"Chega de saudade" and "Saxofone, por que choras"

 A few days ago I was playing through the classic choro "Saxofone, por que choras," and had a sudden flash of realization: The harmonic structure of the A section of "Saxofone" is basically the same as the A section of Jobim's "Chega de saudade." I thought this might be worth a blog post.

There are a lot of great versions of "Saxofone" on Youtube. Here are just three of them. 

The 1944 original by the composer, Ratinho:

A modern version by Nailor Proveta:

A cool live version on accordion, by Dominguinhos:

Anyway, the harmonic structure of the "Saxofone" and "Chega" A sections are same in their broad outlines, though "Chega" does have some substitutions and additions. Here's the basic structure of "Saxofone." Compare it to the chords in "Chega" from any fakebook.

Did Jobim consciously lift the chords from the Ratinho tune? It's not unlikely. He certainly used pre-existing chord changes on a number of his other compositions. Does this same chord structure appear in other choros? If any reader spots one, please let me know.

In the book Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World, Ruy Castro describes how Jobim came to write "Chega de saudade" in 1956:

Jobim had written it almost on a whim - a short time before, at the home of Dona Nilza, his mother, he watched the maid sweeping the living room and softly singing a chorinho. He was impressed with the way the girl managed to sing such a complicated song, in 3 parts [note: Ruy Castro meant "3 sections"], when the large part of what one heard on the radio fit into a single musical phrase. He decided then and there that he would also write a chorinho like that.

Weeks later, at his family's place in Poco Fundo, near Petropolis, he got the idea for "Chega de saudade," and when he reviewed what he had written, he realized he had created a kind of samba-canção in three parts, but with a chorinho flavor...

Some comments: 

In referring to 3 "parts," or sections, Ruy Castro is referencing the fact that most choros are composed with a form AABBACCA, or something similar. Each section generally has a key change. "Chega" is in the form ABC, where the A section is 32 bars, the B section is 16 bars, and the C section is the last 22 bars. 

Although I am no expert, I don't hear this piece as a samba-canção. That genre is a slow or medium tempo samba with a sentimental theme. Even the earliest recordings of "Chega" don't have that tempo or feeling.

"Chega de saudade" is often regarded as the first bossa nova. I think of bossa as defined largely by a moderate samba rhythm, employing some North American jazz-style harmony, and played with the guitar style (and vocal style) developed by Joao Gilberto. "Chega" has the essential ingredients: 

•  It was composed by Jobim, using elements of American music such as melodic references to the old standard tune "Bye Bye Blues" in the A and C sections, and to "When You Wish Upon a Star" in the B section. Harmonically, the entirety of the B section of "Chega" is lifted from "When You Wish...". The C section has some bop-like turnaround material in mm. 51-52, and melodic material in mm. 53-57. The song uses a number of II V sequences (although, granted, II V's are not unique to jazz, and it's also true that jazz had influenced choro for decades previously).

•  The first recordings of "Chega" featured Joao Gilberto on guitar; his style was an essential component of bossa. The first recording, by Elizeth Cardoso (on an independent label), did not achieve great popularity. The second recording, by Joao Gilberto (on Odeon, a major label) became a hit. Gilberto's understated vocal style was another defining component of bossa.

 

Here are some versions of "Chega" that are worth checking out.

The first 1958 recording, by Elizeth Cardoso:

The subsequent 1958 hit recording by Joao Gilberto:

The 1963 recording by Jobim on his first U.S. album, The Composer of Desafinado Plays:

The 1995 recording by Joe Henderson and Herbie Hancock, on Joe's album Double Rainbow:

About the title: Jon Hendricks wrote English-language lyrics in the 1960s, and gave it the title "No More Blues." It's a pretty good choice for the title. "No More Blues" is a rough translation of "Chega de saudade," and also reminds me of "Bye Bye Blues." Perhaps Hendricks noticed the melodic similarity. I don't so much care for the English lyrics, though.

Vinicius de Moraes wrote the original Portuguese lyrics shortly after Jobim finished writing the song. According to Ruy Castro,

Years later, Vinicius said that one of the most difficult set of lyrics he had written had been those of "Chega de saudade," due to the arduousness of trying to fit the words into a melodic structure with so many comings and goings.

This song would obviously be challenging to sing. Mar Vilaseca does a great job on this track, and the band is terrific:

"Children's Games,” “Chovendo na Roseira,” and “Double Rainbow”

Here are a few more observations about one of my favorite Tom Jobim compositions (discussed in a previous post).

"Children's Games," "Chovendo na Roseira," and "Double Rainbow" are alternate titles for the same Jobim song. The chronology seems to go like this:

March, 1970 - The song, titled "Children's Games," was first introduced as a part of the soundtrack for the 1970 film The Adventurers. At that point it was an instrumental piece. In composing it, Jobim adapted musical material from two Debussy pieces: "Reverie," and "Le plus que lente, valse." "Children’s Games," along with other melodies by Jobim, was arranged by Eumir Deodato for the soundtrack (apparently this is the reason that some internet sources credit the song’s first recording to Deodato). The song is played with a swing feel in Jobim's versions, but with a straight beat in some later recordings by others.

July, 1970 - Jobim included it in his album "Stone Flower," again with the title "Children’s Games," and again as an instrumental.

