Killer Joe Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt

Section: A1

Cmaj7 | Bbmaj7 | Cmaj7 | Bbmaj7

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

4

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 Bb 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
Cmaj7	I	Tonic	Cmaj7 is the tonic of C. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Bbmaj7	bVII	Modal interchange	Bbmaj7 is bVII: the flat seventh degree as a major chord, from Mixolydian or from the parallel minor.	Low
Cmaj7	I	Tonic	Cmaj7 is the tonic of C. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Bbmaj7	bVII	Modal interchange	Bbmaj7 is bVII: the flat seventh degree as a major chord, from Mixolydian or from the parallel minor.	Low

What the analyzer found in it

modal interchangeBbmaj7, Bbmaj7

Modal interchange: Bbmaj7, Bbmaj7 come from the parallel mode of C, not from the key itself.

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 – bVII. Inside those 4 chords there is a chord borrowed from the parallel mode. Play it slowly and hold each chord until you can sing the note that wants to move. In a progression with no dominant, that note is what carries the phrase. The same device turns up in Blues for Alice, All Blues and So What, in other keys and at other tempos.

How the rest of Killer Joe goes

The main section alternates two dominant chords a whole tone apart, neither of which resolves — the harmony simply rocks between them for sixteen bars, which is closer to a vamp than to a chord progression. The bridge supplies conventional cadences. Because the two chords share so little, a soloist has to change material completely every two bars while the underlying feel stays identical, which is a specific and unusual demand.

Killer Joe on record

Benny Golson wrote it and it was recorded in 1959 by the Jazztet, the group he co-led with Art Farmer. It has an unusual status: sophisticated enough to hold a jazz audience and simple enough to have been used repeatedly in advertising and film, which has made it one of the more commercially durable compositions in the modern repertoire.

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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Killer Joe — 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 Killer Joe goes

Killer Joe on record

Analyze this progression

Related

Modal interchange

Blues for Alice

All Blues

So What

Jazz chord progressions