Chords needed to play the complete Status Quo songbook
A. D. E
Chords needed to play the opening two bars of ‘Round Midnight by Thelonius Monk
Ebm. Ebm/D. Ebm/Db. Cm7b5
Abm Db7
Unapologetic Jazz Fan
I take your point, but that's not actually a brilliant example.
Leaving aside the fact that it's in a flat key which makes the chords seem more difficult It would on first glance appear to have the same basic A D E structure that you'd find in a blues song in A Maj, just with a flat 3 to give the minor key - but FRancis and Rick probably played power chords most of the time anyway so no real difference as there's no 3rd to worry about.
What's happening is a chromatic walk down the bass of the Ebm (the V chord), the Cm7b5 is a bit interesting as it's the diminished chord, for the key of D. The Abm is (apparently) the root and the Dd7 is a IV7, again familiar stuff. So its the same basic chords just half a step down and with that borrowed Diminished.
Tune a guitar down a half-step and then drop the low E down again to C# and Francis Rossi could knock this out out with no trouble.
What makes jazz so interesting to my ears is not the apparent complexity of the underlying chordal structure but that the choice of inversion is left to the player. So something like a Db7 could be played either straight with just the 7th, or with the addition of the 9th or even the 13th, and depending on the mood one wanted could be played in at least 4 positions on the neck. Listening to a top-notch jazzer noodle around some pretty superficially simple chord progressions is where the magic happens.
Now back to my 3-chord blues. Jazz is too hard to play. And they don't like distortion pedals