1971 - Osmir Milito recorded the same song as "Chovendo na Roseira." It now had lyrics in Portuguese, by Jobim. The new title (in English, "Raining on the Rosebush") reflected the theme of the lyrics. Also in 1971, Luis Carlos Vinhas recorded it with the same title, with the same lyrics. I don't know which of these recordings came first. 

1974 - Sergio Mendes and Brasil ‘77 recorded the song with English lyrics by Gene Lees, a fairly close translation of the Portuguese lyrics. The song was re-titled "Double Rainbow." This new English title referenced the English lyrics.

Also in 1974, the song was recorded by Jobim and Elis Regina as part of the "Elis and Tom" album, under the name "Chovendo na Roseira." Elis sings the lyrics in Portuguese.

1980 - Jobim’s album "Terra Brasilis" included the song as an instrumental, arranged by Claus Ogerman, under the title "Chovendo na Roseira." 

For sound clips of various early versions of "Chovendo," see this nice writeup on the "Brazilliance" website.

For my previous post on "Chovendo," with some Youtube clips including the Debussy pieces, click here. 

Over the years, the song has been recorded by many other artists, under one or another of the three titles. Joe Henderson’s album "Double Rainbow," a tribute to Jobim, oddly enough did not include this song. I wonder if Joe recorded it, but ultimately decided not to include it in the album?

Recently I noticed in Howard Hanson’s Symphony #1 (1922) an appropriation of the same Debussy phrase from "Le plus que lente, valse" (1910) that Jobim used in “Chovendo.” The theme occurs at 2:00 in the clip below:

Interestingly, Howard Hanson gives this phrase to the flute, while the original Debussy piece was for solo piano (Debussy also arranged the piece for strings). In the original 1970 arrangement of "Children’s Games," arranger Eumir Deodato also gives Jobim’s extremely similar phrase to the flute (on the repeat), as does Claus Ogerman in his 1980 arrangement. It’s a perfect orchestration choice for this phrase. 

A few questions are left unanswered: Was the flute orchestration for the phrase Deodato's idea, or Jobim's? Did Deodato or Jobim know the Hanson piece as well as the Debussy? Or was the flute orchestration in Jobim’s piece just a coincidence? And did Hanson realize he was quoting Debussy?

Jobim's "Gabriela" and Villa-Lobos' Prelude #5

Listening to the Villa-Lobos guitar Preludes the other day, I noticed a familiar theme in Prelude #5: The opening melody matches the main theme in Antonio Carlos Jobim's music for the movie "Gabriela" (1983, with Sonia Braga and Marcello Mastroianni, details here). Here's the Villa-Lobos:

Here's the Jobim theme, in a short version sung by Gal Costa:

It's common knowledge that Jobim thought highly of Villa-Lobos (who doesn't?), and Jobim certainly is known to have borrowed from other musical sources, from Chopin to Gershwin to Debussy.

The movie "Gabriela" was based on the 1975 Brazilian telenovela "Gabriela." The 1975 show had a theme by Dorival Caymmi:

Researching this post led me to some very pleasant listening! The Villa-Lobos Preludes, of course. I also found the full movie soundtrack, with a lot of great Jobim music I hadn't heard:

You can hear some fragments of Caymmi's theme embedded in the Jobim soundtrack.

Another Villa-Lobos borrowing in Jobim's soundtrack is a musical sequence that evokes the pattern of the berimbau. Villa-Lobos does this in Prelude #2 (at 0:58) :

                                        

Jobim uses this device at 0:59 in the movie soundtrack, above.

The movie character Gabriela is from the Northeast of Brazil; the berimbau is associated with capoeira, a martial art/dance that is also associated with the Northeast. Here's a nice introductory explanation:

Here's a concert performance of "Gabriela" by Jobim and his "Banda Nova" (Montreal, probably1986). The theme begins at 4:06, the "Northeast" music at 6:54.

"Blues Walk," "Loose Walk," and "Somebody Done Stole My Blues"

Recently I learned that the Bb blues that I knew as Clifford Brown's "The Blues Walk" is also called "Loose Walk," credited to Sonny Stitt. A little internet research turned up the fact that it is also known as "Somebody Done Stole My Blues," written by alto saxophonist Chris Woods.

Chris Woods seems to have been the actual composer; he recorded "Somebody Done Stole My Blues" on February 24, 1953 (Delmark DL-434 - for documentation, click here and scroll to the bottom of the page). If I understand correctly, this session was not released until 1976. Sonny Stitt recorded the same tune as "Loose Walk" on November 16, 1953 (Opus 202, Vogue VJD 555). Clifford Brown recorded "The Blues Walk" on February 24-25, 1955 (EmArcy 26043).

A 1962 Tubby Hayes recording, featuring Sonny Stitt, calls it "Stitt's Tune."

Although somebody apparently did indeed steal Chris Woods' blues, his title, though ironic, was not in response to that, as his recording seems to have been titled that way from the beginning.

I could imagine that the title "Blues Walk" for Clifford Brown's tune might have resulted from a misunderstanding. Perhaps the recording engineer asked Clifford for the title, Clifford called it "Loose Walk," and the engineer heard it as "Blues Walk." That's just a wild guess. The attribution to Clifford could have been a mistaken assumption. A more cynical person might speculate that royalties were involved in some way.

