After church today, St Clement’s is hosting a Jubilee party for the church and also the members of our regular lunch club, who remember the accession of Elizabeth II directly rather than mediated by historical photos and footage. I will be playing my double bass in the band, covering a range of dance band standards from the time as well as popular songs like Run, Rabbit, Run and We’ll Meet Again.

Among the jazzy numbers is Gerschwin’s Summertime but the copy we had didn’t sound quite right to me chordally and we struggled to make it work. My friend, Pico Brown, came up with an excellent set of changes when I used to play in his quintet down in London but every beat or two saw another jazz chord bedecked with extensions and alterations. The present group has excellent musicianship but not such a depth of jazz experience so the PB version would have been a step too  far. Instead, working from the Real Book and tweaking to fit my taste, I came up with the following:

| : Am7   | Am7    | Am7   | A7         |
    Dm7   | F7     | E7    | E7         |
    Am7   | Am7    | Am7   | D7         |
    C     | Bm7 E7 | Am7   | (Bm7 E7) : |

Unfortunately there will not really be much time to rehearse it before we perform but I am fairly confident that I have steered a good line between undaunting chords and a jazzy sound.