Introduction
There are probably a couple thousand Jazz Standards. So we quickly encounter the paradox of choice: The more choice we have the harder it is to make a choice. So then, what Standard should you learn? The short answer is that you should learn whatever Standard you enjoy listening to. The longer answer is that you should try get a bigger bang for your buck and learn some contrafacts.
Contrafacts
A contrafact is a song that uses a new melody over an already existing chord progression. They exist because of quirk in US copyright law. You can copyright lyrics and the melody, but you can’t copyright titles and the chord progression. This allows you to steal a chord progression from another song and create your own melody over it. This idea has been especially important to the development of Jazz – especially Bebop. This little quirk allowed Jazz musicians, record studios, and radio stations to avoid paying royalties to composers. The most famous contrafact is Rhythm Changes, which is based on the chord progression of I Got Rhythm. So why not get 10 for the price of one? By learning just a couple chord progressions, you’ll actually have memorised progressions to lots of different tunes.
Some of the key contrafacts are:
| Original | Contrafact |
|---|---|
| I Got Rhythm | Anthropology ~ Parker |
| Moose the Mooche ~ Parker | |
| Cotton Tail ~ Ellington | |
| Daphne ~ Reinhardt | |
| Don’t be That Way ~ Goodman | |
| Lester Leaps In ~ Young | |
| Oleo ~ Rollins | |
| Rhythm-A-Ning ~ Monk | |
| The Eternal Triangle ~ Stitt | |
| All the Things You Are | Ablution ~ Tristano |
| All The Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother ~ Mingus | |
| Bird of Paradise ~ Parker | |
| Boston Bernie ~ Gordon | |
| I Want More ~ Gordon | |
| Jahbero ~ Dameron | |
| Prince Albert ~ Dorham | |
| Back Home Again in Indiana | Ice Freezes Red ~ Navarro |
| Ju-Ju ~ Tristano | |
| Lex ~ Byrd | |
| Donna Lee ~ Parker | |
| Cherokee Apache Dance ~ George Coleman | |
| The Injuns ~ Byrd | |
| Ko-Ko ~ Parker | |
| Warmin Up a Riff ~ Parker | |
| Confirmation | 26-2 ~ Coltrane |
| Denial ~ Davis | |
| Doujie ~ Montgomery | |
| Juicy Lucy ~ Silver | |
| Meteor ~ Farlow | |
| Striver's Row ~ Rollins | |
| Weeja ~ Elmo Hope | |
| What Is This Thing Called Love? | Barry's Bop ~ Navarro |
| Hot House ~ Dameron | |
| Subconscious Lee ~ Konitz | |
| Wham Bam Thank You Ma'am ~ Mingus | |
| What Love? ~ Mingus | |
| Stompin' at the Savoy | The Kangaroo ~ Les Paul |
| Relaxin' With Lee ~ Parker | |
| Sweet Georgia Brown | Bright Mississippi ~ Monk |
| Dig ~ Davis | |
| Sweet Clifford ~ Brown | |
| Teapot ~ J. J. Johnson | |
| Just You, Just Me | Mad Be Bop ~ J. J. Johnson |
| Spotlite ~ Coleman Hawkins | |
| Evidence ~ Monk | |
| Lover, Come Back to Me | Bean and the Boys ~ Hawkins |
| Bird Gets the Worm ~ Parker | |
| Quicksilver ~ Silver | |
| Oh, Lady Be Good! | Dewey Square ~ Parker |
| Rifftide ~ Hawkins | |
| Fats Blows ~ Navarro | |
| Hackensack ~ Monk | |
| Out of Nowhere | Casbah ~ Dameron |
| Jayne ~ Ornette Coleman | |
| Nostalgia ~ Navarro | |
| 317 East 32nd Street ~ Tristano | |
| How High the Moon | Lennie-Bird ~ Tristano |
| Ornithology ~ Parker | |
| And countless others… | |
But do keep in mind that the chord progressions of contrafacts, while based on other songs, may have been reharmonized – so they won’t look 100% the same. But they are, nonetheless, based off the original song so it’s still worth learning the original chord progressions.