Horace Silver - 1966
The title track of Horace Silver’s “The Jody Grind” was released in 1967. Silver was clearly trying to broaden his appeal. The songs are a bit “tamer” and the album cover is decidedly mainstream but Silver always had some tricks up his sleeve.
‘The Jody Grind’ is clearly a Bb minor 12 bar blues but with some twists:
Example 1 shows the traditional minor scales for reference.
The opening riff uses the natural minor scale with it’s flat 7th (‘a’ flat). The A chord in bar 7 implies a harmonic minor but both it and the B chord in bar 8 are just nice dominant substitutions (Link).
The melody (bar 11) begins on a ‘g’ suggesting a melodic minor but the base continues with the ‘a’ flat. The raised 6th degree (‘g’ natural) can’t really be called a blue note.
As usual, Silver is able to tweak ordinary Destinational Tonality so that it’s interesting without ever sounding contrived. Also as usual, they are lots of fun to play!