I couldn't find the Chris Woods 1953 recording on Youtube, but here is a 1978 live version with Clark Terry, Horace Parlan, Victor Sproles, and Bobby Durham. Clark Terry is burning. Chris Woods may not have been well known, but he could really play:






Here's Sonny Stitt's 1953 recording:






And of course, the classic Clifford Brown track:






All of the above versions are in Bb concert. Dexter Gordon liked it in F, and called it "Loose Walk":

Nino Rota's La Strada and Dvorak's Serenade for Strings

We often have classical radio on while we do the dishes after dinner. A couple of nights ago we were listening to the Larghetto from Dvorak's Op. 22 Serenade for Strings (1875), when I recognized a familiar melody - the main theme from Fellini's "La Strada" (1954, music by Nino Rota).

I can't resist this tune-detective stuff. Here's the opening to "La Strada." The theme starts at 0:24, right after the Dino De Laurentiis fanfare; the first phrase of the theme is cut off. Regardless of its derivation, it's a beautiful piece of writing :

The theme recurs throughout the movie. If you haven't seen it, or haven't seen it lately, the full film can be viewed here.


And here's the Larghetto from the Dvorak:

Of course, I wasn't the first person to notice the derivation. More info can be found on the Wikipedia entry for "La Strada." 

Update 8/29/22: I ran across another possible inspiration for the "La Strada" theme - "Suite Castellana" by Federico Moreno Torroba, written in 1926 for Andrés Segovia. It's completely plausible that Nino Rota had heard either or both of these pieces. The theme occurs at 1:40 in this recording:

Some excellent Charlie Parker analysis

This article goes on my list of first-rate Parker scholarship: Four Studies of Charlie Parker's Compositional Processes, by Henry Martin, published in the July 2018 issue of the journal "Music Theory Online."

Martin studies four Parker compositions that show some evidence of Parker's compositional processes. His article covers the tunes and issues below, in considerable detail:

"Ornithology" has been credited to Benny Harris, to Parker, or to a collaboration of the two. The end of the song was changed (for the better) in later Parker performances. Martin considers the lineage of melodic motives used in the tune as they occur in earlier recordings by Harris, Parker, and others. In the end, it's not possible to positively ascribe authorship to one or the other, though it would seem most likely that Harris wrote the tune, basing the beginning on one of Parker's licks, which in turn derives from Lester Young. The revised ending seems to have definitely come from Parker.

"My Little Suede Shoes" is a combination and reworking of two c.1950 French pop songs, "Le Petit Cireur Noir" and "Pedro Gomez." I discussed this in a previous post, but Martin presents much more detail. Parker's compositional process here consisted of altering and combining the two songs into a coherent and melodically satisfying new tune. 

With "Red Cross" and "Blues (Fast)," we have the opportunity to observe Parker reworking tunes during recording sessions. Parker changes the melodies over the course of subsequent takes, until a final satisfactory result is reached. Martin examines the development of each tune in detail.

Going beyond the discussion of Parker's composition process in these four pieces, Martin considers the question of what exactly "composition" means in a jazz context, proposing a wider definition of the term, including instances of what one might otherwise consider improvisation. It's an interesting question; to me it immediately brings up the issue of what can be copyrighted. Martin has the good sense to stop short of this difficult, thorny question.

Anyone interested in Bird scholarship really should check out this article; a brief review can't do it justice. Just click the link at the beginning of this post.

Monk's "Dreamland"

If you haven't yet read it, be sure to check out Ethan Iverson's recent post, Thelonious Sphere Monk Centennial: Primary and Secondary Documents. It's an excellent overview of Monk's recording career, his compositions, Monk biographies, articles, tribute recordings, and Monk-related documents.

I'd like to offer some comments on just one song mentioned in the article, "Dreamland." Monk may or may not have written it. Recordings exist from 1958, 1969 (available as part of a Mosaic Records DVD box set), and 1971. Monk never copyrighted it.

Iverson posts two charts for Monk's "Dreamland," one that was done by Paul Motian (without barlines), and a version re-charted by Bill Frisell (with barlines). You can find the charts towards the end of Iverson's article, along with a discussion of the tune. 

Here's the 1958 version. Monk did not approve this track for release, and it was not included in the original "Thelonious in Action" album pictured below; Orrin Keepnews eventually released the track on an album called "Blues Five Spot" (1984), after Monk passed away in 1982. On the 1984 album it was titled "unidentified piano solo."

Here is Monk's only studio recording of "Dreamland," done in London for Black Lion Records in 1971: 

When the 1971 track was released, the record company titled it "Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland." Most people who are familiar with "Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland" would call this a mistake, as Monk's tune seems to have nothing to do with the old 1909 waltz that has been recorded countless times over the years. 

Although Monk's tune is definitely not "Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland," I do hear some similarity to the original verse (introductory lead-in) of the 1909 tune. Here are Elizabeth Wheeler and Harry Anthony singing the tune, starting with the verse, recorded in 1909:

Here are the first two pages of the original sheet music, showing the verse (click to enlarge):

Here are the opening bars to each song, with "Meet Me..." transposed to Eb, for easier comparison. In "Meet Me...," if you remove the third note in bars 1, 3, 9, and 11, you will see a melodic curve very much like "Dreamland."

