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6.11.7
"Trouble In Mind" Chords: Secondary Dominants Rule in This Blues Classic
The chords to "Trouble In Mind," a great 8-bar blues classic, are mostly secondary dominants, as the chord map below shows.
Like “September Song,” the “Trouble In Mind” progression moves to a chromatic chord from the tonic, right off the top (in the example below, the key is G major, the chromatic chord is F major). But then it moves directly back to the tonic (Figure 97).
A few bars later, the same chromatic chord pokes up again, as a transient chord.
FIGURE 97: Chord Map of “Trouble In Mind” (Words and Music by Richard Jones, 1926)
“Trouble in Mind,” like so many blues tunes, gets its harmonic drive from its use of tritone-infused seventh chords, including a run of secondary dominant sevenths: E7 – A7 – D7.
Even the chromatic chord is a dominant seventh (F7).