Blues For Harvey – Johnny Griffin

For a description of this song, click on the second album cover ("Blues For Harvey"); our lead sheet comes from that version.

This first recording is considerably slower than the others, without the form and arrangement that would eventually take shape. The head is only played at the beginning. There are no breaks in this version; the bass keeps a 2-feel through the head, while the drums continue time between the hits and fills. There seems to be a bit of confusion about the head form; the altered changes are not clear.

After Johnny Griffin and pianist Kenny Drew solo, Johnny trades with drummer Tootie Heath. The trading has an unusual structure: four measures tenor, four measures drums, and then the tenor returns with a riff phrase which appears on the last four measures of every trading chorus. Johnny starts the trading with a repeated-note figure which he also plays at the beginning of the second chorus. The trading form is largely kept up for nine choruses, after which Tootie solos for six more choruses. Johnny then plays two choruses based on the riff from the end of the trading choruses, and a solo break ending in the same riff one more time leading to a final chord.

With time continuing through the head, Tootie Heath varies the length of his fills around the melody phrases. Later recordings have tighter drum fills.

A clever, creative variation on the blues. Blues For Harvey has an 18-measure form—a blues chorus with every phrase stretched from two measures to three. It's a riff head, with a single neat little phrase repeated through the entire form: an unaccompanied melody pickup, three hits with the rhythm section, and a drum fill going into a break for the next pickup. The changes are also quite clever. Each series of three chord hits goes up in half steps. These land on the IV and V chords in their expected places, but never go to the tonic—there is no I chord anywhere in the head. B♭7 is substituted with chromatic approaches to A♭7 (the ♭VII) at the beginning and end, a tritone sub E7 before the IV, and G7 (the VI) before the V. Only in the solos, which are on standard 12-measure blues changes, does B♭7 finally appear.

Our lead sheet also includes the dynamics from this recording. Johnny Griffin makes the song even more exciting by alternating the dynamic of each melody phrase, especially on the in head. Drummer Ed Thigpen is right with him, playing soft fills around soft melody phrases and bringing things back up for the louder ones. Check out how Ed plays every fill into the downbeat of the "break" measures. Johnny and Ed trade on the form: four measures of tenor alternated with eight measures of drums.

Other recordings of this song don't have the dynamic contrasts, but we feel it is important to show them as this is the best-known recording—and it's one of the most exciting.

A video from 1970 featuring master drummer Kenny Clarke. Recorded after the first Copenhagen live recording but before the second, this version shows that the arrangement as shown on our lead sheet had certainly been established by then. However, there are no major dynamic contrasts in the head. Like Ed Thigpen on the 1973 recording, Kenny Clarke fills into the downbeat of each "break" measure. He uses a similar rhythm on many of his fills, highlighting his characteristic crisp snare sound. The trading has the same structure as the 1973 version: four measures of tenor with eight measures of drums.

A particularly exciting video of a duo performance with drummer Art Taylor. The tempo is even faster than most other versions, but Griffin and Taylor are really locked in. Griffin phrases the melody a bit differently: the three "hits" are played long in other recordings, but here he plays the second one short and adds a "fall-off" on the last note. Taylor plays time through the head, with no breaks; his fills usually go up to the downbeat of the "break" measures, but sometimes they anticipate the downbeat on the "and" of 4. Like Kenny Clarke, he has a specific rhythm pattern he uses on many of the fills. Again there are choruses of trading, with the same pattern: four measures of tenor, eight measures of drums.

Like the duo version with Art Taylor, this live version is taken at a burning fast tempo. Griffin's melody phrasing is again slightly different: each phrase anticipates the third hit (B♭) with an eighth-note A, and (like the one with Art Taylor) there is a fall-off on this last note. There is a little dynamic contrast between the melody phrases, especially on the repeat of the in head, but the pattern is different from the "Blues For Harvey" recording.

Unlike Art Taylor and Kenny Clarke, drummer Kenny Washington largely makes every fill different. All of his fills, however, go to the downbeat of the "break" measure. The trading is again four measures of tenor with eight measures of drums; Johnny starts with yet another rhythmic riff figure repeated in the first two choruses.