Blues For Sale – Herbie Nichols

A playful blues head that explores a unique harmonic motion in the melody: major to minor sevenths (A and A♭). The tonic chord really is a B♭ triad, with no specified seventh. These two notes in the melody reappear on the IV and V chords, as the sharp 11th (sharp 4th) and 4th of E♭7 and as the third and sharp ninth on F7. A classic example of Herbie Nichols’ simple, elegant harmonic depth. Ethan Iverson, in his solo piano recording, really demonstrates the quirky playfulness of this song. He highlights the half-step motion of the sevenths by harmonizing A♮ with A♭ in the lower octave, and vice versa. Some of Ethan’s phrasing is slightly different from the original manuscript; notably, he leaves out the last melody note and ties over the D♭ pickup to the last measure, harmonizing with a B7 chord. Ethan adds a four-measure intro based on the melody. One subtle harmonic detail from Herbie Nichols’ original manuscript that Ethan catches on each melody chorus is in the tenth measure: two beats each of E♭7 and F7. This older style of blues turnaround really complements the end of the melody, which is firmly within the blues scale.

As this project consists of songs that had not yet been recorded, we wanted to present the songs as written as much as possible. Here's an excerpt of a separate recording by pianist Jake Sasfai, a former student of Don Sickler's at Columbia University, playing the head as it appears in our lead sheet which comes directly from Herbie Nichols' manuscript. CLIP