A Beautiful Friendship Chord Chart + Backing Track (Free Download!)
My favorite performance of “A Beautiful Friendship” is by the Hanna–Fontana Band, recorded live at Concord in 1975. For many years, this recording was something of a cult favorite—hard to track down and highly prized, with CDs reportedly selling for as much as $500 only a few years ago. Today, it’s thankfully much easier to access. You can stream the performance on YouTube or find it on Amazon at a far more reasonable price.
That said, the most widely known and recorded version of the tune remains Ella Fitzgerald’s, whose interpretation helped establish the song as a jazz standard.
“A Beautiful Friendship” was written by Donald Kahn, with lyrics by Stanley Styne, and entered the jazz canon in 1956 following Fitzgerald’s performance. While the melody is elegant and direct, it’s the lyrics that give the song its enduring emotional depth.
The tune opens with the now-famous line:
“This is the end of a beautiful friendship…”
At first glance, the lyric sounds like a farewell—but the story quickly turns. By the end of the first verse, the listener hears:
“…and just the beginning of love.”
Rather than mourning a loss, the song traces a transformation: a relationship shifting from a sister/brother or platonic bond into something romantic and perhaps even vulnerable, with just a look. Perhaps that’s why “A Beautiful Friendship” continues to resonate across generations of singers and instrumentalists alike.
Play Along With Our Backing Track to A Beautiful Friendship
Today, I’m excited to share a free chord chart plus a backing track - perfect for practicing, teaching, or adding to your favorite daily warmup routine.
Practice ideas:
Practice one of the licks from our free eBook over this chart!
Bebop language over the dominant 7 chords
Use the Gb Lydian Dominant (or the 4th mode of Db Melodic Minor, same thing) over the second chord, Gb7(#11)
The second chord is a Tri Tone Sub with a #11
Play with the feel and try to lock into the swing sound
Minor Pentatonic, like Carl Fontana in the last 8 bars of his first chorus going into his second chorus
View all our backing tracks on YouTube, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel and social media for improvisation inspiration.
Happy practicing!
Subscribe to our email list to download the chart. You will receive the PDF file immediately (no wait, it will automatically download as a zip file with all the different instrumental parts separated out). Alternatively, scroll down to view the PDFs and backing track online.
