Analyzing the music of Steely Dan

Introduction: Steely Who?

Since 1972, the songwriting duo consisting of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker—the two had met over their shared interests in jazz and Beat literature as undergraduates at Bard College—has formed the core of the rock band Steely Dan.[1] Since their early days pitching their compositions to publishers, the group has gone on to great commercial success since their first commercial release, Can’t Buy a Thrill, in 1972.

The theoretical literature on Steely Dan is limited: there is Walter Everett’s lead article in Music Theory Spectrum dealing with aspects of Steely Dan’s harmonic writing and an unpublished conference talk manuscript on Steely Dan’s use of so-called slash chords.[2] Everett treats as the main areas the following four harmonic topics—extended and inflected chords; jazz-based and rock-based chord substitutions; transient modulations; chords as agents of voice leading rather than harmonic function while making the occasional remark on the group’s lyrics. Aspects of jazz harmony do indeed form an important component of Steely Dan’s compositional approach and contributes greatly to their sound.[3] I will provide commentary on Everett’s categories as well as a critique of his article and offer my own observations on their use of jazz elements in their songs as part of my introduction and will of course highlight additional specific instances in the close readings that will be my primary occupation.

Steely Dan’s music offers many rewarding opportunities to explore a great deal of compositional and analytical terrain, some of which is partially mapped out in the literature and others—particularly the affinity of slash chords with evidence of keyboard-based thinking in Rameau’s early theoretical writing (see below)—yet to be explored to much extent. In addition to a refracted jazz harmonic language, this study provides a platform to use close readings as an opportunity for exploring further harmonic, formal and expressive considerations in a rich and idiosyncratic corpus of music. But the converse is also true. That is, examining these musical factors in Steely Dan’s music provides an opportunity for close readings; theoretical and analytical writing on popular music remains a fairly recent enterprise and there is room in the discourse amidst much drive-by treatment of songs in pursuit of a one theoretical construct or the other for more extended and eclectic analytical work. I seek to contribute engaging analyses of this kind to abet other projects in popular music theory and analysis, regardless of emphasis.

The introduction, in addition to providing biographical information and remarks on the migration of jazz harmony into their style, shall also introduce the reader to another important aspect of their style, namely their dark and occasionally recondite lyrics, which have traditionally been a main source of criticism—that their writing is too esoteric and insider.[4] Thus my introduction will provide the reader with a biographical overview, commentary on Everett’s study of Steely Dan’s harmony with additional remarks on their appropriation of jazz harmony as well as a short survey of their representative lyrics and subject matter.

The Early Demo Tapes

By 1969, the duo of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were living in New York City—the former in Brooklyn, the latter Queens—and had designs on becoming professional songwriters as part of a band they were also hoping to form. [5] Their method of infiltrating the music industry was modest; they would attempt to enter directly the offices of music publishers whose backing they sought. They would occasionally secure an audience, though were unable to gain any traction until they met with Kenny Vance, an employee of JATA Enterprises, the publishing company started by Jay and the Americans, a properly corny 60s rock outfit, by then having already declined greatly in popularity. Their compositions were met with provisional approval and the two were granted access to a two-track recording studio on the 7^th floor of the Brill Building in Midtown, Manhattan where they laid down a number of demo tracks, a number of which have subsequently been made available commercially.[6]

The availability of their early recordings permits the analyst an opportunity to conduct something akin to sketch study, as a number of these tracks were to appear later on their albums. Song songs such as “Charlie Freak” and “Parker’s Band” are harmonically, melodically and formally rather close to their subsequent official releases (obviously recording resources played a significant role in transforming the songs from idea to album cut), although one composition, “Caves of Altamira,” underwent substantial revisions before being released on 1976’s Royal Scam.

