient Jazz Ensemble and the Nelson Riddle Orchestra. He is also the co-leader of the jazz quartet 'Time Is Of The Essence', and composes and arranges material for this and other ensembles. Ollie is active in music education, currently as course leader for the jazz department at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (junior school), where he runs jazz ensembles, big band and theory classes. He has written a series of 'Exploring Jazz' books for Schott Music that are published worldwide and feature on exam syllabuses in the UK. Ollie has also run workshops for Oxford University, Pro Corda Strings and BABSWE, as well as the Guildhall School of Music summer schools. In his Exploring Jazz Saxophone courses, Ollie takes you from getting started right through to soloing confidently over songs and chord sequences, building the improvising skills that put a real jazz player's vocabulary at your fingertips. read more