The Man I Love — Free Lead Sheet PDF (Eb, Bb, Concert)

Music by George Gershwin · Published 1924 · Melody & chords only

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About The Man I Love

Gershwin’s Ballad That Never Made It to Broadway

The Man I Love was composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by his brother Ira, and published on 1 December 1924. It was written for the Gershwins’ first big Broadway hit, Lady, Be Good!, but was cut during out-of-town tryouts in Philadelphia — the show’s producers felt its slow tempo killed the pacing. That was not the end of it: Gershwin tried the song again in the 1927 satire Strike Up the Band, which closed out of town before reaching Broadway, and it was considered for and then rejected from 1928’s Rosalie. Unlike almost every other Gershwin standard, The Man I Love never actually appeared in a hit Broadway show during his lifetime.

What saved it was recordings, not the stage. Marion Harris, Sophie Tucker and Paul Whiteman & His Orchestra all recorded it in the mid-1920s, and the tune quietly built a following on its own merits — a haunting melody over an unusually moody, harmonically restless accompaniment for a Tin Pan Alley song of its era. By the 1930s and 40s it had become a fixture of the jazz repertoire, and it has stayed there ever since.

The chart on this page offers the melody and chords, no lyrics. If you are also working through I Got Rhythm, Someone to Watch Over Me or Embraceable You, it is worth comparing all four: they are Gershwin standards from the same decade, but where I Got Rhythm is a fast, sturdy jam-session workhorse, The Man I Love is a slow, harmonically delicate ballad that rewards a completely different kind of attention.

The Form & Harmony

A Deceptively Simple 32-Bar AABA

The Man I Love is a standard 32-bar AABA song form, but it does not behave like most Tin Pan Alley tunes of its era. Rather than stating the tonic straight away, each A section opens by lingering on a two-chord vamp — shuttling between the vi and ii chords (Gm7 and Cm7 in the common key of Eb) for several bars before the harmony finally resolves. That delayed resolution is the tune’s signature harmonic fingerprint: a moody, unsettled quality that feels closer to the blues than to a conventional show tune, and it is a large part of why the song appealed so strongly to bebop and modern jazz musicians decades later.

Underneath that vamp runs the tune’s other well-known feature: a chromatic descending inner line, moving down in half-steps beneath the held harmony. It is easy to miss on a first read-through because it sits inside the chords rather than in the melody itself, but it is worth deliberately isolating and learning — it is exactly the kind of voice-leading detail that separates a competent read of the chart from a performance that actually captures the tune’s character.

The bridge moves through a more conventional cycle of secondary dominants, giving some harmonic relief after the extended vamp of the A sections, before the final A brings back that same lingering, unresolved opening. There is no single definitive version of the changes — like most standards of this vintage, different fake books and different eras of players have reharmonised details here and there — but the opening vi-ii vamp and the descending chromatic line underneath it are the two features every serious reading of this tune needs to honour.

This unresolved, harmonically patient quality is exactly what made the tune such fertile ground for the modern jazz players who took it up in the 1940s and 50s. Where a simpler ballad gives a soloist a clear, fast-moving set of changes to outline, The Man I Love rewards a slower, more spacious approach — playing into the ambiguity of the vamp rather than rushing past it.

How to Play It on Saxophone

A Practical Approach to a Jazz Ballad

1. Learn the melody and sing the opening vamp. Before playing a note, sing the melody and really listen to the lingering vi-ii vamp that opens each A section. Feeling that delayed resolution in your ear first will shape everything about how you phrase it on the horn — rushing past it on the page is the easiest way to flatten out the tune’s character.

2. Isolate the chromatic inner line. Play the descending chromatic line underneath the opening vamp slowly and on its own, away from the full chart, until the half-step motion feels completely natural. It is a small detail that is easy to blur when reading everything at once, but it is central to what makes this tune sound like itself.

3. Work rubato before you work in time. Practise the melody freely, shaping phrases the way a singer would, before locking it to a metronome. Ballads lose their character fast if they are drilled in strict time from the very first pass — find the phrasing first, then worry about time.

4. Prioritise tone and dynamics over technique. At ballad tempo there is nowhere for a thin or unsteady sound to hide. Spend your practice time on long tones, vibrato control and dynamic shading across each phrase rather than on speed or technical facility — this tune is a test of sound, not chops.

5. Study how great players ornament the melody. Listen to how saxophonists like Coleman Hawkins dress up Gershwin’s tune with small melodic embellishments rather than playing it completely straight. Once you have the plain melody secure, experiment with tasteful ornamentation of your own.

If you would like one-to-one guidance on ballad playing, tone development 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 ballads and other standards.

Essential Recordings

Where to Start Listening

The definitive place to start is Coleman Hawkins’s December 1943 recording, with Eddie Heywood on piano, Oscar Pettiford on bass and Shelly Manne on drums. It is widely regarded as one of the finest places to hear the transition from swing to bebop in real time — Hawkins takes the tune at double time across a long, unfolding two-chorus solo, and the whole quartet plays with a freedom that points straight toward modern jazz.

Billie Holiday’s reading is essential listening from the vocal side — her phrasing around that lingering opening vamp is a study in itself for how much space and patience a great interpreter can find in Gershwin’s harmony. For an entirely different, more abstract treatment, seek out Miles Davis’s version from his 24 December 1954 session with Milt Jackson, Thelonious Monk, Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke, released on Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants. It was the only time Monk and Davis ever recorded together, and the session is best known for Davis asking Monk to lay out — stop comping — behind his solos, leaving long stretches of bare, spacious trumpet against just bass and drums.

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. If you are also studying I Got Rhythm, comparing Gershwin’s fast rhythm-changes vehicle against this slow, harmonically patient ballad is a good way to hear the range of his writing — as is comparing it with two more Gershwin standards on this site, Someone to Watch Over Me and Embraceable You.