I have included the transcriptions (Examples 1-2) to indicate the thoroughgoingness of the revisions. Harmony and rhythm in particular were completely worked over, and the “tricks” in the original (the material of the 2/4, 3/4 and 6/8 bars, for instance) are richly elaborated with polyrhythmic parallel major seventh triads in the chorus of the Scam version; numerous chord progressions are also reworked and a solo section—a subtly altered variation on the chorus—was also added. The goal for this portion of this study is to provide commentary and analyses of early works, focusing on those that made it into their official discography; “Caves” would be a particular focal point due to its richness, the scope of its departure from the demo version and the degree to which it exemplifies many of the newer stylistic elements that would emerge and help typify their sound.

Slash Chords

A common feature of many Steely Dan songs including some of their most well- known (e.g. “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number,” “Aja,”) is the use of so-called slash chords, also referred to as polychords, but at any rate so named for the notational convention that denotes such a chord: for instance, a chord voiced bottom-to-top D-G-C-E would be referred to as C/D, read “C over D,” indicating that a C triad is to be played over a bass note D.[7] It is a quite practical and tactile way of conceiving of chords, one that has roots, so to speak, in thorough-bass practice and as well as Jean-Philippe Rameau; the relationship of this two-handed way of handling chords to Rameau’s theory of supposition, has, in my view, been underemphasized.[8]

Everett offers the following definition when he introduces the topic: “When ninth and eleventh chords are voiced with their thirds and fifths deemphasized, a bop-related polychord effect takes place.”[9] Leaving aside the elusiveness of what a “bop-related polychord effect” is, this definition, with its stress on rootedness,[10] is indeed suggestive of one type of slash chord found in Steely Dan—the kind in which the chord has a clear harmonic function (usually a dominant) with the upper structure not “in competition” with that bass—I intend to broaden the spectrum of slash chords to encompass how they are used compositionally and show some of their idiomatic roles in the songs of Steely Dan, roles which are not always most profitably cast as a rooted entities with certain intervals avoided or deemphasized.[11]

Paul Carter’s conference paper, on the other hand, offers a view of slash chords that is in some ways more textural than harmonic; his discussion of slash chords relies more on issues of register and spacing than it does about harmonic function:

So although the upper tier acts as the harmonic extension to a primary chord built upon the bass note, Steely Dan’s technique of cordoning off this upper tier enables it to be heard as harmonically distinct, creating two strata of music: working at once in consort, yet independently as well.[12]

His treatment goes on to place greater emphasis on the relative motion between the upper and lower strata of the texture than it does on whether or not these chords contain thirds, in contrast to Everett’s more harmonically-driven account. Carter also allows ordinary 7^th chords into the system—not unlike some figured bass manuals—since membership in the class of slash chords requires only a triadic upper structure and having that portion of the sonority be displaced by more than an octave from the lower portion. Carter encounters problems, as many of his transcriptions/reductions are at times faulty and do not reflect what I hear as the sounding surface, and also in relying on voice-leading connections that a song’s instrumentation and motivic arrangement do not necessarily bear out; in these cases it at best should be argued rather than declared.[13] Although there are issues with Carter’s approach, it is suggestive in creating two streams in which the music proceeds—an approach that more greatly accommodates how these sonorities operate in Steely Dan—rather than Everett’s which at every turn is concerned with assigning a harmonic function per se.[14]

I propose five non-mutually exclusive categories into which most uses of these chords fall. The categories will serve to frame individual examples and attendant theoretical issues they call forth (e.g. sequences) as well as the more extended analyses. The following is a list of categories with explanations of what type of compositional deployment of slash chords are implicated.