It seems at least possible that Monk took the melodic shape of the verse to "Meet Me" as a starting point, then wrote his own tune. In his recordings, Monk plays "Dreamland" straight through as an arrangement, with no real improvised solo, much as he did in his performances of "Crepuscule With Nellie."

Iverson writes that he is "unconvinced that ['Dreamland'] is not just some old parlor piano tune we haven’t found yet, mainly because the bones of Monk’s original ballads are so much more idiosyncratic than the quite conventional 'Dreamland.' " That's a good point - the changes don't resemble other Monk tunes - but the chord progression in Monk's "Dreamland" is not in a style you'd typically find in a 1910s or 1920s parlor tune. To me, the harmony sounds more 1930s or 1940s (of course, Monk might have done some reharmonizing).

Note that the melody of "Dreamland" falls on the #11 of a dominant chord in bars 4 and 8, and on the b9 in bar 16. Also note the pickup/triplet shape in bars 3 and 7. These are characteristic bop features, although it's always possible that they were added as part of a Monk interpretation.

There's a notation at the top of the first page of the 1909 sheet music that cautions us:

PLEASE NOTE:--Owing to the phenomenal and unprecedented success and sale of this beautiful song, there have been placed on the market, imitation "Dreamland" songs with very similar titles.

This song written and composed by LEO FRIEDMAN and BETH SLATER WHITSON is THE ORIGINAL song of this title and WE CAN PROVE IT.

If Iverson is right that Monk's "Dreamland" is an old parlor tune, one might guess that it could be one of those "Meet Me Tonight" knockoffs that the sheet music warns us about - but the style of both melody and changes is all wrong for 1909. 

In his definitive biography Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, Robin D. G. Kelley writes,

"Dreamland" has been mislabeled and misrepresented many times...I have reviewed both songs ["Meet Me..." and a song titled "Dreamland" by Goetz and North], along with dozens of other songs with the title "Dreamland" (Harry L. Newman's "Take Me Back to Dreamland," Harold Arlen's "Hit the Road to Dreamland," Francis Paul, "Dreamland," ad nauseum). None of these songs bear any resemblance to what Monk played on those two occasions. After ten years of searching, querying, and digging, I have come to the conclusion that...it is a Monk original. Perhaps it is a sketch of a song never quite finished.

My own opinion is that there's a pretty good case that Monk composed the tune, taking off from a paraphrase of the verse to "Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland."


Finally, here's one last video, a 1950s Les Elgart big-band version of "Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland." Sitting in the sax section of local big bands, I played this arrangement countless times, but it took a few gigs before I recognized the original melody buried in the arrangement:

Michel Legrand and Saint-Saëns

Here are a couple of terrific performances: Michel Legrand playing his song "I Will Wait for You," and Itzhak Perlman playing Camille Saint-Saëns' "Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso."

Both are great listening, but I'm posting these because I had a tune-detective moment with the rondo theme that occurs at 1:40, 3:08, and 5:27 in the Saint-Säens video. Maybe it's a stretch?

Coltrane, Morton Gould, Francis Poulenc, and Harold Shapero

A friend (thanks, Carlos) just pointed me at a great "Deep Dive With Lewis Porter" article on the inspirations behind John Coltrane's composition "Impressions." Briefly put, Porter demonstrates that the melody of "Impressions" is a paraphrase of a section of Morton Gould's "Pavanne" (1938). The chord structure, of course, is borrowed from Miles Davis' "So What." For more detail on this, check out the Porter article. It's a great read, with plenty of sound clips. I'd heard about Coltrane's use of "Pavanne" before, but the following was news to me:

In a follow-up article, Porter cites the source of the melody to Coltrane's "Big Nick": Francis Poulenc's "Impromptu #3." See Porter's article for recorded examples.

In a comment below the second article, a reader points out that the source of the melody to the first half of "Giant Steps" was pretty definitely Harold Shapero's String Quartet (1941). Check the recording below! Shapero moves his theme through quite a few transpositions, including some chromatic third relations, though he doesn't follow "Coltrane changes."


 

The second half of "Giant Steps,” both chords and melody, is definitely borrowed from Nicholas Slonimsky. This is widely known (see this previous post for an image).  It was a monumental achievement for Coltrane to combine the Shapero melody, Coltrane changes, and the Slonimsky example into a cohesive whole, not to mention working up the technique and applying the improvisational creativity necessary to perform it.

While checking other sources for this post, I ran across an assertion that the intro to "So What," written by Gil Evans, is borrowed from Debussy's "Voiles." I hear Debussy, but I don't particularly hear that piece in the "So What" intro. I also read in several places that "So What" derives in some way from Ahmad Jamal's recording of Gould's "Pavanne" - I'd have to be convinced. However, it's a fact that the horn riff in James Brown's "Cold Sweat" was derived from "So What" - as stated by Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis, who wrote the horn parts.

Update 3/28/21 - Regarding "So What," see the comments below. It seems pretty clear that Miles used the template of Ahmad Jamal's "New Rhumba" (not the Jamal "Pavanne" recording cited in Wikipedia), distilling it into the modal, ultra-cool piece that had so much to do with setting the mood of Miles' "Kind of Blue" album. 

