If I Were A Bell - Frank Loesser

[CyrilleB]

From the stage musical "Guys and Dolls" (1950):

If I Were A Bell - Frank Loesser

[engelbach]

Cyrille,

It's nice that you've got the key used the show, D. The Vocal Score has it in Eb, and the Vocal Selections album and Jazz 1460 have it in F.

I play it in F. My reharm uses more conventional jazz changes; for instance, circle of fifths rather than descending thirds in last few bars.

If I Were A Bell-Rev JE - Frank Loesser

Cheers,
Jer

[CyrilleB]

Sure, they are many versions out there. Notably the Miles Davis one.
However, the original arrangement from the musical is very subtle. Unfortunately the vocal is super loud in that version and we can barely hear the instruments. The descending bass line is quite interesting (I often like the fact that the bass is not always playing the root of the chords).
For people learning standards, it's always good to know where the song comes from and to understand the original harmonic structure. From there, anything can be changed as long as it sounds better or at least as good as the original. That's the way most jazz musicians in those days use to learn songs. There was no "real books". They all learned from the original recordings and then modified few chords here and there to suit their own taste (accidentally or on purpose). Some may prefer those modifications, some not.
Using conventional cycle of 5th chord progressions is convenient especially for those who spent their lifetime learning phrases based on that cycle. But then, many tunes are now sounding too similar because of that.
The key doesn't really matter. The key in that version just happened to be in D major to fit that singer's voice range.