1. Fauxbourdon

Typical of this category are triadic upper structures that move in parallel motion; furthermore, texture and harmonic coloring are features of fauxbourdon slash chords, but not necessarily a change in harmony. Two familiar examples of this phenomenon would be the chorus of “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number” (Example 3), in whose chorus triads from the tonic natural minor scale adorns C major harmony. Another familiar example is the chorus from “Aja” (Example 4), in which the same harmonies are similarly adorned, although the ultimate harmonic goal of this chorus (Bmaj9) is much different from “Rikki.” Note also that both these examples also involve parallel motion with the vocal line.[15]

2. Composing out a rogue riff

The term “rogue riff” was coined by Christopher Doll and refers to “an up-down gesture that composes out a major-minor seventh chords fifth and seventh.”[16] It is familiar from stock boogie woogie bass lines to the Rolling Stones’s “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” to the theme from Sesame Street. As a musical meme, it is identifiable in numerous guises and can be horizontalized, as in the classic boogie woogie bassline, or harmonized in a variety of ways.

Slash chords are one method by which Steely Dan play with the space between the fifth and lowered seventh of a given harmony. One example arises in “Josie” (Example 5). In measure 11 of the verse, the funky Emin7 groove gives way to a bluesy A7 chord. The A7 chord is extended through measure 12 by means of an interesting arrangement of slash chords, and marks one of several slash chord interventions in this song. In measure 12, the melodic strand G-F#-E is harmonized by an unusual sequence leading to a return to Emin7: in order, the progression within these two measures proceeds A7 | G/C, D/G, C/F |.[17] The stock nature of the melodic traversal of rogue riff space, the sparkle of the modal mixture (C-natural and F-natural) and the emphasis on major sevenths creates an effect that at once conveys A7-ness and a slick sidestepping of lengthy root durations, which are more typical of the non-slash chord aspects of the verse.

3. Slashy sequences

There are many instances of sequences in Steely Dan, though many make a special point of incorporating slash chords. Two such songs are “Pretzel Logic” (explored at length at the end of this document) and “Josie.” Consider two instances from the latter (Examples 6-7), the first coming at the end of the introduction and exhibiting a 5-6 contrapuntal pattern with the last chord as a spoiler, both rhetorically and contrapuntally as well as harmonically; the second is an interjection into an otherwise stationary Emin7 environment of the opening of the verse, whose relationship to traditional tonal sequences is a good deal more tenuous.

4. Non-sequential progressions

This more general category encompasses a broad range of progressions including non-sequential progressions of only slash chords or progressions that include more traditional harmonies interleaved with slash chords. An example of an exclusively slashy progression comes again in the verse of “Josie,” whereas a mixed progression appears in the introduction of “Dr. Wu” (Examples 8-9).

5. Sussy dominants

This last category of slash chords most closely resembles Everett’s description of them as “ninth and eleventh chords … voice[d] with their thirds and fifths deemphasized.”[18] Their role here is to convey a clear harmonic function—almost always dominant—but in a formation in which the unresolved character of their upper intervals is intrinsic to that particular expression of a harmonic function. Examples of sussy dominants occur in “Chain Lightning” (Example 10), where an expected blues change to IV is instead expressed as a move to D/C (a slashy III chord), which, through an unusual voice-exchange, prepares a sussy V11 or C/D chord that serves to tonicize a slashy VII.[19] Another example can be found in the final dominant of the chorus of “Peg” (Example 11), which provides a sussy alternative to the jazz dominants that had come before and leads back to the considerably less-jazzy verse.

Steely Dan and the 12-bar Blues

The 12-bar blues has been a staple of rock composition since its origin; indeed, one of the earliest rock n’ roll hits—Bill Haley and His Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” (1954)—was fashioned after such a blues. The form for the 12-bar blues that has become standard in the theoretical literature possesses the following harmonic and metric properties:

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
I	I	I	I	IV	IV	I	I	V	(IV)	I	I

 

The top row simply indicates measure numbers and the Roman numerals below indicate harmonies; dominant sevenths are typically added to every harmony.[20] The parentheses in the tenth bar indicate that IV is a common harmony at this point.[21]

Blues performances evince a variety of progressions, and of course even blues artists proper never restricted themselves to 12 bars, nor did they in every case fill those bars with the same harmonic material; those regarded as traditional blues artists availed themselves of a variety of harmonic manipulations from “(We’re Gonna) Rock around the Clock” to Albert King’s “I’ll Play the Blues for You.”

