Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

[Bob L]

I first heard Jeff Beck's version of this tune when Wired was released. Lately I have been playing and studying the original Charles Mingus version in Ebm. I have been playing along using the chords in the attached chart. I can follow the chords well enough, but I am struggling a bit in how to think about the movement of tonal centers.

It seems to me that the movement begins in measure 1, as the B13 pivots to a new center of E major. I am not quite sure how to think of the movement in measures 3-5. It seems to me that Fm is established as the center in measure 6, which transitions to E major again in measure 8.

Am I in the ballpark with this thinking? Also, what are the backing changes during the sax solo?

 

[hepular]

best answer i've found appears to be "don't" Folks seem to think that Mingus was loosely following blues, but going with chords that always moved around because he liked the way they sounded. which means that soloing is both more open & more challenging because your reasoning is less constrained by a harmonic center

i play it from a fake book chart, which has it in a-flat/ f minorish (4 flats)--last year i was all about showing off what sort of weird re-harm movement i could make against the melody, this year it's trying to get spread voicings and letting the thing breathe.

changes through first bars are pretty different from what you have, even transposed:
F7#9 dflat9/ Gflatmaj7 B7-5/ eflat7 Dflat7/ Eflat 7 F7
Bflat-7 Dflat7 / G7-5 C7/ D7 G7/ Dflat7 Gflat maj7/
B7 Bflat7/ C7 Eflat7/ F7#9 Dflat7/ Gflatmaj7 B7 [repeat] ending on an Fm11

with apologies for suckage: