Daily Licking 018: McCoy Tyner's Effendi

Back to more of that, uh huh.

This is a tune from McCoy's first trio record, "Inception", from 1961 or there abouts. It is an awesome record, there is not a bad tune on it, and McCoy is being McCoy and just blazing. The bassist is a guy named Art Davis and he goes mano-y-mano with McCoy on a couple of tunes where they play unison lines during the melody of"There Is No Greater Love", and this one, "Effendi". Effendi is a term used in Turkey for government officials. So says the internet. I will have to go watch "Midnight Express" again and see if that is true.

This tune is sort of McCoys twist on a modal tune like "So What", but McCoy uses an ABA form, so it goes:

Dmin - 8 measures
Bridge - 8 measures
Dmin - 8 measures


That way you get 16 measures of D min, when it wraps around from the last 8 to the first 8.

Effendi it even starts on Dmin, just like So What does, but when it gets to the bridge, hold the phone, what's this, a B sus chord? Huh?

Yea, hows that for a left turn?

Or is it?

If he was going to go all the way and copy the progression to So What (like his future trio mate John Coltrane would with his composition Impressions) Tyner would have gone to Eb min after the D min. But he didn't.

Now, since we all know how to spell any possible chord we could ever want to, we know that your wild Western Ruby Throated E flatus minorus has:

Eb - Root
Gb - 3rd
Bb - 5th
Db - 7th

Well, looky what you have in a Bsus chord, if you look at the notes enharmonically:

B - Root
D# (or..should I say, dun dun dun = Eb!) - 3rd of Bsus, root of Ebmin
E - 4th, the thing that makes it a "sus"
F# (ahhh the plot thickens!) = Gb = 5th of Bsus, and it is the 3rd of an Ebmin
A = 7th of Bsus
C# (and the final culprit = Db) = 9th of Bsus, 7th of Ebmin.

That is some sneaky chording right there. You have some of the same juicy notes in a Bsus as you do in an Ebmin, you get the root, 3rd and 7th of Ebmin (the most important notes) tucked away inside a Bsus chord if you include the 9 with it.

So it is different than other modal tunes, but it gets there by just barely altering the bridge chord to sound very close to another recognizable tune, but then it's totally different and yet still gives you that modal tune sound. Some secret-agent-chord-substitution-ridiculoso right there. I point this out, because you can almost imagine him noodling around with So What, going hmmm what else can I do here, and being the genius he is, he found something al-righty.

So that is the tune - Dmin for 8, Bsus for 8, D min for 8, and then repeat that entire thing. Art Davis and McCoy start the tune and play the line below together while McCoy adds some very cool chords in between.

And if the left turn at the Bsus isn't enough for you, they also take the tune at about oh 200-208 bpm just to keep things interesting. Check out the full tune below from YouTube as well.

bass lick 4/4 tempo 200 | Dmin7 r1 | r8 d g b a4 c8 d~ | d4~ d r2 | r8 d- g c b4 c8 a~ | a4. r8 r d- f a | g4 a8 g~ g4 r | r8 d f a [b8~ b8 c8] [b8~ b8 a8~] | [a8 b8 a8~] [a8 g8~ g8~] g4 r | Bsus r8 f# g# a~ a g# f# b~| b4 r r2 | r2 r8 f# g# a~ | a g# f# b-~ b4 r | r8 f#+ g# a~ a g# f# b~ | b2 r2 | r2 r8 f# g# a~ | a g# f# b~ b f~ f4 | DMin7 r8 d g b a4 c8 d~ | d4~ d r2 | r2 r8 d- g c | b4 c8 a~ a2 | r8 d- f a g4 a8 g~ | g1 | r8 d f a [b8~ b8 c8] [b8~ b8 a8~] | [a8 b8 a8~] [a8 g8~ g8~] g8 c8 a8 d-8 |