"La Fiesta," "Someday My Prince Will Come," and "Olé"

A couple of days ago I was driving home from teaching, and turned on KCSM, our Bay Area jazz station. Miles' recording of "Someday My Prince Will Come" was playing, and I tuned in just in time for John Coltrane's solo. The first notes in the solo are pretty much exactly the beginning of the second theme in Chick Corea's "La Fiesta." I had never noticed that before.

Here's the Miles recording on Youtube. Coltrane's solo starts at about 5:50.

Here's a transcription of the solo, scrolling while the music plays. (Sorry I can't just post these videos here - apparently Sony has blocked any access except viewing them directly on Youtube.)

Here's Chick Corea's tune. The second theme (the part in question) starts at 1:45:

Both tunes are in 3/4 time, and the chord progressions are the same for four measures. The Miles recording was done in 1961; "La Fiesta" was recorded in 1972. It seems pretty clear that Corea got some initial inspiration from the Miles/Coltrane recording. 

As you might expect, I was not the first person to notice this. Here's a discussion from 2003; check out the first comment from Mike Fitzgerald (fourth comment from the top), with some very good information on this question. The comments also point out the similarity of the first theme of La Fiesta to the Coltrane tune "Olé" (recorded in 1961 also). Coltrane's "Olé" definitely uses the same chord progression as the first theme in "La Fiesta," but as Fitzgerald points out (quoting Lewis Porter's Coltrane bio), the progression was not original with Coltrane. 

The song "El Vito" is a likely source, both for "Olé" and for the first theme of "La Fiesta":

"Aquarela do Brasil" and "Song of India"

I'm certainly not the first person to notice similarities between Ary Barroso's "Aquarela do Brasil" and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Song of India," but I can't resist yet another tune-detective post.

Here's the first recording of "Aquarela," by singer Francisco Alves (1939), with an arrangement by Radames Gnatelli, using big-band instrumentation with samba percussion:

Many of the accompanying riffs in this arrangement, which I'm guessing were written by Gnatelli, have become an integral part of the song as it is usually performed. Click the link above for more about Gnatelli; he was an accomplished composer, arranger, and performer, who had a distinguished career in both popular and classical genres.

Wikipedia has a nice article on "Aquarela," including Ary Barroso's story of how it came to be composed, its path to success, and some notes on the political aspects of the song:

This song, because of its exaltation of Brazil's great qualities, marked the creation of a new genre within samba, known as samba-exaltação (exaltation samba). This musical movement, with its extremely patriotic nature, was seen by many as being favorable to the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas, which generated criticism towards Barroso...the Barroso family, however, strongly denies these claims...

Anyway, back to the similarities. Here's Rimsky-Korsakov's "Song of India," more properly called "Song of the Indian Guest," from his opera "Sadko":

1) Compare the theme at 1:00 in "Aquarela" with the theme at 2:54 in "Song of India."

2) Compare 1:22 in "Aquarela" with 3:30 in "Song of India."

The themes in 1) above are more obviously similar, but the themes in 2) show a resemblance also - a high held note on the fifth of the key, chromatic descent of a third, then the held note and chromatic line repeated twice more.

There was an earlier instance of the use of Rimsky-Korsakov's piece in popular music. In 1937 Tommy Dorsey released his big-band version of "Song of India":

In Dorsey's song, the theme I have called "2" is the featured melody; you can hear references to theme "1" in Bunny Berigan's trumpet solo. Dorsey's bridge uses yet another theme from Rimsky-Korsakov's piece (this one is not found in "Aquarela").

This recording, with "Marie" on the flip side, was a major hit for Dorsey.

As a side note, Wikipedia cites "Beautiful Ohio" (1918), the Ohio state song, as borrowing a motif from "Song of India." I hear it, but Barroso's use of the theme in "Aquarela" seems a lot more obvious. On the other hand, the reference in "Ohio" to Stephen Foster's "Beautiful Dreamer" is pretty blatant.

There have been countless versions of "Aquarela," but one of the most subtly perfect interpretations has to be Joao Gilberto's:

Charlie Parker's "Cool Blues" and Bizet's "Carmen"

Charlie Parker's "Cool Blues" is a "riff blues" in C, first recorded in 1947. 

The riff itself was in Parker's vocabulary at least as early as his March 28, 1946 recording session in Los Angeles for Ross Russell's Dial label; he uses the lick in his "Yardbird Suite" solo. About a year later, on February 19, 1947, Russell set up a recording session with Parker, pianist Errol Garner, and Garner's rhythm section. Parker had recently been released from Camarillo State Hospital. He was relaxed and refreshed, and playing beautifully. One of the tunes recorded was "Cool Blues," a setting of the riff as a 12-bar blues. Here are the four takes from this session:               

These recordings of "Cool Blues" were titled differently in various Dial releases: "Cool Blues," "Hot Blues," and "Blowtop Blues."

In the biography Charlie Parker: His Music and Life, author Carl Woideck mentions some possible sources of the "Cool Blues" riff. One possibility is the very brief use of a similar lick in Duke Ellington's "Blue Ramble" (1932). The riff occurs at 1:40 and 1:58:

Woideck also quotes Phil Schapp's liner notes for The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings of Charlie Parker as stating that "Cool Blues" is "similar to a set-closing theme...reportedly used several years beforehand by bassist John Kirby's sextet." In a telephone conversation with Woideck, Schaap also mentioned that "at least one musician who remembered the Kirby theme sang it to Schaap in a way similar, but not identical to, Parker's version."

