All of Me Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt

Section: A · Bars 1–8

C | C | E7 | E7 | A7 | A7 | Dm7 | Dm7

This is a short excerpt quoted for analysis, not the full chart, and this composition is very likely still in copyright. Published versions and recordings disagree with each other about the rest of the tune, and often about these bars too.

The books behind this page

Every one of these tunes is assembled out of the same handful of harmonic resources. Jazz Harmony is those resources, explained in the order in which they build on each other.

Start here Project 03 · Harmony

Harmonic analysis

Key

C major

Tonal center

C

Confidence

Low

Chords analysed

8

Read in C major, the key of the tune. Taken on its own, with nothing around it, this excerpt is just as easy to hear in D minor — a few bars are often not enough to fix a tonic, and that ambiguity is a real property of the music rather than a gap in the analysis.

Chord	Roman numeral	Function	What it is doing	Confidence
C	I	Tonic	C is the tonic of C. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
C	I	Tonic	C is the tonic of C. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
E7	V7/vi	Dominant	E7 is functioning as V7/vi: a secondary dominant. It is the dominant of A, not of the home key, so it borrows the pull of a V-I and points it at vi instead.	Low
E7	V7/vi	Dominant	E7 is functioning as V7/vi: a secondary dominant. It is the dominant of A, not of the home key, so it borrows the pull of a V-I and points it at vi instead.	High
A7	V7/ii	Dominant	A7 is functioning as V7/ii: a secondary dominant. It is the dominant of D, not of the home key, so it borrows the pull of a V-I and points it at ii instead.	Low
A7	V7/ii	Dominant	A7 is functioning as V7/ii: a secondary dominant. It is the dominant of D, not of the home key, so it borrows the pull of a V-I and points it at ii instead.	High
Dm7	ii	Predominant	Dm7 is the ii chord of C: the classic predominant. It prepares the dominant and almost always moves to it.	High
Dm7	ii	Predominant	Dm7 is the ii chord of C: the classic predominant. It prepares the dominant and almost always moves to it.	High

High, medium and low next to each numeral are judgements about musical context, not probabilities. A low rating marks a bar that can honestly be read more than one way. How the ratings are decided →

Why this example matters

In C major the excerpt reads I – V7/vi – V7/ii – ii. Inside those 8 chords there is at least one secondary dominant. Play it slowly with only two voices — the third and seventh of each chord. In E7 those are Ab and D, and watching where that pair goes next tells you more about the progression than the root movement does. The same device turns up in Stella by Starlight, How High the Moon and Ornithology, in other keys and at other tempos.

How the rest of All of Me goes

The A sections work outward from the tonic through a series of secondary dominants, each one reached by a leap rather than by step, and then find their way home — the harmonic motion is wider than in most songs of its date but entirely functional. It is a favourite for teaching because a student can name every chord’s function without ambiguity, and a favourite at sessions because the melody is short enough to state and get out of.

All of Me on record

Written in 1931 by Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons. Billie Holiday recorded it several times and her readings are the ones most often studied for phrasing — she consistently places the melody behind the beat in a way that has proved almost impossible to notate. Frank Sinatra’s versions took it in the opposite direction, brighter and on top of the beat, and the two approaches still divide performances of the tune.

Analyze this progression

Take these bars into the analyzer and interfere with them. The fastest way to learn what a chord was doing is to remove it and read what the analysis says instead.

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All of Me — Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

The books behind this page

Jazz Harmony

Harmonic Narrative

Jazz Guitar Comping

Harmonic analysis

Why this example matters

How the rest of All of Me goes

All of Me on record

Analyze this progression

Related

Secondary dominants

Stella by Starlight

How High the Moon

Ornithology

Jazz chord progressions