"One Night Only (The March)" - Trombone Shorty
From the Trombone Shorty album, Backatown.
I don't really have much to add to this tune. One thing I've learned from the music of Trombone Shorty is that the tunes don't have to be over-complex. There's a beauty in simplicity.
The overall harmony is a minor V7-i progression. What's nice about this progression is its ability to resolve. Compare that to a ii-V7 progression that relies on unresolved tension, the V7-i progression has a feeling of finality to it.
However, Shorty's solo appears to disregard this harmony, and he seems to be playing in the C mixolydian, or bebop, scale. I suppose that one could even argue that he's building a half-diminished scale on the G of the C mixolydian, which would help play into the shifting third-degrees of both chords, to blur the line between major and minor tonalities, but let's leave that discussion for someone who actually writes a blog about this kind of stuff... Anyway, try experimenting with diminished scales on this tune.
SPECIAL THANKS to dpolitzer for the comments!
Here a YouTube video of Trombone Shorty’s performance on The Late Show with David Letterman:
Recommended Reading: The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. Published by Dell Publishing.