From the Beatles to the Boss, rock composers have for years made use of the 12-bar blues, either in the basic form described above or have treated it as an opportunity for troping.[22] John Covach notes that the blues is not a form;[23] it is, in my view, rather, and in accordance with that of Covach, an organizing principle that can be utilized either through repetition of itself or alternation with other material to shape a song’s form. The 12-bar blues helps shape a number of classic and newer Steely Dan songs and represents one of their signature areas of harmonic and songwriting innovation. Like other artists—perhaps most notably the Beatles—the 12-bar blues can be observed on various formal levels, sometimes encompassing the verse alone, sometimes the verse and the chorus together, sometimes the A of a compound or simple AABA form.[24] Other times, repetition of the blues scheme comprises the entire song.

The harmonic plan of the 12-bar blues, on the other hand, often undergoes heavy alteration, sometimes to the point of being difficult to recognize. The substance of my work on this area will be in exploring, through close readings, the compositional and analytical results of these efforts.

The following list classifies Steely Dan’s songs based on the 12-bar blues, highlighting the ways in which they incorporate alterations of the 12-bar blues both in terms of formal organization - that is, as it helps contribute to the formal sections of a song; once we turn to the analyses, we will consider the harmonic substitutions, which tend to be more extensive than their rock colleagues and at the same time, while at times reminiscent of jazz blues substitutions do not, on the whole, resemble them closely.[25]

I have classified the songs into three simple categories. The first, “strophic,” refers to songs for which the form consists largely or entirely of successive iterations of some modified 12-bar pattern. The category “Verse/Chorus” refers to songs with no full contrasting sections other than verse and chorus in which the 12-bar blues serves as either the verse (having a separate chorus) or where some portion of the 12-bars serves as the basis for the chorus as well. The category “AABA” refers to songs having a large-scale contrasting section followed by a return to the initial material. This category does not specify the distribution of the 12-bars between the verse and chorus, and some songs in this category, such as “Daddy Don’t Live in that New York City No More” and “The Last Mall” do not even have choruses. So, to this extent “AABA” can interact with “Verse/Chorus.” Put another way, it does not distinguish between simple and compound AABA form.

Strophic

“Chain Lightning” (Katy Lied)

“Bodhisattva” (Countdown to Ecstasy)

“What I Do (Donald Fagen, Morph the Cat)[26]

“Black Friday (Katy Lied)

“Ruby Baby” (The Nightfly)[27]

“Security Joan” (Morph the Cat)

 

Verse/Chorus

“Peg” (Aja)

“Pretzel Logic” (Pretzel Logic)

“Trans-Island Skyway” (Kamakiriad)

“Countermoon” (Kamakiriad)

 

AABA

“The Last Mall” (Everything Must Go)

“What a Shame About Me (Two Against Nature)

“Godwhacker” (Everything Must Go)

“Cousin Dupree” (Two Against Nature)

“Lunch With Gina (Everything Must Go)

“One the Dunes” (Donald Fagen, Kamakiriad)

“Daddy Don’t Live in that New York City No More” (Katy Lied)

“What I Do” (Morph the Cat)

Much more detailed treatment of the particularities of the songs populating these categories will come in the form of extended analyses, in which harmony, text-music relations and other analytical issues will be dealt with. The following is a sample analysis of 1974’s “Pretzel Logic.” If the analyses don’t seem to reflect what are the most significant of the prevailing themes in the theoretical literature that has dealt with modifications to basic forms of the 12-bar blues—namely hierarchy, either from a linguistic perspective or a functional or Schenkerian, which is to say tonal, perspective—it is because I have not always found the criteria for determining a tonal hierarchy germane to my goals, which, on the whole, are ultimately concerned with characterization and conveying personal interpretations using technical categories freely and flexibly.[28]

