TLDR: Skip to the end of the article to find free PDF versions of Woody’s solo in C, Bb, Eb, and bass clef! The YouTube video at the end of the article contains an embedded Bb version of the sheet music.
This one time at band camp, an instructor told me that you could gauge the skill of an improviser by how they handled turnarounds. Typically in the 7th and 8th bars of 8 bar groupings, the turnaround is what propels a melody into a new section, the bridge, or to the top of a new chorus. Often a turnaround features more densely packed chord changes which can be tricky to navigate. Jazz giants like Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Tadd Dameron, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and many others found new and exciting ways to blow through turnarounds, constructing exciting peaks and valleys in their improvised solos.
Bebop brought about a fascination with tritone substitutions. Tadd Dameron experimented further with tritone subs, creating new sounds that weren’t based in the typical dominant 7th harmony which had dominated Jazz up to that point.
Dameron’s “Lady Bird” features a beautiful, unique turnaround which has become a popular substitution for the typical iii/VI/ii/V7 turnaround used in many standards. In the key of C, Dameron inserted CMaj7/EbMaj7/AbMaj7/DbMaj7 at the end of the melody. For a cool explanation of turnarounds in general and what has become known as “Dameron Turnarounds”, check out this video:
Dameron was good friends with Coltrane, and they recorded together. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when they talked shop. It was Coltrane’s fascination with turnarounds that led him to experiment with new ways to resolve to the tonic (homebase keys) of his own compositions which played off of Dameron’s approach in different ways. Lazy Bird and Moment’s Notice both shifted tonal centers in half steps and in major thirds, prefiguring his seminal “Coltrane Changes” approach. We first hear examples of Coltrane Changes in standards like Limehouse Blues and Body and Soul. Then, Coltrane’s crystallized approach rocked the Jazz world with his stunning Giant Steps album. Sax wunderkind Andrew Gould gives a killer explanation here, and he has some excellent resources outside of the video well worth checking out:
So, why am I blabbering on about all of these turnaround innovations? Well, between the old masters like Armstrong, the beboppers like Bird, Bud, and Dameron, and the restless curiosity of Coltrane, you can see that turnarounds had been dumped out, mixed together, changed forwards and backwards, and put back together again over decades of serious experimentation.
From a Jazz history perspective, who innovated on harmony and turnarounds after Coltrane? That is an interesting question. It would take a herculean effort to find a different approach. Coltrane himself, and many others in Free Jazz, abandoned traditional harmonies altogether in the years following Giant Steps’ release. Miles Davis also broke the limits of traditional jazz harmony with a different approach in his Second Quintet, but ultimately jumped onto the Fusion train and didn’t look back. Was it because there wasn’t anything else to explore?
In my opinion, Woody Shaw was one of the post-Coltrane voices to put together a completely new language for Jazz, not only for trumpet, but for the genre as a whole. And we get incredible insights into his innovations looking at his treatment of the turnarounds in “There Will Never Be Another You” on the album Solid, released on the Muse label in 1986.
It’s not his most technically astounding album, but it’s, well, solid. (Sorry). And I remember the first time I heard his solo on There Will Never Be Another You, my head exploded. Twice, actually. Once at the end of the first chorus, and then again at the end of the second.
While I was transcribing, I debated throwing in guesses for what chords Woody was thinking of. But, I think that’s a mistake. His use of thirds and fourths during these turnarounds is more an example of chromatic sidestepping than chord substitutions. And it creates a mindblowing effect, similar for me to hearing Armstrong leap across a 2 bar break, or Dameron using his turnaround at the end of Ladybird, or Coltrane blowing the roof off the house in Limehouse Blues.
Since Woody, has there been another major innovation in Jazz trumpet language? That’s a question for another article. In the mean time, all we can do is sit back and marvel at a master at work.
Bb PDF
C PDF
Eb PDF
Bass Clef PDF
Trumpet Madness 