My Cherie Amour - Stevie Wonder
Try playing some of these chords on the guitar! [Intermediate Lesson]
One of my all time favorite songs from Stevie Wonder, is "My Cherie Amour". It is the title track to the 1969 album of the same name. I remember this song being all over the AM radio when I was 6-7 years old. I always liked the jazz chords in this song as they painted the colors of late 1960's pop-urban culture. The other day, I was sitting here at my desk, listening to my 60's playlist, and "My Cherie Amour" came on. For some reason, I decided to get onto www.ultimateguitar.com to see if the chord progression was maybe easy enough to memorize. I knew that I could probably play the chords, I just needed to know the progression. I knew that there were some strange chords at the end of some of the phrases. What I didn't know was just how strange they actually were.
Intermediate Lesson
Okay so, the intro starts off (in 4/4) with the following progression:
Intro
||: F#M7 | BM7 | | C#M7 :|| G#7+5 |
Okay, so we already have the first, kinda strange chord. I decided to play the "G#7+5" like this (xx4554)
Now, the verse:
||: C#M7 | F#7sus F#7 | BM7 | G#7sus G#7 :||
(Chorus?)
| F#M7 | G#13 | Fm7b5/B (x2314x) | A#9 | D#9 | G#13 | C#M7 | | G#13b9 (4x4211) |
Yikes! So, for the "Fm7b5/B" chord, I had to try to figure out a way to get it as close to the "piano melody" chord as possible, which meant I had to sacrifice playing the b5th (B) for the 7th (Eb), to get it to fit the melody going into the next chord: The A#9. (If there's an easier way to play it, I'm open for suggestions.)
The "13b9" is a common jazz chord, usually in a progression with a "dominant 11" played just before it, resolving back to the "I".
Continuing...
Verse 2 is basically the same progression as the first verse. Then, it goes back to the intro. However, at the end of the second "intro", the progression modulates up one-half step. To do this, instead of playing the original G#7+5, you play a simple "A7” chord:
||: F#M7 | BM7 | | C#M7 :|| A7 |
(key modulates up 1/2 step)
Verse 3
||: DM7 | G7sus G7 | CM7 | A7sus A7 :||
| GM7 | A13 | F#m7b5/C (x3425x) | B9 | E9 | A13 | DM7 | |
Outro
||: GM7 | CM7 | | DM7 :|| (Fade)
Hope you enjoyed my outline of this song and learned something new. I'm still practicing the changes to the more challenging chords in this song. I almost have down. Just need to practice it a few dozen times.
The Chord Vocabulary
Here are the chords in "654321 form" in order of appearance, in case you don't know some of them:
F#M7 - 2x332x or xx4321
BM7 - x24342 or 7x887x
C#M7 - x46564
G#7b5 - xx4554
F#7sus - 242422
F#7 - 242322
G#7sus - 464644
G#7 - 464544
G#13 - 4x4566
Fm7b5/B - x2314x
Bb9 - x1011x or 6565xx
Eb9 - x6566x
G#13b9 - 4x4211
A7 - 575655 or x05650
DM7 - x57675 or xx0222
G7sus - 353533
G7 - 353433
CM7 - x35453 or x32000
A7sus - 575755 or x02030
A7 - 575655 or x02020
GM7 - 3x443x or xx5432
A13 - 5x5677
F#m7b5/C - x3425x
B9 - x2122x
E9 - 07677x
* Thank-you for taking the time to learn this song.
Even though my SubStack newsletters are free, my work is supported by my paid subscribers. Please consider an affordable monthly or yearly subscription. Thank-you, Dave.