The trick to "Sophisticated Lady" is the descending chromatic chain of seventh chords. How do you make that sound inevitable? How do you improvise on it without sounding unnatural? Legendary jazz musicians are on record flubbing these changes (that's you, Ray Nance) or copping out by jumping back to the melody for that one measure (that's you, Ben Webster).
Since everyone is enjoying the music theory, here's a quick quiz: name five songs that start on ii. (This one starts on vii/ii and that's close enough to count, at least for this blog where I make the rules. I will also accept II's which are really V/V.)
This was at one point going to be the mother/son dance at my wedding, but we ended up going with "As Time Goes By" instead. If only this recording had existed back then...
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