Sister-Lee (2013)
Genre: Modal Jazz
For the 2013 Gift of Jazz composition class, we analyzed the song “Sister Cheryl,” written by the young percussion phenom Tony Williams, who had his great breakout at age 17 with Miles Davis’s “Second Great Quintet” alongside Miles, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter. Our instructor, Marc Sabatella, quipped that this is arguably the best tune ever written by a drummer and I would concur. The song was made popular by another young jazz prodigy, Wynton Marsalis. I encourage readers to check out both Williams’s and Marsalis’s versions. They are both great!
Besides its infectious rhythm and bass line, what makes the “A” section of “Sister Cheryl” so unique is that Williams created a chord progression that didn’t follow traditional patterns of functional harmonic resolution. Rather it stayed in one mode (it this case, B Mixolydian) for the duration of its 10 measures. The melody fits beautifully over these chord changes.
For my original piece, I intentionally emulated this compositional technique by creating an “A” section chord progression entirely in C Mixolydian and a “B” section entirely in Db Lydian. Because my piece was “Sister Cheryl”-like, you might say it is sister-ly (pun intended).
When I took the class and wrote the tune, my younger sister, Lee, was currently waging a courageous fight against an aggressive form of breast cancer. Even though she was not a big jazz fan herself (she leaned more towards country and classic rock), it felt right to dedicate the tune to her as “Sister-Lee.” I wrote a melody that I felt reflected both her strength and beauty. As loyal readers of this blog know, we lost Lee in 2017 and her last four years of life were painful and difficult. “Sister-Lee” represents a portrait of her in better times.
This live recording from Dazzle in Denver on March 19, 2013 features Marc Sabatella (piano), Tim Libby (trumpet), Jeff Miguel (sax), Ian Hutchison (bass) and Alejandro Castaño (drums).
The chord progression for“Sister Cheryl” is popular for improvising over and the musicians at Dazzle reported that they enjoyed playing over these changes as well. I hope listeners will also find it accessible.