This well-known standard was published in 1930, which also happens to be the current copyright barrier in the United States. I am taking advantage of the latter fact to begin a series sampling/surveying songs published in that year. The immediate motivation is that I noticed a change: V9 chords seemed to appear more regularly (that is, in more songs) than they had a decade earlier--that's a simple quantitative measure; I thought many of the uses were more interesting and that has made a survey worth the effort.
I am also using the moment to offer up a reminder of three basic types of V9 presentations in the major key. I discussed these in an introductory post (link) and of course they reappear in many subsequent posts. There are two classes, internal and external resolution, with two subclasses for external resolutions: direct and indirect.
The inventory of sonorities and figures I am concerned with here begin with those:
- V9 external resolution, direct, root position
- V9 external resolution, indirect, root position
- V9 internal resolution, root position
- V9(b5)
- viiø7 or V9 without root
- V9 in inversion, any resolution
I am using the published sheet music version of "Georgia on My Mind", despite the limitations it shares with most pieces like it: it is a "vanilla" setting meant for home consumption or as the basis--but only a starting point--for public performance. I think this is still fair in my historical account, but of course would be a serious shortcoming for any later time if I ignored more complex treatments in publications or recordings, especially of what eventually became known as "tensions," to which the ninths are now understood to belong. I do intend eventually to write about arranging manuals published in the 1930s and 1940s, but my historical survey will need to stop there.
In the intro and verse, we find these.
In the chorus, the V9(b5) from the intro reappears in an expressively significant position within the title text "Georgia on my mind"--and the whispered repetition puts the ninth D5 in the voice.
Finally, continuing from bar 34, there is an unusual instance of what I call an indirect resolution. Normally this works out as paired thirds--here it might have been D5 to Bb4/A4 to C5, but Carmichael increases the nostalgic-sigh element by shifting downward to G#4. In any case, the ninth D5 does resolve (more or less) straight and clear to C5. (And note the anticipation in bars 32-33, circled notes.)
- V9 external resolution, direct, root position: bar 14
- V9 external resolution, indirect, root position: bars 34-35
- V9 internal resolution, root position: bar 34* the ninth disappears rather than resolve as V9 turns into V+(7)
- V9(b5): bar 6, bar 32
- viiø7 or V9 without root: bar 10
- V9 in inversion, any resolution: bar 34