Billy Strayhorn’s “Take The A Train” was the signature song of the Duke Ellington Orchestra and remains a hugely popular jazz standard. Musicians often notice that Antonio Carlos Jobim’s classic “The Girl from Ipanema” has the same chord changes. Their bridges (middle sections) are different, but if you play the two songs in the same key, the “A” sections, which account for three quarters of each song, follow almost exactly the same sequence of chords.

These two songs are far from alone. Strayhorn’s 1939 “Take The A Train” actually took its A section chords from the 1930 standard “Exactly Like You” by Jimmy McHugh. And Jobim penned the Brazilian classic “So Danco Samba” in 1962, the same year as “The Girl From Ipanema,” using the same A section chords.

A Look at the “A Train” Chord Changes

Here are the chords of the A section, slightly simplified:

Let’s look at them two bars at a time:

If you look at “Exactly Like You”, “The Girl From Ipanema” and “So Danco Samba,” and transpose each into the key of C, you see the same chord changes. Where the chord changes differ slightly, as they do in some versions of the songs, we see that they still function in exactly the same way. (For instance, “Exactly Like You” often uses simply G7 for bars 5-6, instead of the functionally equivalent Dm7-G7.)

Listen

Have a listen to the songs and see if you can recognize the chord changes they share in common:

• Take the A Train
• Exactly Like You
• Girl From Ipanema
• So Danco Samba
• The Jersey Bounce
• Maxwell’s Silver Hammer (chorus)

“A Train” in Minor: “Bernie’s Tune”

These aren’t the only songs written of the “A Train” chord changes. There are others that stick very close to the changes, such as Dexter Gordon’s “Dextivity.” And still others use the progression in a more abstract and interesting way…

Look at Bernie Miller’s 1952 song, “Bernie’s Tune.” (Here’s a recording by Gerry Mulligan, who made the song famous.) The tune is D minor, but if we write it in C minor instead, for comparison to “A Train,” we see a very close chord-by-chord parallel to the “A Train” progression:

Again, let’s look at the progression two bars at a time:

In short, the A section of “Bernie’s Tune” is simply the A section of “A Train” in minor, with each chord darkened accordingly.

Listen to the two sets of chord changes and see if you can hear the similarity:

Like the “A Train” changes themselves, the “Bernie’s Tune” variation is used in other songs as well. For instance, Gerry Mulligan’s own “Idol Gossip”. Or Ralph Bowen’s burning “ Soul Proprietor ” off the CD of the same name. (“Soul Proprietor” doesn’t even bother to include a bridge; the entire form is the 8-bar A section!) The first eight bars of Tom Jobim’s “Chega de Saudade” (“No More Blues”) are a paraphrase of the same changes.

Other Uses

The trick of going from the tonic (C) to the V7/V (D7) and then returning to the tonic by way of a ii-V sequence (Dm7-G7) is actually used in countless standards. “Take the A Train” and the other songs we’ve discussed are unique in that they make an entire A section out of the trick. But if you listen to the following songs… or look at their changes… you’ll notice the same trick. See if you can spot where:

• All of Me
• Cherokee
• Confirmation
• East of the Sun
• I Can’t Give You Anything But Love
• I’m Getting Sentimental Over You
• If I Were a Bell
• In a Mellow Tone
• Indiana / Donna Lee
• Just Friends
• Mood Indigo
• On the Sunny Side of the Street
• Our Love is Here To Stay
• Recado Bossa Nova
• There Will Never Be Another You

These are just a few examples. If you keep your ears & eyes peeled, you’ll find the trick used all over!

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