It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)

You often hear someone say, "That song sounds so bluesy!" What does "bluesy" mean?

Take the standard major musical scale, DO-RE-MI-FA-SOL-LA-TI-DO, and change the starting note from DO to LA, and you get the standard minor musical scale, LA-TI-DO-RE-MI-FA-SOL-LA.

Now, in that minor scale, sing or play MI and SOL a little "too low" in pitch. In other words, MI becomes "MIb" (where "b" is the "flat sign"). SOL becomes "SOLb."

Our scale is now LA-TI-DO-RE-MIb-FA-SOLb-LA. Now, make the second note, TI, silent; it's not going to be needed in this song. What you then have — LA-___-DO-RE-MIb-FA-SOLb-LA — is called a "minor hexatonic blues scale." ("Hexatonic" means "six-note." In counting the number of notes, we don't count the final note in the sequence, which in this scale sequence is the second LA. The second LA represents the "same note" as the first LA; it's just one octave higher.)

Now, let's get real loosey-goosey and decide that sometimes we're going to use MI and sometimes MIb; sometimes SOL, and sometimes SOLb. What you get is the jazz of Duke Ellington. Here's an example:




It's Duke's 1931 composition "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)." Listen closely to the melody used with the lyrics that begin at 0:47. (The lyrics were written by Duke Ellington's manager, Irving Mills, by the way.) Pay attention to pitch used for "thing" in "It don't mean a thing ... ." Contrast it with the pitch of "ain't" used in " ... if it ain't got that swing." The pitch the singer, Ivie Anderson, sings for "thing" is MI, but the pitch she uses for "ain't" is MIb. "It don't mean a thing ... " uses a minor scale. " ... if it ain't got that swing" shifts to a blues scale.

The composer, Duke Ellington, is playing with our ears. When we come to "It don't mean a thing, all you got to do is sing," we might expect a MIb on "got," but no, we get the note DO instead. Yet the phrase " ... all you got to do is sing" still sounds bluesy.

That's because the pitch interval between LA and DO is what musicians call a "minor third." LA, the first and last note in the sequence, is the "tonic" note of the LA-DO-RE-MIb-FA-SOLb-LA scale. DO is the "third" note of the scale (remember, the "second," TI, is simply sitting this one out, so DO is still called the "third" note in the scale). When the pitch distance between the tonic of a scale and the third corresponds to that between LA and DO, the interval is a "minor third" — where a "major third" would involve a slightly wider pitch distance.

Blues scales use a minor third between the tonic (here, LA) and the next note up in the scale being sung (here, DO, since TI is silent). That's why the DO on "got" in "It don't mean a thing, all you got to do is sing" sounds bluesy. Minor thirds, as parts of blues scales, are bluesy.

The jazz of Duke Ellington was more urbane than the African American blues idiom it was derived partly from. Mr. Ellington didn't want to have it sound too bluesy, though, because he wanted his music to appeal to everyone: white and black, urban and rural, middle class and poorer. Blues music was originally associated with black, rural, working-class musicians. Duke Ellington wanted to take the blues to another height entirely.