Ethan Hein's new post on that one weird chord in "Sir Duke" and my response post, on hearing the chorus of "Sir Duke" as a transformation of the opening chords of "Warm Valley"

Since I did recently ask if Ethan could do a post on "Sir Duke" I am very pleased to read his newest post. Maybe he was planning his post anyway, but this year there should be a ton of discussion of Stevie Wonder's music.  

https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2026/that-one-weird-chord-in-sir-duke/

 

Sir Duke” is one of the greatest songs written in the last fifty years, bar none.  Yeah, I’m just putting my cards on the table about this.  Normally I actually hate music that sings the praises of music but Wonder gets away with it because his song is a tribute to Duke Ellington and to the big band jazz greats of the past who inspired him. To put this in staid Romantic terms, when a genius pays tribute to a genius the genius can get away with stuff that other people shouldn't even seriously consider trying. 

 

The chords in the chorus of “Sir Duke” are amazing in their simplicity and in the magnificent weirdness of that F minor 7^th chord. It’s not unheard of to have a tritone pivot in music like this.  I can think of a B minor to F major shift in the first theme of String Quartet No. 7 by Shostakovich, for instance (00:14-00:17).  But B major to F minor 7^th is a lot weirder.

 

I think the introduction sets up the chorus chord in a very simple, easily overlooked way.  The introduction moves from B major to G sharp minor to G natural major to F# major.  Right from the start we have a progression that goes from the tonic to the submediant and immediately flattens the submediant and drops to the dominant.  That chromatic modal borrowing plants a seed that Wonder is going to do whatever chromatic alterations will sound fun, and what sounds fun is chromatic mutation of roots and fifths while leaving thirds and (if applicable) sevenths) alone. We should also not forget those chromatic chains of chords in the pre-chorus.  The key has been so thoroughly destabilized by the time the chorus hits F minor 7 really does sound like the most natural chord to hear despite the fact that it could be read as a minor dominant chord built on a flattened fifth as easily as a sharpened fourth. 

 

Ethan Hein links to a video where Adam Neely discusses a couple of theories as to what is going on in the chorus of “Sir Duke” that is well worth checking out. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NckkwiYrjTw

The shadow chord thesis is interesting. The G#7 isn't how I hear it and I think there's a simpler and far more direct way to argue that Wonder was drawing on Ellington's linear/harmonic nexus of chord formation.

 

Stevie Wonder's "Sir Duke" has a chorus with chords that go as follows:

 

B major, F (natural) minor 7th, E major 7th, C# minor 7th, F sharp 7

 

I was looking at those changes and then it hit me, “Hey, wait a minute. I am pretty sure I know which Ellington standard has something like these chord changes in the first three bars.”

 

"Warm Valley" which has

B flat major 7th, E7,      E-flat 7 and so on ...

Now, just do a handful of individually simple things:

1. Kick the key up a half step into B major

2. Remove the major 7th from the first chord

3. Sustain the 7th factor of the E7 but

4. Drop the third into parallel minor (this will yield the F minor 7th chord of "Sir Duke"

5. Retrain the G# and D# and then let the bass and alto of the SATB texture drop by parallel fifths while the S and T factors stay in place. 

 

The oblique motion off-setting parallel motion in interlocked voices is what makes this voice-leading genius on Stevie Wonder's part.  It also manages to evoke a legendary Ellington standard.  Where “Warm Valley” is a famously languid ballad, “Sir Duke” is a buoyant tribute”.  The chordal kernel, if you will, can be heard in common across the two songs. 

 

I think the core of the shadow progression idea makes sense but I think it makes way more sense to just go straight from "Sir Duke" back to Ellington's "Warm Valley".  No "shadow progression" is needed to hear the connection.  We can just make the connection very directly by comparing the two songs. 

 

The “Warm Valley”/”Sir Duke” connection is an intuitive association on my part having listened to Ellington and Wonder for decades.  I didn’t start putting it together, though, until I read Ethan Hein and heard Adam Neely discuss the chord progressions and then it clicked for me that a half-step transposition and a gentle modal mutation showed that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. 

SECONDARY SECTION

Now ever since I slogged through that CT podcast series I've been loathe to mention podcasts.  What Ethan has done with "Sir Duke" is exceptional enough that I'm breaking my rule of not linking to podcasts because you should give him a listen as he walks through the chords that Stevie Wonder "could" have chosen that make more sense based on prescribed theories and why they don't actually work as well as what Wonder did.

https://ethanhein.substack.com/p/you-can-feel-it-all-over