The jazz standard “All Of Me” is one of the great jam session tunes. If you’re a beginning jazz pianist, you’ll want to learn this tune as soon as you can, since both vocalists and instrumentalists play it a lot. And if you’re at the intermediate or advanced stages, its chord progression is timeless and never gets stale. Jazz pianists from Teddy Wilson to Lennie Tristano have played classic solos over these chord changes, so inspiration is plentiful.
There are so many great ways to play “All Of Me” that I’ve found the biggest challenge with playing the tune is to stop directly imitating the classic versions and simply “be myself” while playing it. Here’s my version, complete with the original ending, which is slightly different from the Real Book version.
Enjoy this installment in my Journey Through The Real Book, in which I’m going through the entire book in order, posting one tune per week:
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