View Poll Results: Who do YOU think composed "Donna Lee"?
- Voters
- 64. You may not vote on this poll
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Charlie Parker
32 50.00% -
Miles Davis
32 50.00%
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Though it would be fun to have a poll on this. For reference: Wikipedia's Reliable Sources™ say it's by Miles, but a case can easily be made for Bird's authorship.
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06-19-2016 07:07 PM
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I think one argument in favor of Miles Davis as being the composer is that the tune isn't nearly as interesting/complex/intricate rhythmically speaking as all the (rest of the) tunes Bird composed. FWIW, I agree with that view and voted accordingly.
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There is a pretty detailed discussion of this in a chapter of the book The Bebop Revolution in Words and Music, supporting the claim that Miles Davis wrote the tune.
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Don't forget Fats Navarro's contribution (check out the end of his intro for the Indiana contrafact, Ice Freezes Red):
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It had a complicated origin.
The drummer/arranger/composer, Tiny Kahn wrote a tune similar to Donna Lee that was recorded by the Terry Gibbs Quintet in the early 40s, before Bird or Miles played it.
The Fats Navarro tune mentioned by PMB above is also very similar to DL.
I don't think Miles wrote, or could even play DL, and he stole so many tunes that this was probably just another example of that.
Phil Schaap did a program on WKCR about the song's genesis, with the clarinetist Aaron Sachs, who played Tiny's contrafact (aka 'silent melody') on 'Indiana'.
The truth probably is that it evolved out of either Kahn's or Navarro's ideas, and was played at jam sessions in the 40s, until someone wrote it out in its present form.
When I used to gig with Aaron Sachs, he called it ' the line that they played on Indiana'.
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It doesn't sound like a Bird head to me. I don't know if it was Miles or someone else, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't Bird.
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Bud Powell's impro version of Indiana sounds just like DL..
Last edited by cosmic gumbo; 06-20-2016 at 10:48 PM.
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it doesn't sound like a bird head to me either
sgcim sounds like he has the facts at his fingertips - very plausible - and love the name
its almost like a study or etude - and bird would never have done anything remotely like a study or an etude
its also got a kind of pedagogic thing going on - this is how we make the changes now
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Listening to Fats Navarro and Bud Powell, I think this is almost certainly true.
Originally Posted by sgcim
In which case, it's possible that Miles did write it out—and then realized he couldn't play it.
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Almost any chorus of Bud's solo on Indiana had ideas that were similar to or just as good as DL. In the mid to late 40s, he was at his best- genius.
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I brought this up with L. Coryell awhile back. I mentioned that Miles claimed to have written it. (I think he claims this in his autobiography) L.C. said it was Bird's but there's a different ending that Miles played than the one out in the fake books. L.C. played it for me ... he learned it from someone who gigged with Miles, an organist if my memory is correct. FWIW
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The really interesting discussion by Douglas Parker, "'Donna Lee' and the Ironies of Bebop" in Oliphant's The Bebop Revolution in Words and Music explores the lines of connection between this tune and the various others, and suggests Miles Davis wrote it as a kind of joking send-up of a Fats Navarro line, designed also to answer those who claimed Miles didn't have speed-chops. That Davis then couldn't play it at tempo was itself ironic, and that the tune continued to be played faster and faster adds to the irony.
The last paragraph is interesting:
"Marked cross from the womb and perverse, misnamed and misattributed, misconceived and misconstrued, a feisty emblem of the new music that respectfully preserved the old, homage and satire at once, an affirmation of the composer's performance ability that he was unable to perform, a mighty monument with a moppet's monicker misused to measure machismo — this is Donna Lee, a grab-bag of ironies that spring from many curious sources, ironies that interbreed and somehow continue in effect as time and distance increase." (p. 201)
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I certainly don't know who wrote Donna Lee, but on another thread there was a discussion about 'borrowed chord progressions' and I raised the issue of "contrafacts" which according to Wikipedia is essentially a song where the composer creates a new melody over a well know chord progression. It noted in the article that this was a practice in the '40's amongst bebop musicians in part to avoid having to pay royalties. The article cites Donna Lee as being a contrafact of Indiana. I'm just referencing this because some might like to read the article in question in Wiki for further discussion. Kind of interesting. Maybe that is why the two songs resemble each other but with a different melody.
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Targuit brings up a good point, I think. The list of contrafacts in jazz is a long one, and can be found in various method/theory/etc books. Not confined to, but certainly illustrated by, a common practice in the beginnings-of-bebop period.
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Case in point: Originally Posted by PaulHintz
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I am suggesting Lester Young for the melodic idea check out his solo on Indiana
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"The piece is most likely named after bassist Curly Russell's daughter, Donna Lee Russell.[1][2][5]
Charles Mingus offers an alternative origin in his quasi-autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, which describes a period in his life when he had two "wives" named Donna and Lee-Marie. Allegedly, when he introduced them to Davis, Mingus referred to them as "Donna-Lee" because he perceived them both as a single wife."
Well, that's interesting.
Miles Davis claims he wrote it and I believe him and it was a tribute of sorts. He borrowed heavily from others.
I write contrafacts. It's my big F U to the establishment.
Miles wrote Donna Lee.
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The actual musical content sounds a lot closer to Fats Navarro in terms of phrasing than Bird: the phrases are longer and there aren't any shorter syncopated phrases that appear a lot in almost every Bird head.
The story I heard is that Miles wrote it down based on a bunch of licks Fats Navarro played on "Ice Freezes Red".
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Miles. It's a contrafact of Indiana.
I'm not recommending this video, the breathless excitement's all a bit much really :-)
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I vote for John Lewis. He apparently wrote a few tunes Miles pilfered. Like the original Milestones.
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Charlie Parker was simply incapable of composing something as rhythmically straightforward as Donna Lee.
Miles on the other hand - well DL is rather similar to Little Willie Leaps - also his soloing style at that time?
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Oh, at this rate it was probably Bob Dylan :-)
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The line seems like piano. But I believe in Phil Schaap.
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Well now, interesting. I never thought about this. If you read Mingus' Beneath The Under Dog, he talks about the big love of his life, Donna Lee/Lee-Marie. I looked it up and he's also one of those who claimed to have written that song. He wasn't known for claiming song credit that wasn't his. It's not far-flung. He did SOME contrafacts. And those triplets a lot.
But also in the fray is Fats Navarro. It sounds like he could've written it as well.
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Let's make a vow to resurrect this thread every year to say the same things.
So...the story goes that Miles and Bird couldn't get Bud Powell to play Indiana in Ab, which horn players preferred for that set of changes. Bud insisted on playing it in F, the original key, because he'd been killing that tune with his trio in F. Well, they thought if they wrote a new head for Indiana in Ab, they could trick Bud into playing in the key they wanted to play in. Naming the tune Donna Lee, after Bud's bassist's (Curly Russell) daughter made it easier to get Powell to play it.
Who wrote it? It doesn't matter. Bird and Miles got Powell to play those changes in Ab, that's all that mattered.
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