 The title track from the 1974 album Pretzel Logic is an early composition that exhibits Steely Dan’s fondness for altering the 12-bar blues.[29] According to the composers in a 1974 interview in New Music Express, the lyrics, which I have attached, deal with time travel. According to Fagen and Becker:

When it says, “I stepped up on the platform / The man gave me the news,” we conceived the platform as a teleportation device. And there are other key lines like “I’ve never met Napoleon but I plan to find the time […]” What we're actually saying is I plan to find the time in that he lived in.[30]

A reference to “tour[ing] the Southland in a traveling minstrel show” is perhaps a sarcastic reflection on Becker and Fagen’s famous distaste for touring life viewed through their own New York parochialism. Solipsistic and obscure, the lyrics will not feature prominently in the following, which will largely be concerned with form and harmony.[31]

The overall form, a 19-bar blues that undergoes several repetitions, at once does and does not parse like a typical blues within each iteration; on the one hand, mm. 1-8 exhibit the textual arrangement of a typical blues: repeat a line on the I chord, do it again on the succeeding IV and I chords. With this as a starting point, the remainder of the form coincides with the traditional AAB format by offering us contrasting lyrical content for the concluding section, albeit with four extra lines. On the other hand, the wash of new harmonies, multi-tracked vocals and repeated lines “Those days are gone forever / over a long time ago” all lean toward this section’s behaving like a chorus, specifically what Doll calls a “break-out chorus.” So the form is itself adjusted to accommodate both an overarching AAB blues while being simultaneously suggestive of verse/chorus form and is therefore of the Strophic and AABA types listed above.

Harmonically, “Pretzel Logic” behaves in fairly typical fashion, at least initially (Example 11): an eight-bar introduction gives way eight measures of slow A minor blues shuffle that proceed according to the model. Additional window dressing comes in measure 2 from the embellishing F major7, a VI chord, rather than the more familiar IV chord, and the parallel triads in the Wurlitzer keyboard and later in the horns, all of which invoke slash chords of the Fauxbourdon and Rogue Riff type. The parallel triads—B minor slipping into C major, completing the tonic Amin7 chord—are a salient detail of the song whose meaning deepens when considering the chorus, especially when the guitar emphasizes the D-E voice-leading strand beginning in the fifth measure of the introduction. We will return to this shortly.

In measure 9, at the onset of the chorus, a more significant departure takes place, where a peculiar descending fifths sequence exhibiting Steely Dan’s signature slash lasting two measures, which is itself repeated, usurps the place of the expected dominant harmony. Despite the jettisoning of the standard blues move at this point, vestigial traces of the abandoned model persist when borne in mind, however, through this sequential passage. For one thing, the bass begins the sequence on scale-degree 5, E, and because descending fifth sequences descend by second every alternate chord, the sequence produces an arrival of scale-degree 4, D, on the succeeding downbeat, and this much resembles the typical V-IV move at this point in the progression.

But the downward step from V to IV is heavily mediated by additional material. In an effort to hold onto the line of thought that traces the V-IV motion, once notices how both the D and E major triads lying above the bass in measure 9 are typical components that might be bearers of dominantness in a rock context; E major, the dominant triad itself, is simple enough, but the D major chord over E also produces a familiar sussy dominant chord with seventh, fourth and ninth—Esus or E11 as it is sometimes called. In fact, there is even a well-known precedent for juxtaposing these particular harmonies over the dominant scale degree—The Beatles’ “The Word” from Rubber Soul does just this in its D major blues (Example 12). Here in m. 9, G and A triads appear above scale-degree 5, A, with the same occurring over scale-degree 4, G, in the following measure. The overall V-IV drive is unmistakable, but these harmonies are given a little extra flair from their ornaments.

