A romantic song, with a soaring, lyrical melody throughout—very open for expressive interpretation. Though mostly tonal in F major,
Strivin’ certainly has that harmonic intrigue that defines Herbie Nichols’ style. The shift from E7 in the second half of the first measure to A♭7 in the next measure is a good example. The bridge of this 32-measure AABC song alternates A minor and C major.
For his solo piano recording,
Michael Cochrane starts with a four-measure pedal point intro and states the melody quite clearly at a slow swing tempo. Under the melody, he reharmonizes some of the changes, mostly with tritone substitutions and chromatic passing chords. Cochrane replaces the E7 in the first measure with a beat each of Em7 and A7; the fourth measure has Am7 to D7 instead of F to Gm7 for a smoother transition to A♭m7-D♭7 (tritone sub for G7) in the fifth measure.
To hear this song with the original changes, click on Historical Notes for a clip of Frank Kimbrough playing the melody at the
Herbie Nichols Piano Summit.
The full title of this song is
Strivin’ For The Love Of You. This longer title goes well with the first melody phrase; though we haven’t found lyrics, Herbie Nichols could certainly have written them. We don’t know when Herbie wrote
Strivin’, but he mentions it as one of three piano arrangements that he gave to Thelonious Monk in 1946 in his article for Rhythm magazine. This article can be found on Ethan Iverson’s blog Do The Math; check out the historical notes on
Stratosphere for more details.
Frank Kimbrough played a particularly expressive version of this song
[clip] for the
Herbie Nichols Piano Summit, with the original changes as shown in our lead sheet. Though he starts at a slow swing tempo like Michael Cochrane's recording, he picks up the pace by the bridge.
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The Second Six"
