Ho ho ho! It’s that time of the year again when jazz music makes its grand annual comeback! In this post, we’ll learn how to play one of the most iconic Christmas songs while we dip our toes into the world of jazz music.
When it comes to holiday music, few songs rival the timeless allure of "The Christmas Song” composed in 1945 by Robert Wells and Mel Tormé. Its definitive recording by Nat King Cole in 1961, accompanied by a lush string section, elevated the song to its iconic status. With its intricate composition, featuring several key changes and a myriad of colorful jazz chords, Cole’s smooth and soulful arrangement helped propel the song to the top of both the pop and R&B charts.
While its lyrics evoke a frigid winter day (with “folks dressed up like Eskimos”), the song actually has its origins in the blistering summer heat of 1945. One day when his writing partner Tormé was over at his house, Wells penned a few lines of lyrics - the first verse of the song - on a notebook to see if he could psychologically cool himself down by focusing on wintry imagery. When Tormé saw these first few lines, he knew they had something special. Around 45 minutes later, the song was born. Wells and Tormé brought the song to Nat King Cole, an artist whose popularity was exploding at the time, and Cole went on to record and release the iconic version of the song on his 1961 album The Nat King Cole Story.
Jazz Chords - triads and sevenths
Nat King Cole’s recording features a rhythm section with John Collins on guitar and an orchestral section consisting of strings and a harp. The song starts with a chord progression that walks up and down the first four diatonic jazz chords in the scale of Db Major. When you hear “diatonic”, just think of the notes in the standard major or minor scale, in a single key, with no extra notes. These chords are DbMaj7, Ebm7, Fm7 and GbMaj7.
Chords can be referred to by their traditional names (tonic, supertonic, etc.) or by their roman numerals as in the following list. Upper-case numerals denote major chords, lower-case numerals denote minor chords, and the “o” symbols denote diminished chords:
1st – Tonic (key note) - I
2nd – Supertonic - ii
3rd – Mediant - iii
4th – Subdominant - IV
5th – Dominant - V
6th – Submediant - vi
7th – Leading tone - viio
8th – Tonic (Octave) - I
We can thus describe the chord progression in the first line of the song as “walking from the I to the IV”, or the walking from the tonic to the subdominant, where DbMaj7 is tonic (I) and GbMaj7 is the subdominant (IV).
So what makes a jazz chord sound jazzy? Let’s quickly recap what a chord is. In classical music, the basic harmonic unit of a chord is a triad, which consists of the root and the notes on the 3rd and 5th intervals of the chord’s scale degree. Triads can be major, minor, diminished (minor with a flat 5) or augmented (major with a sharp 5).
In jazz music, an additional note - the 7th interval - is added to the triad’s basic harmonic unit to form what are known as “seventh chords”. Because the 7th interval is only one degree apart from the root note of the chord (a half step in a major seventh chord, whole step in a minor seventh chord), it inherently contains a kind of dissonance and tension. Dominant seventh chords (V7, also known as major-minor sevenths) have the special quality of being a major triad with a minor seventh (root, major 3rd, perfect fifth, and minor 7th). In jazz notation, major seventh chords are sometimes shortened to “Maj7”, for example “DbMaj7”, to distinguish them from dominant / major-minor seventh chords which are simply notated with “7” as in “Ab7”.
DbMaj7, the tonic (I) chord of “The Christmas Song”, consists of Db, F, Ab and C, which are the notes built on the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th intervals of Db respectively.
The ii-V-I Turnaround
Now that we have chords down, let’s talk about chord progressions. We saw from the first line of the song (“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire”) that walking up and down a scale is one kind of chord progression. Jazz compositions like this song, however, commonly feature chord progressions with myriad surprising and unexpected chord changes, and the glue that holds these changes together is the ii-V-I (“two-five-one”) turnaround.
Fundamentally, chord progressions build harmonic motion throughout a piece of music - e.g. movement from the tonic (I) to the subdominant (IV) - by creating and resolving tension. The ii-V-I turnaround provides a certain structure to this creation and resolution of tension. Here’s how it works:
ii (minor seventh chord): The "ii" chord is typically a minor seventh chord built on the second degree of the diatonic scale. This sets the scene for voice leading towards the dissonant V.
V (dominant seventh chord): The "V" chord is a dominant seventh chord built on the fifth degree of the scale and serves as the climatic point of dissonance, which begs for resolution towards the I.
I (major seventh chord): The "I" chord is a major seventh chord built on the first degree of the scale, which represents the tonic or home key. In the key of C major, the I chord would be a C major seventh chord (Cmaj7).
The progression typically moves from the ii chord to the V chord and then resolves to the I chord. The V chord creates tension due to its dominant seventh quality, and the resolution to the I chord provides a sense of release and resolution.
On my first pass through the song while learning it by ear, I automatically assumed that the second line of the song (“Jack Frost nipping at your nose") uses a ii-V-I turnaround from the I to IV (subdominant). While the ii-V-I is often used to describe resolution to the home key (also known as an authentic cadence), it can also be relative to a specific chord you are trying to move towards. Let’s say you’re on the I chord and you want to create a strong drive and sense of movement that lands on the IV chord. How this works is as follows:
First, you take the subdominant (GbMaj7) as the temporary tonic or home key
Relative to GbMaj7, the supertonic (ii) is Abm7, the dominant (V) is Db7
The ii-V-I turnaround to GbMaj7 is therefore Abm7-Db7-GbMaj7. Play these chords and you’ll hear how the Abm7 sets up the Db7 chord nicely for resolution to GbMaj7.
The ii chord in a ii-V-I turnaround is sometimes optional, as it’s role is really to setup the V7. To see this in action, take a look at Frank Vignola’s tutorial for the song (starting at the 00:28 mark). He’s transposed the song a half step down to C major, so the ii-V-I would be Am7, D7, to Cmaj7, and he omits the Am7.
So far so good. There’s only one problem: the song doesn’t actually go to the IV chord! If you listen to the changes over the second line, you’ll hear that it actually goes to the submediant, or vi (sixth) chord. This was one of the surprising chord changes that I found particularly interesting when learning it by ear.
From DbMaj7, the chord progression walks up Ebm7 just as in the previous line, but instead of the minor Fm7 we play F7, which serves as a dominant chord that resolves to Bbm7.
Hows does this work? The subdominant (IV) and the submediant (vi) triads share all but one note - in GbMaj we have Gb, Bb, Db, and Bbm we have Bb, Db, F. This explains why Vignola’s arrangement with the IV chord sounds perfectly fine even though it’s a different chord compared to the original vi. The similar harmonic structure between the two chords allows them to effectively substitute for each other.
There’s plenty more I want to say about the ii-V-I turnaround and how it’s used throughout this song, but this post is getting a bit too long for an email. Stay tuned for a part two, where I’ll be providing the full chord sheet!