Steely Dan adds a further wrinkle by interpolating a new bass note, A, which provides a striking harmonization for the E major triad above. One can also notice how the sequence itself does not even behave fully sequentially, which is to say that the triads above the bass do not themselves progress by fifths in the manner of the bass notes; they ascend by second and then, descending a major third across the barline, reset to match the onset of the previous bar.[32]

The chorus also picks up a thread from the parallel triads that appeared above the initial A minor, although the rhythm has been slightly altered: whereas in the introduction and verse the first upper triad both begins and advances into the second on and within the second beat, here the first chord begins at the beginning of the bar and slips into the second chord on the same second (swung) part of the second beat.

Attending the periodicities of this passage, then, has several effects: hearing a V-IV descent through the sequence pushes the two upper triads together in a close rapport, expressing two aspects of chord formation above the initial bass note of the measure, one “sussy,” the other purely triadic, with the bass A acting as an interloper; focusing on the D major chord leading deliberately into the E triad as analogous of the B minor and C major triads above A in the opening is an important component in arriving at this hearing. The idea here is of one jazzy upper structure “snapping into” a more normal chord above the bass. I believe, too, that hearing the bass note A in this way—as not quite belonging, as usurping the moment where V should be sounding—and its counterpart G in measures 10 and 12, contributes to their propensity to sparkle in relation to the comparatively drab and plodding initial 8 measures of the form.[33] The unheralded major mode version of the tonic A minor contributes to this. The slash chord sparkle is of course one of the cornerstones Steely Dan’s writing.

Alternatively, this hearing has the capacity to break down—and with it a more vivid image of the second half of this form as the remainder of a blues—once we focus our attention on the root-to-root motions, which are now happening twice per bar rather than once or even less frequently; descending fifths throw the weight to the sparkling second half of the bar, an effect emphasized by the coincidence of the second chords of each measure with the rhyming portion of the line, and, especially the first time, Donald Fagen’s distinctive handling of the vowels in “laugh” and “phonograph.”

The sequence begins a third time in measure 13, but each time as Fagen sings “those days are gone forever,” so the sequence comes to an end, and the texture thins. The upper C major chord of measures 10 and 12 is awarded its own root on the downbeat of measure 14, which leads into the familiar bVI-bVII tonic preparation, the latter chord of which Christopher Doll has recently and memorably dubbed the “rouge dominant.”[34] Thus “Pretzel Logic” provides listeners with variety of effects if we make the move of acknowledging it as a blues.[35]

Supplemental Analysis (“What a Shame About Me”)

2000’s Two Against Nature marked the return of Becker and Fagen as a songwriting duo and was the first album released under the Steely Dan name since 1980’s Gaucho. Although there is more clean Stratocaster work here and the sound at times hovers closer still to smooth jazz, the songwriting remains familiar while the roster of sordid protagonists and tawdry love affairs all make their return.

“What a Shame About Me,” whose lyrics are attached, deals with an impromptu meeting between two old college friends that takes place whilst the protagonist, whose subject position the narrative assumes, is performing menial tasks at his job at New York’s Strand bookstore. The narrator hears testimony from his old NYU friend, Franny[36], that everyone from the old gang has gone on to success in Hollywood or the software business while he has wasted away on the heels of failed attempts at writing a novel and time spent in drug rehabilitation. It concludes as Franny propositions the protagonist, although he ultimately demurs, responding, “I said babe you look delicious but you’re standing very close / but like this is lower Broadway and you’re talking to a ghost / Take a good look it’s easy to see / What a Shame About Me.”

