Can we stop a moment and consider the voice of Tom Petty? I think people just hear him, say "Tom Petty," and move on, like they're seeing the Big Dipper - a miracle of all the physics that hold our stars in the firmament - for the thousandth time.

The voice of Tom Petty is thin and whispy, rarely hitting anything above a coo. Through his career phases, you can hear singing inflections indebted to Dylan and Reed, but there is a completely unique drowsy calm even in his peppy numbers like "American Girl." It sounds like his thin, straight blonde hair looks. It is the damndest strange voice.

We would not be the same without the odd little thing.

Just as irreplaceable to me, however, is the master songwriting class Tom Petty puts on using, over and over, the most basic guitar chord sets possible. The a-minor, G, D, a-minor combo is one of the chord progressions simply part of the ether - nearly as elemental and old as the Big Dipper itself. But when those chords are struck in this song, it is instantly recognizable as "Mary Jane's Last Dance" and only "Mary Jane's Last Dance." It's the style of the mutes and hammer-ons; it's the perfect fuzz on the instrument; it's the slow but sweet tempo.

The chorus is even simpler. E-minor, A is the core. But you add the morbid vocal harmonies in that song, singing that dour refrain; you make that simple two-chord base yours as you please. Then, as the voices extinguish, you add some great escalating arpeggiations to really sell the thing. I delight in how the vocal melody gives space for instrumental response. I taste mana in the uplifting glory of resolving on an A-major when the famous verses start so strongly on a-minor.

A morticianary harmonica for the win.

Play it in the moonlight.