A footnote in Schapp's liner notes:

Bird told Benedetti that his title for "Cool Blues" was "Blues Up and Down." This same blues theme was used earlier by the John Kirby Sextet to take the "Biggest [Little] Band in the Land" off the stand. Bird learned it by hearing the Kirby Sextet and through his friendship with Russell Procope, that group's alto saxophonist.

This speculation on the origin of the tune does seem credible. However, there is another likely source, in Georges Bizet's opera, "Carmen."

The "Cool Blues" riff shows up briefly, but unmistakably, in Act 2 of "Carmen." In this recording, it occurs from 1:16:22 to 1:16:52:

Woideck added the Bizet information in the (later) Italian edition of his Parker biography, mentioning also that the Kirby group was known for its jazz interpretations of European classical music. The Italian edition also mentions that "[the Kirby set-closing theme] does not appear in any of the official records of the orchestra for various labels, and the search for live performances and radio tunes for the band has not identified any version as yet."

Schaap makes a good case that Parker might have adapted the Kirby melody. But Parker might equally well have lifted the theme directly from "Carmen" - he was definitely a classical music fan. Or both, or neither. The Ellington fragment is pretty fleeting, and seems less likely as a source.

Quite a few recorded live versions of "Cool Blues" exist; below are four from Youtube:

With Fats Navarro and Bud Powell (1950):

 "The Washington Concerts" (1953) (note the "Habanera" quote):

"Summit Meeting at Birdland" (1953), with John Lewis:

With a very young Chet Baker (1953):

That "A Train" Lick, Part 3 - Jelly Roll Morton's "Jungle Blues"

My friend Adam has run across another, even earlier instance of "that A Train lick." In previous posts, we had it traced back to 1929. But here it is in 1927, in Jelly Roll Morton's "Jungle Blues."

The lick as used in "A Train":

You can hear a very similar phrase in "Jungle Blues" at 1:54, 2:37, and 3:09.

Here are links to my two previous posts on our "tune detective" project regarding the A Train lick:

That "A Train" Lick, Part 1 - Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, Billy Strayhorn, and Tiny Grimes

That "A Train" Lick, Part 2 - Jimmie Rodgers!

In "Jungle Blues," another interesting melodic phrase is the one played at 1:40 and 3:00. This is the same lick that was the basis for the first published blues, "I Got the Blues" (Anthony Maggio, 1908). These notes are repeated over and over:

 The sheet music for "I Got the Blues" and some history are in this post:

"I Got the Blues" (1908), the first published blues

The "I Got the Blues" lick was subsequently appropriated by W. C. Handy for the third section of his "St. Louis Blues" (1914). It's kind of archetypal - b3 to 3 to 1. I'm sure it goes back a lot further than 1908. Here's how Handy used it in "St. Louis Blues":

That "A Train" Lick, Part 2 - Jimmie Rodgers!

Don't blame me. My friend Adam (last name withheld) just came up with this one. Adam is the one who started our tune-detective project on earlier use of "that A Train lick" (see Part 1 here),

Adam's new example is Jimmie Rodgers' "Blue Yodel No. 1," a big hit in 1928 - before any of the other tunes listed in my previous post.

Ridiculous? A year-end joke? Maybe! But...

The A Train lick -

Jimmie Rodgers, "Blue Yodel #1," 1928. The yodeling lick is at 0:30 -

The yodeling phrase actually does resemble "that A Train lick" in several ways: a leap up to the third of the key, back down to the fifth, then chromatically down to the fourth, leap to the second, moving to the tonic (delayed by several notes in "Blue Yodel"). It is similarly placed, at the end of the musical phrase.

Here's the Wikipedia page for Blue Yodel #1 (AKA "T for Texas"). Jimmie's recording sold half a million copies. He built on the success of "Blue Yodel #1," recording eight more Blue Yodels for Victor between 1928 and 1930, as well as many other titles. Louis Armstrong and Lil Hardin Armstrong were featured on the last one, "Blue Yodel #9." All the Blue Yodels are on YouTube.

Of course, Jimmie didn't invent yodeling, either. It was not just an alpine thing, but was part of "Western" music in the 1920s-1930s. Roy Rogers was pretty accomplished too; supposedly as a youth he used yodeling to communicate on the family farm.

However, from what I can find on the web, there seems to be disagreement over whether yodeling was actually something cowboys did to communicate on the range, or whether it was just a showbiz gimmick, perhaps inspired by alpine yodeling in vaudeville.

You'd have to at least concede that this yodeling lick was "in the air" by the 1930s, when most of the other tunes on our list were written. Maybe the lick just sort of floated into Harold Arlen's creative mind, and so on, down the line:

Blue Yodel #1 - 1928
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea - Harold Arlen, 1931
Shuffle Off to Buffalo - Harry Warren, 1933
I've Put all My Eggs In One Basket - Irving Berlin, 1936
Take the A Train - Billy Strayhorn, 1939
Tiny's Tempo - Tiny Grimes, 1946

(Here's a "maybe," also contributed by Adam: Stardust - Hoagy Carmichael, 1929)

I know - you are thinking, "Give me a break!" - right? But like I said, you can't blame me for this one.

Happy New Year!

