Walk on The Wild Side - Dorian over Maj7

[princeplanet]

You all know it, but youtube it to refresh your memory, Ronnie Ross's famous Bari solo at the end of the Lou Reed classic. It's probably the best known sax solo in pop/rock history, yet it has always puzzled me. Set against Cmaj7 to Fmaj7, the choices against C are plain enough, but he "minorizes" the Fmaj7 by playing notes from F dorian. Now this is a chord progression probably never encountered in Jazz, and Ross improvised over it with next to no rehearshal.

F dorian is from C minor, so obviously a common modal interchange switch from IV to iv. That's all fine, but the chord isn't swapped, only the improv. You get this cool rubbing of the a flat against the a nat in the f maj 7 chord. Is that more unusual? Any other tunes that have IV maj7 a lot, or at least enough to try this sound on? I suppose there are hundreds of Bossa tunes like this, right?

Where does this sub come from? Is it a known concept? Can you cite other examples of it's use?

Such a cool beautiful solo. Any other bari players that played in that style?

EDIT:

The more I think about it, the more I realize it works for the same reason the C blues scale works against an F chord in C blues. The F chord is in fact a 6th chord, not a maj 7, so even more reason for it to work (no E nat to dodge).

Hmm, so obviously F dorian works against the IV chord in C blues, never thought to use it... I suppose that's fairly common ....

[JoeB]

Yes, classic solo. I would focus on the blues aspects more than just dorian. On both chords, blue notes are skillfully mixed in with tonic notes, slides, smears, wails, etc.

For the C chord, I hear C major pentatonic licks with the occasional F passing note. Some soulful bending between b3 and 3. There is a nice pentatonic melodic cell that adds the B note. I like the repeated C6 (Am7) arpeggio.

On the F6 chord, I hear a combination of notes from F major pentatonic and F blues. This theoretically produces an F dorian scale and also an F dominant scale. It is this mixture that gives the solo its character. One of the most scale-like licks seems to descend dorian (R, b7, 6, 5, 4, b3) but a few notes later its true blues character is revealed when b3 resolves to 3. Notice the use of Eb in this lick rather than E as you refer to. I hear a first inversion F9 arpeggio in there too. The b5 is often heard, sometimes along with the 5.

Fun stuff.

[michaelsorg]

What I hear is just major triads (maybe a 6 added sometimes on the IV). So that fits the mold for blues scale use as Joe said, or the major pentatonic with b3 and b7 added. Though certainly tasteful, I would say there isn't any new ground being broken in this solo.