John Coltrane 1959
‘Naima’ was introduced on the 1959 album ‘Giant Steps’. It is an example of Coltrane’s brilliant solution to one of the major dichotomies of modern Jazz – how can you create a piece of music that is interesting harmonically but does not tie the hands of improvisers with complex changes.
We are very fortunate to have an original manuscript with Coltrane’s instructions to his piano player, Wynton Kelly. It makes it quite clear how he viewed the chords and how they function. The first section is clearly marked ‘A’. The spelled out chords below that are the ‘B’ section.
The ‘A’ section is a series of Major 7 chords over an Eb pedal. The ‘B’ section is a series of Bb chords – notice how he emphasized the minor second (Bb and B). It’s also revealing that he chose to spell out the ‘B’ section rather than use complex chord names.
‘Naima’ is a master class in chord extensions. The Eb pedal in the ‘A’ section implies that this is basically an extended V – I. Example 2 shows how Coltrane’s series of Major 7th chords act as variations on the Eb7 (V) chord. The first chord (circled) is an Eb7 chord with all its diatonic extensions. See ‘Chords built on Thirds’ for more (Link). The next four bars show how the Coltrane chords relate to this basic Eb7.
Example 3 treats the ‘B’ section the same way. It can also been seen as an extended V – I (Bb back to the Eb). Since Coltrane did not name these chords the score above uses these labels.
For more on Upper Structure Triads check out our page “Playing With Upper Structure Triads” (Link).