That "A Train" Lick, Part 1 - Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, Billy Strayhorn, and Tiny Grimes

My friend Adam called my attention to the Irving Berlin song "I'm Putting All My Eggs In One Basket" (1936), which contains a phrase that strongly resembles one in the A section of Billy Strayhorn's "Take The 'A' Train" (1939). Adam wondered where that lick might have originally come from.

Here's the lick from "Eggs":

Berlin wrote "Eggs" for the Fred Astaire movie "Follow the Fleet":

I'm sure you already know the "A Train" lick:

Duke Ellington's classic 1941 recording:

I didn't have a good answer for Adam about the origin of the lick, but I did recall another tune with a similar lick, "Tiny's Tempo." Guitarist Tiny Grimes recorded this one in 1946, with Charlie Parker as a sideman:

This week I've been re-reading Alec Wilder's landmark book, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950(1972). If you are at all interested in jazz standards, you owe it to yourself to read it. It's extensively researched, authoritative, and amusingly opinionated. Wilder's opinions are pretty well-informed - he was himself a successful composer, both classical and popular, and personally knew some of the composers he wrote about.

In his Harold Arlen chapter, Wilder mentions an early Arlen tune, "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" (1931), calling this phrase "a marvelous riff which I must believe was written before the lyric":

That's the piano part, from the published sheet music, copied from Wilder's book. "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" was written for a 1931 Cotton Club show, "Rhyth-mania." Arlen was familiar, and comfortable, with the jazz world. He was adept at incorporating blues licks and blues harmonies into his compositions - I've always enjoyed that aspect of Arlen's work. Note the Ab in bar 2, a moment of a b3 blue note. As Wilder notes, Arlen was pretty advanced for his time.

Here are the dates of the songs mentioned:

"Between the Devil" - 1931
"Eggs" - 1936
"A Train" - 1939
"Tiny's Tempo" - 1946

Harry Warren's Shuffle Off to Buffalo (1933) has a related lick - a simpler version, without the initial reach to the higher note, but with the chromatic movement from the fifth to the fourth, followed by a reach up, to the second and the tonic. As in the first 3 tunes above, the lick comes at the end of the musical phrase.

"Between the Devil" is the earliest instance that I can find of any lick resembling this one. I have to wonder if it was a part of the jazz vocabulary of the day, even before Arlen wrote the song.

If any blog readers can think of an earlier example, please leave a comment at the end of this post!

Update 12/27/16:

Here's a similar sequence from 1929. I was just reading Wilder's chapter on Hoagy Carmichael. I'm not sure if this counts, as the melodic sequence is placed differently, both harmonically and in its placement in the measure, but I'd be remiss not to mention it:

About this musical example, Wilder comments, "If ever there was an instrumental phrase, as if improvised at that..."

Update 12/30/16: Click here for That A Train Lick, Part 2 - Jimmie Rodgers!

As a side note, this post led me to check out Tiny Grimes' biography. Tiny played with Art Tatum in the early 1940s, recorded four tunes with Charlie Parker in 1946, and later recorded with Johnny Hodges, Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet, Pepper Adams, Roy Eldridge, and Earl Hines. Tiny Grimes is also regarded as a contributor to the origins of rock and roll:

Trivia: According to Wikipedia,

In the late 1940s, he had a hit on a jazzed-up version of "Loch Lomond", with the band billed as Tiny "Mac" Grimes and the Rocking Highlanders and appearing in kilts. This group included top tenor saxman Red Prysock and singer Screaming Jay Hawkins.

Screaming Jay (remembered for his 1956 hit, I Put a Spell On You) was featured on vocals, sax, and keyboards with the Rocking Highlanders. Jay doesn't sing on the "Loch Lomond" track, but if you want to check it out, "Loch Lomond" is from 8:00 to 11:05 in the first recording below. The saxophones get an interesting bagpipe effect in the intro:

Here's one last one - Tiny Grimes with Art Tatum and Slam Stewart:

"Batida Diferente," "Satin Doll," and a Couple of Other Songs

Here's another bossa nova with American antecedents - "Batida Diferente," by Durval Ferreira and Mauricio Einhorn (English - "A Different Beat"). "Batida" was featured on Cannonball Adderley's 1962 album, Cannonball's Bossa Nova.

Brazilian bossa nova musicians were very much aware of, and influenced by, American jazz of the 1950s and "Golden Age" standards of the '20s to '50s. It's hard to miss the resemblance of "Batida's" bridge to "Satin Doll" - not only the chords, but also the starting note of each 4-bar phrase, and the fact that the second phrase is a repeated sequence of the first. Here's the bridge; the A section is in the key of G.

The chord pattern here (II V I to the key of the IV, then II V I up a step, leading to the V of the original key) is common enough in standards to have been dubbed the "Montgomery-Ward bridge." Nowadays we might have called it the "Walmart bridge."

The harmonic progression in the A section of "Batida" is pretty much the same as "Do Nothing 'til You Hear From Me," or "The Nearness of You."

Last week I brought in a chart of "Batida Diferente" for my Saturday adult combo class to play, and a couple of the band members noticed some other song resemblances. A stretch maybe, but the first phrase of the melody in "Batida's" A section isn't too far from this one:

"Be My Love" was composed in 1950 for Mario Lanza by Nicholas Brodzsky, lyrics by Sammy Cahn. It sold over 2 million copies. Ferreira and Einhorn certainly would have known the tune, but who knows?

