"Surrey With The Fringe On Top" is a song from the 1943 musical "Oklahoma!" by Rodgers and Hammerstein. It has simple, diatonic melody and harmony with an AABA' form. The very simplicity can make this song difficulty to handle—what does one do with a melody that repeats one note at the beginning of each A section? There are a number of different solutions, and one must be chosen!

There are many performances on Youtube. My favorite "classic" vocal performance is from the 1955 film version with Gordon MacRae and a young and lovely Shirley Jones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIG_GVE-KiE; I remember seeing the movie in a local theater when I was a boy. No fellow could resist being taken out in a surrey by Stacey Kent after hearing her rendition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBhij1ju7z8. There is an exuberant cha-cha-cha performance by Peggy Lee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS4c7HIc-44 that is harmonically very simple. Avoid the abysmal rehearsal performance by Frank Sinatra. The 1956 performance by the Miles Davis quintet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mbCuFn3EH4 is a sterling example of Miles's idiosyncratic style and contrasts his conception with those of John Coltrane and Red Garland. Finally, catch the remarkable 1957 performance by Sonny Rollins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej3EYt56EQ4 accompanied only by the drums of Philly Joe Jones.

I wrote this chord chart because the song was requested on my New Years Eve gig. Although there is a chord chart in the Jazz 1300 standards collection, I wrote my own because I did not like its harmonic treatment of the A sections. There are many possibilities for handling the static melody, including remaining on the tonic (with a moving bass line), a V pedal point under a tonic chord or a moving chord sequence, or my eventual solution: I-ii-iii-ii harmonic movement, similar to that in the Miles Davis recording. The rest of the chord chart is pretty standard, and corresponds to the lead sheets found in many fakebooks. I included a tag coda for the ending.

I play this chart with the Swing Two/Four style at 140 bpm.

Surrey With The Fringe On Top (k ver) - Richard Rodgers

As a final note, this is my first posting of 2018. I'd like to wish the iRP community a happy and healthy New Year. May we all be spared tendonitis, arthritis, laryngitis, and the other maladies that plague the performing community in the coming year.