Lennie Tristano Personal Recordings 1946-1970: The contrafacts

(Mosaic/Dot Time MD6-272)

When it comes to repertoire, in jazz there's a common device known as "contrafacts", a name coined by James Patrick in 1975 to describe the replacement of the melody from a song by a different one while maintaining the underlying chord progression, as in, for instance, "How High the Moon" becoming "Ornithology" (see this Wiki list for more examples). Patrick's article (published on the Journal of Jazz Studies, vol. 2, no. 2) dealt with the compositions of Charlie Parker, who popularized this device, although it must be said that it was used in the Swing era: one example is "A Smo-o-o-oth One", based on "Love Is Just Around the Corner". Besides artistic considerations, note that this bit of trickery allowed the composer of the new melody to copyright the whole composition, and receive the appropriate royalties, even if the chord progression had been "borrowed".

On Oscar Pettiford's centennial

 

Oscar Pettiford in Newport, 1958
(screenshot from Jazz on a Summer's Day)

While on April 22 we celebrated the 100th birthday of the very well-known Charles Mingus (article/podcast in Spanish), on Friday, September 30th, we did the same for the other great bassist/leader of the era, even though not as well-remembered as Mingus, but, back in the day—he passed away in 1960—as respected and admired: Oscar Pettiford.

Miles Davis: February 4th, 1958—in pictures

On Tuesday, February 4th, 1958, at Columbia Records' studio on Manhattan's 30th St., a session was booked for the afternoon. It lasted from 2 to 6.30 pm, with Harry "Chappy" Chapman, an in-house veteran going back to the early 1940s, manning the control room. 

The musicians and producer involved may have not known it at the time, but this was to be the first of two momentous occasions: this session and the following one, on March 4, were to be the last produced for Miles Davis by George Avakian, who had put him in the map by signing him to Columbia, the label he ended up staying with for thirty years, between 1955 and 1985. 

These sessions on February and March 4 would also be the last ones by Davis's "first quintet", with Red Garland on piano and "Philly" Joe Jones on drums. Together, they'd form Milestones, a, er, milestone in Miles Davis's career, which may have seemed unsurpassable at the time. Not for long, though: his next small group album would be Kind of Blue.

Cover of Milestones. Photograph by Dennis Stock.