Two Jazz Monographs: Building from the 5th / The Remarkable II V Cluster

Jazz musicians take note! Two Jazz Monographs combines John Purcell's Building from the 5th and The Remarkable II V Cluster under one cover, an advantage, given that the two subjects are closely related.Building from the 5th traces a common thread that runs through the work of Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker. It makes the argument, backed by transcriptions, that Louis, Lester, and Bird were superimposing II chords on top of V chords (building from the 5th) long before the advent of modern jazz. Further transcriptions suggest that John Coltrane continued this tradition into the 1950s and 60s.The Remarkable II V Cluster is an overlooked pentatonic scale that possesses unique and valuable properties. In principle, any harmonic situation in straight ahead jazz can be navigated using the II V Cluster (in its three forms) and the major pentatonic scale. The simplicity of this system allows improvisers to produce a wealth of interesting sounds with a minimum of mental effort. The II V Cluster has been reverse-engineered from the work of Lester Young.