Eric Dolphy 1962
‘Miss Ann’ is from Eric Dolphy’s 1962 album “Far Cry”. The piece is constructed linearly and is a cross between “Advanced Form” and “Collective Form” Jazz (Link).
“… you see, some things like you play are not based on chords, they’re based on freedom of sound, you start with one line and you keep inventing as you go along, line-wise.” Eric Dolphy
It is quite reasonable to approach ‘Miss Ann’ as a linear piece where any harmonic “logic” is purely incidental. But, like all of Dolphy’s music, it seems to be grounded in some sort of tonal logic. Jaki Byard’s piano accompaniment adds to this sense of Directional Tonality.
The structure is 14 bars, like ‘Les’, another Dolphy head we looked at (Link). Points of harmonic “calm” come at bars 4, 8 and 13.
The accompaniment we added to the head simply blocks off the melody into half note sections. The bass doubles the notes of the melodies first and third downbeat. The chords are inversions of the melody notes.
The first four bars “rest” on a tonal centre of G flat. The next four bars rests on Eb. The final six bars rest on a B chord.
If we think of the piece as having a tonal centre of Gb we can see from Example 1 that the “changes” are not unusual at all. The first four bars end in a bVII – I “backdoor cadence”. The next four ends in a VII – VI; the VI being a “sister chord” of I. The last six bars “resolve” to a IV chord. For more on how this harmony traditionally function see Link.