The melody of the A section of "Batida" also resembles the original "Star Trek" theme (composed by Alexander Courage), but because the TV series didn't come out until 1966, it's disqualified as a "Batida" source. Maybe Courage listened to Mario Lanza (it's common knowledge that the harmony to "Star Trek" seems to have been lifted from Johnny Green's "Out of Nowhere").

Larry, our Saturday pianist, noticed that the bridge to "Batida" matches There! I've said It Again, a tune popularized by Vaughan Monroe in 1945, and also recorded by Jimmy Dorsey, Nat Cole, Bobby Vinton, and others. The chords are "Montgomery-Ward," but the melody also almost exactly matches in bar 1-2 and 4-5 of the bridge.

Incidentally, Mauricio Einhorn, co-composer of "Batida," is is an excellent jazz harmonica player. Here he is appearing with Toots Thielemans:

"My Little Suede Shoes," "Pedro Gomez," and "Le Petit Cireur Noir"

In his liner notes for the newly-released Charlie Parker collection "Unheard Bird," Phil Schaap discusses the origin of "My Little Suede Shoes." Apparently Parker created the tune by combining two French pop songs, "Le Petit Cireur Noir" and "Pedro Gomez." The "Suede Shoes" title comes from the story that is told in the lyrics of "Le Petit Cireur Noir."

Check it out for yourself. "Pedro Gomez" contributes the A section of Parker's tune; "Le Petit Cireur Noir" contributes the bridge. The two Giraud songs were flip sides of the same 78 rpm single:

The music to "Pedro Gomez" was composed by Hubert Giraud, with lyrics by Roger Lucchesi. The music to "Le Petit Cireur Noir" was composed by Giraud and Lucchesi, lyrics by Annie Rouvre. Both songs were published in 1950.

The French lyrics to "Pedro Gomez" are here. This song tells the story of Pedro, who is taking a boat from Bahia and going to Paris. He packs up his cuica and other samba instruments. The song lists the instruments ("one needs at least 10 instruments like that" for a good samba). When the boat arrives it takes Pedro 2 1/2 hours to get through customs, because the officers suspect contraband, and "at least four taxis" to take his belongings into Paris. "With a well payed gig at Lido he replaces 22 gauchos...By himself he creates so much rhythm that all women go nuts." He spends his money, and two months later is broke. He starts to sell his instruments, "starting with the pandeiro... tamborim, small bongos...soon was the turn of the conga, his bells, tam-tam, etc....finally his parrot...so he can buy a ticket back." Pedro returns to Bahia by himself "with his small cuica." Note the vocal cuica imitation in the recording. (Thanks to my friend Carlos for the translation.)



The French lyrics to "Le Petit Cireur Noir" are here. This song is about a shoeshiner, who complains that the fashion for suede shoes is putting him out of work. It's in dialect (Carlos thinks Caribbean). "But one day I found in a cafe terrace a well stuffed wallet...nobody claimed it. With it I bought a shoe store. I now sell pretty shoes...and since then I now like the suede shoes..." But he doesn't forget his old job: "...and when I go to the cafe I put on my old shoes... leather shoes, well worn out...so I can have them polished and give big tip...This little story has a moral, that a little black shoeshiner can very well make it in life...and to make it, all he needs is to find at the cafe terrace a well stuffed wallet."

Hence, the title to Parker's tune.

According to Phil Schaap's notes, Parker was in Paris in November 1950, where he heard an artist/entertainer named Lobo Nocho sing "Le Petit Cireur Noir" (check Wikipedia's very interesting biography of Nocho). Bird tracked down a copy of the Trio Do-Re-Mi recording (the Youtube videos above), and combined the songs into "My Little Suede Shoes."

In his blog, Doug Ramsey expresses the opinion that Parker borrowed the chords and structure for "My Little Suede Shoes" from "Jeepers Creepers." I agree that the chord progressions for the A sections of the two songs match, but the evidence for Parker using the two Giraud songs as his source is kind of overwhelming. The chord progression is basic. The melody of "Shoes" matches Giraud's songs closely, and "Jeepers" not at all. There's a comment from a reader at the end of Ramsey's blog post quoting Annie Ross as saying that she had owned the record of the Giraud tunes, and Parker had heard it at Kenny Clarke's house. The poster does not say if this was in Paris or not. According to Wikipedia, Clarke did not move permanently to Paris until 1956.

Brian Priestley, in his book Chasin' the Bird: The Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker, states that "My Little Suede Shoes" is "actually a song from the French Caribbean that Charlie picked up in Paris entitled 'My Little Suede Shoes' or 'Mes Souliers de Daim.'" This would appear to be incorrect information.

I'd always felt that "Shoes" was stylistically unlike anything else Parker ever wrote. I guess this explains it.

As a side note, "Pedro Gomez" is obviously intended rhythmically as a samba, and comes off in the Trio Do-Re-Mi recording as a sort of 1950 French pop samba. Parker's recording has more of a Cuban flavor. When Americans play Latin nowadays, you are more likely to hear a bossa nova rhythm. I guess it all works here.

The "Unheard Bird" CD is all great stuff. It includes three alternate takes of "My Little Suede Shoes," plus the originally released master, as well as over 50 more previously unreleased studio takes from various other recording sessions. More on that in a future post.
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