Dont Get Around Much Anymore Chords

Playing Duke Ellington's "Don't Get Around Much Anymore"

The chord progression is straightforward if you know your way around standard II-V-I movement. The song sits in C major for the most part. Here's the basic layout: C | Am7 D7 | G7 | CM7 | Am7 D7 | G7 | C | That Am7 to D7 is the ii-V leading into G, and it appears twice. What makes this tune actually useful in practice is the A section turnaround. After the second time through, you hit the bridge, which goes:

F | F7 | Bbmaj7 | EbM7 | Ab7 | DbM7 | G7alt | C7alt | This is where most people stumble. That Bbmaj7 to EbM7 movement is a tritone sub chain, and if you just play straight dominant 7ths everywhere, it sounds wrong. The bridge needs those major 7ths holding their space before resolving.

Dont Get Around Much Anymore Chords

For anyone actually learning this, the trick is remembering that the D7 in the A section is a dominant, not a major 7. You'll see some charts that notate it as Dmaj7, which is incorrect and will send you down the wrong path if you're improvising over it. Play a D7 and you get the right pull toward G. Play Dmaj7 and you're suddenly in a completely different harmony that doesn't resolve where the tune expects it to. I ran into this problem when a student of mine was rehearsing this for a gig. We had the chart handed out at the session and half the players were reading Dmaj7 instead of D7. The pianist was comping with a big major 7 voicing on the third chord of every measure, and it sounded like the harmony had lost its direction. We spent ten minutes figuring out why the V chord kept refusing to resolve properly before someone actually looked at the melody note against the chord. The A note in the melody over that D chord told us immediately it had to be dominant. We switched everyone to D7 and it locked in within a bar. The ending is worth paying attention to too. The classic Ellington voicing uses that descending chromatic line through the turnaround:

C | C#dim7 | D7alt | G7alt | C | Or sometimes you'll see it written as C | A7alt | D7alt | G7alt | C7alt | which works fine if you're coming from a bebop tradition. Both are valid. The first version is more historically accurate to how Ellington's pianists actually voiced it. For guitar players, the most practical way to learn this is to get comfortable with the C major voicings on the top three strings for the melody, then layer in the standard shell voicings underneath. The A section works cleanly with rootless left-hand shapes like:

A7: x545xx
G7: x323xx
CM7: x565xx The bridge is where guitarists typically struggle because the root movement is all over the fretboard. The F to F7 to Bbmaj7 progression jumps you from the 1st position to way up the neck. If you try to navigate it as open chords you'll miss half the changes. Stay rooted on the lower strings and shift positions smoothly. It's not difficult once you map it out. One thing worth noting: the tune doesn't always come back to C cleanly at the end. In live settings, especially with singers, you'll sometimes see it end on a turnaround that leads back to the top rather than a final cadence. If you're leading a band and the singer just repeats the form, have a plan for whether you're doing a static V turnaround or a full return. Walking into a second chorus without agreeing on this is how you lose the band at the top of the form.

There's no download link to give here because this tune is in the public domain and the chord changes are well documented across real books and fake books. The Berklee Real Book has the standard notation. If you want something faster to check, Jamey Aebersold volume 48 covers it. The important part is knowing the bridge and making sure the D7 stays dominant throughout.