The Backdoor ii-V Progression

by Anton Schwartz

If you play jazz music, you know how a standard ii-V-I progression works: a Dm7
chord followed by a G7 chord resolves to a C chord. We also hear a lot about the
Tritone Substitution ii-V, in which the Dm7 and G7 resolve, instead, to the key of
F. Well, there is another very common resolution of the ii-V progression. It is
much more common among standards than the tritone sub version, but it gets
surprisingly little discussion relative to the others. In it, the Dm and G7 resolve
to the key of A. In other words, a iv7 chord leads to the VII7 chord, which
resolves to the I chord. A good example of its use is in bars 3-5 of the Tadd
Dameron standard, Lady Bird. Another is bars 4-5 of Misty.

The progression has sometimes been called the �Backdoor ii-V� or �Backdoor
Turnaround.� Look among standards and you will find it�s pretty ubiquitous. I
thought about it for awhile one night and here are some I came up with:

Blue Daniel
Dolphin Dance
For All We Know
Groovin� High
Half Nelson (Lady Bird)
How Deep is the Ocean
I Could Write a Book
I Didn�t Know What Time It Was
I Should Care
I Want to Talk About You
I�ll Be Seeing You
Just Friends
My Foolish Heart
My Old Flame
Misty
Nobody Else But Me
Nostalgia In Times Square
One For My Baby
Round Midnight
Silver�s Serenade
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Soultrane
Stardust
Stella By Starlight
Sweet & Lovely
Tea for Two
Till There Was You
Tenderly
When in Rome
When Sonny Gets Blue
Yardbird Suite

Plus a couple of pop songs:

Hello, Goodbye (Beatles)

In My Life (Beatles)
Just The Way You Are
You Are So Beautiful (Billy Preston)

As an exercise, see if you can find the backdoor turnaround in each of the songs.
Play them�either a recorded version or on your instrument. Once you get a feeling
for what it sounds like, you�ll come to identify the progression easily.
There are a couple common variants to the backdoor progression. In these songs it
appears as IV � VII7 � I (i.e. with a major four chord instead of minor):

Cherokee
Donna Lee (Back Home Again in Indiana)
Hello Goodbye (Beatles)
How Long Has This Been Going On
I Thought About You
Long Ago & Far Away
My Romance
Stella By Starlight
That�s the Way of the World
There Will Never Be Another You
The Feeling of Jazz

And in these, the turnaround resolves not to the I but to the very closely related
iii chord:

Beatrice
Body & Soul
Darn That Dream
Days of Wine & Roses
Don�t Blame Me
Ev�ry Time We Say Goodbye
Four
How High The Moon / Ornithology
Joy Spring
Line for Lyons
My Shining Hour
The Best Thing for You
This Time the Dream�s on Me
All The Things You Are
I Fall In Love Too Easily

Once again, see if you can identify the backdoor progression in each song.

Why does the progression work? There are many ways of looking at it, but here are a
few. For simplicity, let�s talk in the key of C, making the progression
Fm7 | B7 | C:

First, the B7 chord of the backdoor progression is very closely related to the
G7 and D7 chords of the normal and tritone-sub ii-V progressions. If we voice each
of the three chords with with a 9 and 13, they all use the same B diminished chord
and whole-half diminished scale. And we may see the chordtones of the B7 as the 9
(B), 5 (D), 7 (F) and 9 (A) of G dominant.
The Fm7 chord of the backdoor progression functions much like the D�7 chord,
which leads to C in a minor ii-V progression. The D�7 chord is effectively the
relative minor of the Fm7 chord, since it is based a minor third down from the Fm7
and the 1-3-5 of the Fm7 are the 3-5-7 of D�7. Differently put, an Fm6 chord is
merely an inversion of a D�7.
The backdoor progression leading to a major key is the tritone sub progression
of the closely-related relative minor. Since Fm7�B7 leads easily to Am, it should
be no surprise that it also leads to Am�s relative major, C.

By the way, none of the lists of songs above are comprehensive � I�m sure there are
lots of good examples I didn�t think of. Can you think of some? Leave a comment!

Epilogue: Thank you to the people who have made suggestions below that I�ve added
to the list! Steve, Duffy, Kostas, Geoff and Aaron � much obliged!

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