Learn a Jazzy, Reharmonized Arrangement of “Sweet Georgia Brown”

The beloved standard “Sweet Georgia Brown” was written in 1925 by Ben Bernie and Maceo Pinkard, with lyrics by Kenneth Casey. The inspiration for the song reportedly struck when Bernie met a member of the Georgia House of Representatives, Dr. George Thaddeus Brown, in New York City. Brown mentioned that the Georgia General Assembly declared his daughter, who had been born in 1911, should be named Georgia after the state. This would be referenced in both the song title and the lyric “Georgia claimed her/Georgia named her.”

First recorded by Bernie and his orchestra, “Sweet Georgia Brown” became a popular standard, performed by guitarists like Django Reinhardt, Doc Watson, and Bucky Pizzarelli, among many others. It was also adopted as the theme song for the Harlem Globetrotters.

I chose to arrange the song in G major, the key it’s often played in within my jazz manouche circles. In the first 12 measures of the original version, each chord lasts for four bars, so I reharmonize the melody notes for chordal variation. For example, instead of playing a single E7 shape, I use six different voicings in bars 1–4. I begin with an E major triad with the third (G#) in the bass and play a descending counterpoint bass line that travels down to C#, where I substitute the relative minor chord (C#m7) before moving on to an E augmented triad. 

While at times I punctuate the arrangement with fuller voicings, containing as many as six notes, I also use more skeletal forms for contrast. In the last four bars, for instance, I play only the melody with a bass line, and the ear fills in the implied sequence of dominant sevenths shown in the chord symbols. 

To add a bit of surprise, and to interject a bit of a bluesy feel, I opt for a rootsy approach on the open G chord at the end of the piece. This is a song about the South, after all, and in creating any instrumental arrangement, it’s important to evoke the lyrics.