Misty by Erroll Garner

Sometimes the best songs happen in the weirdest places. In 1954, Erroll Garner was on a bumpy flight from San Francisco to Chicago when inspiration struck. His DC-3 was flying through a storm and starting its descent into O'Hare when Garner looked out the window and saw "a rainbow glowing through a haze." Right then and there, he started composing what would become one of the most recorded songs in jazz history.

Garner couldn't read music and taught himself everything by ear. So there he was on the plane, humming this new melody and tapping imaginary keys on his knees.

If you've ever heard Garner play, you know his humming can sound pretty intense — like he's really feeling the music. The passenger sitting next to him summoned a flight attendant, probably thinking something was wrong. But this was just how Garner worked. Critics said he had "an encyclopedic musical mind and an infinitely playful one."

He recorded it a few months later on July 27, 1954, with bassist Wyatt Ruther and drummer Eugene "Fats" Heard. At first it was just an instrumental that nobody really knew about. Then lyricist Johnny Burke got dragged into the project by his pianist Herb Mesick, who kept playing the tune every time Burke walked into the room. Burke finally got fed up and said "Alright, give me the damn music, and I'll do it." He knocked out those lyrics in about 2-3 hours, and suddenly this unknown jazz tune became a classic.

What makes "Misty" so cool is how Garner plays with the harmony. That Abm7 to Db7 to Ebmaj7 move? He's basically borrowing a chord from Eb minor and sneaking it into an Eb major song. Music nerds call this "mode mixture" — you're grabbing some of that darker minor feeling while staying in a major key.

Here's the sneaky part: that Db7 chord is actually the V7 of Gb major, which is related to Eb minor. So jazz players often think in Gb major over the Abm7-Db7 part before landing back on Eb major. That's why it sounds surprising but somehow makes perfect sense.

Garner didn't just play the basic chords either. He added passing diminished chords, walking bass lines, and his signature block chord style. The same progression can sound completely different depending on how you dress it up.

Understanding "Misty's" construction reveals why certain progressions create such powerful emotional responses. The backdoor dominant is a bit complex in explanation but it’s easy to play and it capture "some of the energy and emotion of a different tonal world," as we discussed in the newsletter.

This harmonic approach appears throughout the jazz standard repertoire: Cherokee, Lady Bird, Just Friends, and Stella By Starlight all employ similar techniques. Learning to hear and use these progressions opens up significant compositional possibilities for creating sophisticated harmonic color without losing accessibility.

The song's journey from airplane inspiration to cultural touchstone shows how great musical ideas can take on a life of their own.

"Misty" hit mainstream culture in a big way through Clint Eastwood's 1971 psychological thriller "Play Misty for Me." Eastwood was making his directorial debut and built the entire movie around the song — the title comes from the creepy nightly request an obsessed caller makes to a radio DJ.

The film was a hit and introduced "Misty" to tons of people who might never have heard it otherwise.

What's your experience with backdoor progressions? Have you noticed them in songs you love but couldn't quite explain why they sounded so compelling?