Chords for Elton John The Ballad Of Danny Bailey (1909-34)

This is the Ballad of Danny Bailey, which was actually written quite late on in the process.
This was written at the Chateau, in fact, _ and it really shows off D.
Murray's bass playing,
which I think is superb.
He's an underrated and superb musician.
His sense of melody and his sense
of understanding the lyric and the way that the whole thing has to feel was, as far as I'm
concerned, faultless.
I've never really come across a bass player quite as good as him.
So I'm going to leave him in so you can hear a bit of what he's doing on the front,
because it's very unusual what he does.
So here we go, Danny Bailey.
[B] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Some punk with a shotgun [C] killed young Danny Bailey
_ [Bm]
in cold blood [C] in the lobby of a downtown motel.
Here comes [C] D now, listen.
[Bm]
Killed him in anger,
[C] a force he couldn't handle.
[Em]
Helpful a trigger [F] that cut short his life.
[Am] And there's nothing that
can _ [Bb] _ _ _ _ [Am] _ _
_ _ [Bb] _ _ _ _ [Am] _ _
[G] _ [F] stop him now.
Here's the rhythm [Em] section.
_ [D] _ _
_ [G] _ _ [Bm] _ _ _ [E] _ _
[G] _ _ [D] _ _ _ _ [C] _ _
[G] _ _ [Gm] _ _ [D] Oh, [C] I guess the [G] car won [D] again.
Now it's all over Danny [Bm] Bailey. _
_ _ [E] And the [A] harvest is [D] in.
Danny Bailey is John Dillinger, you know, or pretty boy Floyd [Em] or Clyde Barrow.
You know, again, he's my composite gangster.
I just love creating [D] characters.
_ _ [G] _ [Bm] _ _ _ [E] _
[G] The heart.
[D] Everything.
_ _ _ [C] _ _
[G] _ _ [Gm] _ _ [D] This [C] _ _
[G] _ _ [C] is another little section of Danny Bailey, I like to hear, because the way that
Del Newman has tied the orchestra to the backing vocals is really clever.
And there's a the secret
of a good arrangement is not trying to be fancy and throw all kinds of stuff in.
It's a question
of trying to tie everything together.
I mean, I love great arrangers and Del is certainly in that
league.
At the end of that big outro, the [G] piano does some triplets and it [Gm] goes.
_ [A] And that was what
[D] I based the whole of the outro on.
So I've got the basses going on.
Then I've got cellos and
things going.
[Bm] _ _ And [Em] they're just the triplets that [Bm] come in at the very end.
So in another sense,
you see, [C] you pick up something that is relevant to the [Bm] basic thing and then you try and build [C] on that.
Here we go.
E minor.
[Em] E minor.
_ [F] That's a vocal cue for Melton to the band.
_ [Bm] _ _ _ _ [F] _ _ _ _ [Bm] _ _ _ _ [F] _ _
_ [Em] _ _ _ _ [F] _ _ _
[Em] _ _ _ _ [F] _ _ _ _
[Em] _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ [F] _ _
[G] _ _ _ [F] _ _ _ _ [Em] _
_ _ _ [F] _ _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ [G] _ _ [Bb] _ _
[D] _ _ [C] _ _ [G] _ _ [D] _ _