A few things are probably clear even after a quick listening: one is that this tune gets going, like Pretzel Logic, with a tonic introduction followed by material that strongly invokes the opening eight measures of a standard 12-bar blues; in this case, the proportions happen to be doubled, with twice the amount of measures devoted to the initial I-IV-I. Second, and unlike Pretzel Logic, this song is very cleanly divided between its verse and its chorus, with the latter similarly occupying what would have been the space of measures 9-12 of a blues.[37]

Some of what is striking, though, is quite how far measures 17ff. stray from a standard blues. The text certainly makes this a felicitous compositional choice; each verse describes the stories and actions of the protagonist’s old friends, while each chorus narrates aspects of his own personal decay. But there is more at work here than the various states of health of the characters and the musical form being employed. By focusing on measures 17ff. as a bit of 12-bar blues, we are able to further characterize the state of the Strand worker by hearing the chorus as a discourse and musical dialect (12-bar blues) that, while not entirely lost, is subtly imitated and emulated.

What does hearing this passage as a blues blown off its course entail? We can begin to answer this by allowing the horizon of expectations that attend this portion of the form to spin our hearing. If we want to hear it as lost—or nearly so—it will once again be important keep in mind what is being lost while trying not to miss what is actually there.

One thing becomes obvious right away: there is no A major, or V, chord in the chorus or anywhere else in the entire song for that matter. Nor is there any IV chord either. Gone, too, is the breezy, effortless melodic phrasing of the verse, sweetened with major mode F#s and B-naturals, along with the its deliberately relaxed and spacious harmonic rhythm, all of which help portray, in this interpretation, the enviable position of the protagonist’s friends’ success in his eyes. Instead, the passage beginning in measure 17 begins to stammer, incorporating recitative-like, declamatory melodic writing, punctuated by syncopated hits in the rhythm section rather than the easy drive of the verse. The phrasing forms strong 2+2 groupings, in contrast to the verse’s more expansive groupings.

B-flat major, or bVI of D major, is the closest the chorus ever comes to settling on a harmonic area, and even this is the result of a twisted path through two successive and forced II-Vs, beginning in measure 17, the first of which actually begins on a major 7^th chord, followed by a snarly descent through D, Db and B7, the familiar tri-tone substitute. This unusual twist on common jazz parlance is paired with pitch material drawn from the D blues scale, which the vocal line traverses with only slight regard for its harmonic surroundings.[38] Thus our protagonist’s reflections on himself are portrayed in his own musical idiolect in contrast to the music which accompanies his reporting on his friends—a confused, too-hip, hazy jazz replaces a more straightforward rock blues whilst the minor blues scale replaces major modes. He therefore identifies and connects with his more successful friend through their mutual invocations of contrasting aspects of D scales, but he is not ultimately on equal terms with her, musically or personally.

Returning to measure 21, after so much noodling and dithering, the melody touches on scale-degree 5, followed by scale-degree 4 on the downbeat of measure 22, our clearest reference to any of the standard blues moves at this point in the form, although it is plainly harmonized by chords other than V or IV and correspondingly shrouded. This motion, however, receives emphasis by marking the beginning of the only deliberately tonic-angled descent of the entire chorus and the inclusion of the bluesy flatted-fifth scale degree, Ab, which makes the passing of A to G across the bar line more salient. The melody goes on to close on the note D, but Bb major continues to be asserted rather than D major or minor.

The rhythm of the accompaniment also changes in measure 22; based on the two-bar rhythmic pattern going back to measure 17, we would have expected the rhythm in measure 22 to match that of measure 18, dotted-quarter with a half plus an eighth. Instead, the unusual Db/E chord appears on beat 2, an obtrusive presence in the accompaniment. It has the effect of pulling the rug out from underneath a melody that, after 2 2-measure phrases of equivocating and dithering, has finally begun to assert itself as something more committed and purposeful, namely a directed descent from scale-degree 5 to 4 with a concluding, bluesy figure on the tonic scale-degree. The premature arrival of the Db/E, based on the preceding rhythmic pattern of the accompaniment, coupled with its peculiar swampiness, contributes to the sense of deflation. All of which leaves us with a picture of a Strand employee whose promise in the world has withered, whose tragedy is made all the more vivid by his inability to stay hip, though he tries desperately, to the musical voice of his old Jane Street flame.

Notes