Doxy (jazz standard)

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Sheet music cover from 1918

Doxy is a jazz composition by Sonny Rollins from 1954, the harmonies of which are based on those of the song Ja-Da by Bob Carleton.

Prehistory of the song

After the American club pianist and composer Bob Carleton wrote the song Ja-Da (Ja Da, Ja Da, Jing, Jing, Jing!) In 1918 , it was recorded in the United States in the last year of the First World War with a recording of the singer Cliff Edwards a hit, but was forgotten afterwards. Artists such as Tommy Ladnier / Sidney Bechet , Bunk Johnson / Don Ewell (1945), Frank Sinatra / Peggy Lee and Muggsy Spanier (1947) took up the topic.

Structure of the song and original recording

In 1954 the tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins took up the harmonies in his composition Doxy . He designed a 16-bar song "with an emphatic two-beat -feeling" in song form AABA, the first in tempo moderato was played. After Rollins recorded it with Miles Davis on June 29, 1954 for his prestige album Bags' Groove , it became a popular theme in modern jazz . Rollins' composition Doxy was based on the chord changes of Carleton's song. "The catchy 16-bar theme, in its structure close to the question and answer scheme of the blues , jumps at the listener with laconic wit." According to Carlo Bohländer , the song title can "just as well [as] a (modern jazz) doctrine - as Derivation from Orthodoxy - as a slang word for an easy, loose girl or even a prostitute ”.

More shots

Doxy became a jazz standard : shortly after the first recording, he was already recognized by Shelly Manne & His Men (with Stu Williamson and Charlie Mariano , 1956), Frank Rosolino (1956), Ray Draper / John Coltrane (1958) and Cal Tjader (1959) recorded in 1958 by Rollins' with a big band conducted by Ernie Wilkins ( The Big Brass for Verve ). In 1962 Sonny Rollins played it again with his quartet with Don Cherry , Bob Cranshaw and Billy Higgins ( Our Man in Jazz for RCA ). In 1967 Dexter Gordon dealt with the topic, even if he approached the piece at a somewhat faster pace: In his solo “he initially orientates himself on the simplicity of the melody, using the minor / major third and the predominant intervals in the theme pure fourths back, emphasizes and plays around them. He clearly has the form in mind - bars 9-12 of each chorus also act as a response to the previous bars. ”In 1968 Phil Woods and His European Rhythm Machine interpreted the title; Branford Marsalis ( Trio Jeepy , 1988), Joe Pass / Red Mitchell (1992), Pee Wee Ellis (1993), Joe Morello (1994) and Fred Hersch (1994) and, in the 2000s, John Bunch and Roger Kellaway presented other versions .

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Carleton, born November 8, 1894 or 1896 in Missouri; † July 13, 1956 in Burbank, California.
  1. ↑ According to Carlo Bohländer , Boyd Senter's Sugar Babe (1925) and Don Redman's How'm I Doin '(Hey Hey) (1932) also had the same chord and time scheme and, in addition to Ja-Da, the basis for the Gus Cannons jukebox number Walk Right In from 1929. Incidentally, Ray Brown's FSR uses the same chord changes as Doxy . see. Camden Hughes Doxy and FSR

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wießmüller, p. 100.
  2. ↑ a b See Bohländer, p. 449
  3. ↑ Horace Silver , Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke worked in the rhythm section .
  4. ↑ a b Ron Cherian: Dexter Gordon's solo on Sonny Rollins' "Doxy" , Jazzzeitung 2007/05, p. 21
  5. ↑ See entry (jazzstandards.com)
  6. ↑ See Rollins' discography at Jazzdisco.org
  7. ↑ See Bielefeld catalog 1985, 1988 & 2001.