{"id":2690,"date":"2025-07-26T12:21:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T16:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/?p=2690"},"modified":"2025-07-26T23:13:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T03:13:17","slug":"the-missing-voice-a-tune-based-on-the-chord-progression-to-have-you-met-miss-jones-and-some-background-on-the-tune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/2025\/07\/26\/the-missing-voice-a-tune-based-on-the-chord-progression-to-have-you-met-miss-jones-and-some-background-on-the-tune\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Missing Voice’, a tune based on the chord progression to ‘Have You Met Miss Jones’, and some background on the tune"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u2018The Missing Voice\u2019 is my original melody line on the changes to \u2018Have You Met Miss Jones\u2019 as they are shown in \u2018All-Time Standards\u2019 (Vol. 25 of the Aebersold book and playalong series).  Here is a link to a rough recording I made of the tune<\/a> using the iReal Pro record function.  Charts of the tune are below this paragraph; please note that these include a revision to the last three notes which is more recent than the recording.  Like my lines on the changes from other tunes used in Vermont All State Jazz Ensemble auditions, it includes licks borrowed from other sources (including Charlie Parker\u2019s solo on \u2018Now\u2019s The Time\u2019, Denzil Best\u2019s \u2018Move\u2019, the old standard \u2018Peg O\u2019 My Heart\u2019 and Ornette Coleman\u2019s \u2018The Blessing\u2019) and it also works as a countermelody to the original melody.  (As I\u2019ve mentioned in past posts, I learned about the concept of a contrafact which is also an allusive countermelody from Benny Harris\u2019s tunes Ornithology, Crazeology and Reets and I.) Please scroll below the charts for some background on the harmony and history of the tune, including links to some selected jazz versions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lorenz Hart\u2019s lyrics for \u2018Have You Met Miss Jones\u2019 describe a man being introduced to a woman by a third person (\u2018Have you met Miss Jones \/ someone said as we shook hands\u2019.)\u00a0\u00a0 The speaker introduces himself to the woman in an odd way, by mentioning his apparent preoccupation with pushing boundaries: \u2018Then I said Miss Jones \/ you\u2019re a girl who understands \/ I\u2019m a man who must be free\u2019.\u00a0 There are a number of versions of the song by female jazz singers, including Ella Fitzgerald<\/a> and Anita O\u2019Day<\/a> who reverse the gender roles by changing \u2018Miss Jones\u2019 to the knightly \u2018Sir Jones\u2019 and give a proto-feminist inflection to the line \u2018I\u2019m a girl who must be free\u2019 (or \u2018a gal who must be free\u2019 in O\u2019Day\u2019s version). The link in the last sentence is to O’Day’s 1958 version from ‘Anita O’Day At Mister Kelly’s’, in which her solo takes after Ella Ftizgerald with the use of quotes from public melodic language (‘Rain, Rain Go Away’, “The Irish Washerwoman’, ‘Shave And A Haircut’). Here is a transcription, by my wife and UVM’s jazz voice teacher Amber deLaurentis, of O’Day’s solo from the version on her 1960 album ‘Anita O’Day and Billy May Swing Rodgers And Hart’<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Although in this version O’Day keeps her paraphrase of the original bridge from the Mister Kelly’s solo, she otherwise seems to largely refrain from obvious quotation. She does end her bridge with piece of lesser-known jazz melodic code, a four-note gesture (D-D-Bb-C) very similar to the one that Stan Getz uses (Db-D-Bb-C) at the end of the bridge during the head statement of his 1953 version (discussed below). Getz’s more chromatic version of the lick, which also appears later in O’Day’s version, appears at the end of at least two other bridges: in Billy Strayhorn’s ‘Satin Doll’ (where it is sung with the lyrics ‘switch-a-rooney’) and in Alston and Tolbert’s ‘Hit That Jive Jack’ as sung by the Nat King Cole Trio<\/a>, where it’s sung to the lyrics ‘da-di-ah-da’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bridge of ‘Miss Jones’ modulates through a series of keys which, like the bridge of \u2018All The Things You Are\u2019, is a challenge to any improviser.\u00a0 It seems that this is what has drawn many generations of jazz players to continue improvising on the tune\u2019s changes.\u00a0 During the bridge, the speaker describes his reaction to meeting Miss Jones in a way that breaks romantic attraction down to a series of physical and mental sensations: (\u2018And all at once I lost my breath \/ and all at once was scared to death \/ and all at once I owned the earth and sky.\u2019)\u00a0 It is typical of Rodgers and Hart\u2019s gift for coordinating music and lyrics that this list of three symptoms, which move from mild physical distress to cosmic delusion, is accompanied by a modulation through three keys, Bb major, Gb major and D major, which are increasingly distant from the opening key of F major.\u00a0 \u00a0(For another example of ingenious coordination of music and lyrics involving a similar progression, see the verse to the Rodgers and Hart tune \u2018Glad To Be Unhappy\u2019. One fine vocal version is this 1987 rendition by Carmen McRae<\/a>.)\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This bridge is sometimes mentioned as a possible inspiration for the chord progression of John Coltrane\u2019s \u2018Giant Steps\u2019.\u00a0 Indeed, if one takes the chords from the first five bars of the bridge and removes the minor seventh chords – i.e. the Abm7 and Em7 chords – the remaining chords are the iconic first five chords of \u2018Giant Steps\u2019, just down a half step from the original key.\u00a0 (This less chord-laden progression is the way the bridge appears in the original sheet music and in versions by swing era players such as the one by Art Tatum and Ben Webster<\/a>; the minor seventh chords were added by bop-influenced jazz players in versions such as the ones discussed below.)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In keeping with the song\u2019s indirect approach to storytelling, the lyrics to the last eight bars imply that the speaker and Miss Jones strike up an ongoing relationship (\u2018we\u2019ll keep on meeting till we die \/ Miss Jones and I\u2019).  As the song opens with a verse including a line that cryptically references marriage (\u2018the nearest moment that we marry is too late\u2019), it seems that the speaker could mean he and Miss Jones get married, but there is room for multiple interpretations.   (In the musical for which Rodgers and Hart originally wrote the song, I\u2019d Rather Be Right, <\/em>the couple referenced in the song do eventually get married, but that outcome is still uncertain at the point in the plot when the song is sung.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The title of \u2018The Missing Voice\u2019 alludes to the fact that although we hear in the original lyrics from the protagonist and the unnamed introducer, Miss Jones herself never speaks.  My melodic line, in keeping with bop tradition, is more active and chromatic than the original melody from which it borrows its chord progression. I imagine the lyrics to \u2018The Missing Voice\u2019 might be a more verbose counterpoint to the original melody\u2019s long notes, something like Ethel Merman\u2019s counterpoint to Donald O\u2019Connor\u2019s melody in Irving Berlin\u2019s You\u2019re Just In Love<\/a>, or the bride\u2019s anxious chatter in response to the clueless groom\u2019s long notes in Stephen Sondheim\u2019s Not Getting Married<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stan Getz\u2019s version of Have You Met Miss Jones from 1953 is one of the earlier versions to feature a medium swing tempo.\u00a0 This version also features Bob Brookmeyer on valve trombone and John Williams on piano (not the film composer, although he did spend time as a jazz player as well.)\u00a0 It is worth noting that this version was recorded in 1953, the same year as Tatum and Webster\u2019s version.\u00a0 With the way that jazz history is often summarized as a progression of cleanly separated eras, it can be easy to miss that while the stylistic differences between swing era players like Tatum and bop-influenced players Getz originated in different eras, they were sometimes practiced concurrently as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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