Have You Met Miss Jones Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt

Section: B / Bridge · Bars 17–24

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

F major

Tonal center

F

Confidence

Low

Chords analysed

12

Read in F major, the key of the tune. Taken on its own, with nothing around it, this excerpt is just as easy to hear in F# major — 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
Bbmaj7	IV	Predominant	Bbmaj7 is the IV chord of F: subdominant. It moves away from the tonic without creating the pull of a dominant.	High
Abm7	ii	Predominant	Abm7 is the ii chord of F#: the classic predominant. It prepares the dominant and almost always moves to it.	High
Db7	V7	Dominant	Db7 is the dominant of F#. Its third and seventh form a tritone, and that tritone is what makes the tonic feel due.	High
Gbmaj7	I	Tonic	Gbmaj7 is the tonic of F#. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Em7	ii	Predominant	Em7 is the ii chord of D: the classic predominant. It prepares the dominant and almost always moves to it.	High
A7	V7	Dominant	A7 is the dominant of D. Its third and seventh form a tritone, and that tritone is what makes the tonic feel due.	High
Dmaj7	I	Tonic	Dmaj7 is the tonic of D. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Abm7	ii	Predominant	Abm7 is the ii chord of F#: the classic predominant. It prepares the dominant and almost always moves to it.	High
Db7	V7	Dominant	Db7 is the dominant of F#. Its third and seventh form a tritone, and that tritone is what makes the tonic feel due.	High
Gbmaj7	I	Tonic	Gbmaj7 is the tonic of F#. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Gm7	ii	Predominant	Gm7 is the ii chord of F: the classic predominant. It prepares the dominant and almost always moves to it.	High
C7	V7	Dominant	C7 is the dominant of F. Its third and seventh form a tritone, and that tritone is what makes the tonic feel due.	High

What the analyzer found in it

ModulationF# major

Bars 2-3 are heard in F# major: the harmony cadences there and stays long enough to become a key.

ModulationD major

Bars 4-5 are heard in D major: the harmony cadences there and stays long enough to become a key.

ModulationF# major

Bars 6-7 are heard in F# major: the harmony cadences there and stays long enough to become a key.

ii - V7 - IAbm7 - Db7 - Gbmaj7

A complete ii-V-I in Gb. Predominant, dominant, tonic: the sentence jazz harmony is built out of.

ii - V7 - IEm7 - A7 - Dmaj7

A complete ii-V-I in D. Predominant, dominant, tonic: the sentence jazz harmony is built out of.

ii - V7 - IAbm7 - Db7 - Gbmaj7

A complete ii-V-I in Gb. Predominant, dominant, tonic: the sentence jazz harmony is built out of.

ii - V7Gm7 - C7

A ii-V pointing at F, which never arrives. The preparation is complete, the resolution is not.

half cadenceC7

The progression stops on the dominant of F — a half cadence. It is unfinished on purpose.

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 F major the excerpt reads IV – ii – V7 – I. Inside those 12 chords there is a complete ii-V-I. Play it slowly with only two voices — the third and seventh of each chord. In Db7 those are F and B, and watching where that pair goes next tells you more about the progression than the root movement does. The same device turns up in Autumn Leaves, All The Things You Are and Tune Up, in other keys and at other tempos.

How the rest of Have You Met Miss Jones goes

The A sections are a well-behaved thirty-two-bar song of their period and give no warning of what is coming. The bridge moves through three keys a major third apart and returns — the same scheme Coltrane would formalise two decades later, written in 1937 by a Broadway composer with no interest in formalising anything. It lasts eight bars and then the tune resumes as though nothing happened. That contrast is the reason the piece is called: it is the shortest route to hearing the third-cycle in a context where it still sounds like a song.

Have You Met Miss Jones on record

Richard Rodgers wrote it with Lorenz Hart for the 1937 musical I’d Rather Be Right. Jazz musicians took to the bridge immediately and the tune has been a session staple ever since; Joe Pass’s solo guitar version is among the most studied. Whether Coltrane knew this bridge when he devised his own substitution scheme is a question that comes up constantly and has no documented answer, but the two are always taught in the same breath.

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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Have You Met Miss Jones — Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

The books behind this page

Jazz Harmony

Harmonic Narrative

Jazz Guitar Comping

Harmonic analysis

What the analyzer found in it

Why this example matters

How the rest of Have You Met Miss Jones goes

Have You Met Miss Jones on record

Analyze this progression

Related

ii-V-I

Autumn Leaves

All The Things You Are

Tune Up

Jazz chord progressions