Liza — Free Lead Sheet PDF (Eb, Bb, Concert)

Music by George Gershwin · Published 1929 · Melody & chords only

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About Liza

The Night Al Jolson Couldn’t Stay in His Seat

Liza (All the Clouds’ll Roll Away) was composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and Gus Kahn, published in 1929 for Show Girl, a backstage musical produced by Florenz Ziegfeld. Unusually for a mainstream Broadway show, the stage performances were accompanied by the Duke Ellington Orchestra, then still primarily known as a Harlem nightclub band rather than a Broadway pit ensemble.

The song's most famous moment happened by accident. On the show's opening night in Boston on 25 June 1929, star Ruby Keeler was singing the number when her husband, the enormously popular entertainer Al Jolson, suddenly stood up from his seat in the third row and sang a chorus along with her — a spontaneous gesture that surprised the audience and Gershwin himself. Jolson recorded the song commercially just days later, and his version reached number nine on the charts.

The chart on this page offers the melody and chords, no lyrics. Show Girl itself had a short run, but Liza outlived the show by decades, becoming a favourite uptempo vehicle for big bands and small jazz groups alike.

The Form & Harmony

A Restless, Chromatic Harmony Built for Momentum

Liza is in the key of Eb, verified against the engraved chart used for this page, and its harmony is considerably more chromatic and restless than most tunes of its era. The opening bars alone move through a slash-chord B¨7/F, an F#dim7, a slash-chord C7/G, and a startling A¨‹6 — a borrowed minor iv chord — before another diminished passing chord (A°7) leads to B¨‹6 and a striking E¨9.

That density of diminished and borrowed chords recurs through the form, including a C‹/B¨ slash chord and an A‹7(b5) in the bridge, giving the harmony a constantly shifting, unsettled quality that matches the tune's uptempo, flag-waving energy. Few standards of this vintage pack this much chromatic movement into a single chorus.

This harmonic density is exactly why the tune has remained a favourite big-band and small-group vehicle — it rewards close listening and gives an improviser genuinely varied terrain to navigate at speed, rather than the simpler diatonic frameworks common in many contemporary popular songs.

How to Play It on Saxophone

A Practical Approach to a Chromatic Flag-Waver

1. Learn the melody against its chromatic harmony. The opening bars move through several unusual chords in quick succession. Learn small phrases together with their chords rather than memorising the melody in isolation.

2. Build tempo gradually with a metronome. This tune is meant to be a bright, driving flag-waver. Learn it accurately at a slow tempo first, then build speed gradually, prioritising clean articulation over raw speed.

3. Isolate the diminished passing chords. The F#dim7 and Adim7 chromatic connectors are the tune's signature harmonic device. Practise resolving each one in isolation so they feel natural at full tempo.

4. Work on rhythmic precision under tempo. As speed increases, rhythmic accuracy becomes the priority. Practise with a metronome, gradually pushing the tempo while keeping a solid time feel.

5. Study the Benny Goodman Quartet's 1937 recording. Listen to how Goodman's clarinet, Lionel Hampton's vibraphone, Teddy Wilson's piano and Gene Krupa's drums each carry the tune's momentum in turn, a useful model for trading energy in a small-group setting.

If you would like one-to-one guidance on rhythm, technique or building a wider jazz vocabulary, saxophone lessons in person in South East London or online are available. The free saxophone transcriptions on this site are also useful for hearing how great players navigate uptempo standards like this one.

Essential Recordings

Where to Start Listening

For a definitive small-group jazz treatment, seek out the Benny Goodman Quartet's recording from 2 August 1937, released on Victor 25660, with Goodman's clarinet, Lionel Hampton's vibraphone, Teddy Wilson's piano and Gene Krupa's drums trading the tune's restless energy across one of the great small groups of the swing era.

The tune's defining big-band version came from Chick Webb and His Orchestra, recorded 3 May 1938 for Decca, featuring saxophonists Wayman Carver and Teddy McRae and a celebrated Chick Webb drum solo that has made the chart a staple of student big bands ever since.

Art Tatum and Thelonious Monk both recorded influential piano versions. Comparing the Goodman Quartet's small-group reading against Webb's full big-band arrangement is a good way to hear how differently the tune's chromatic energy can be scored.

If you are working through the broader Great American Songbook repertoire, browse the online real book index for related tunes, all available as free lead sheet PDFs in Concert, Bb and Eb.