Oleo

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Oleo is a jazz standard written by Sonny Rollins in 1954.

History of origin

In his early days, Sonny Rollins usually only worked out his compositions in the recording studio. He then withdrew to a corner with a few notes to finish the work. It should have been the same with Oleo . The title is named after a cheap margarine that was very popular in the United States at the time.

Characteristics of the composition

As bebop head, Oleo builds on the harmonies of I Got Rhythm and its conventional song form AABA. However, it amazes "with a sophisticated rhythmic confusing trick." The bopy starting motif (bgc) is emphasized like the Morse code for r (short-long-short), starts in the first bar on "1 and" and is continued on "4 and" (bgd), but toned down with an eighth note run. It then comes back from “3 and” in measure 4 (bgc, bgb). "Nevertheless, a melodic whole emerges from these irregular Morse signals"

Original version

The first recording of Oleo took place on June 29, 1954 with the quintet of Miles Davis , whose saxophonist Rollins was at the time (the rhythm section included Horace Silver , Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke ). The A parts were presented in the original version with trumpet, saxophone and bass, while in Part B piano, bass and drums improvised. To this day, this first arrangement of the title has an effect in many versions.

The piece remained in Miles Davis's program for a long time and was taken up again and again, around 1956 with John Coltrane , in 1959 with his classic sextet (Coltrane, Cannonball , Bill Evans ) or in 1965 with his quintet of the 1960s (with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock ). "Over the years, however , Oleo lost the ease of the first recording and gradually transformed into a modal super-tempo piece ."

Sonny Rollins also had the piece in his repertoire after he left Davis, as documented by live recordings since 1959. The recording from the jazz club The Village Gate in the summer of 1962 is particularly outstanding , where he used the title to break into free jazz with Don Cherry and Billy Higgins : The Oleo theme “is only a starting pad for a formally liberated, high one expressive excursion with duet and commentary structures. ”The piece is resolved into a jazz blues at half the tempo.

On the way to the jazz standard

Numerous other musicians have worked with Oleo , from Ray Bryant , Hampton Hawes and Red Garland to George Shearing , Barry Harris and Keith Jarrett . Eric Dolphy interpreted the title in 1961 on the bass clarinet. Numerous other woodwinds followed, from Pepper Adams , Dave Liebman and Bobby Watson to Donald Harrison , Joe McPhee and James Carter . The title is also appealing to guitarists, as evidenced by versions by Pat Martino , Jimmy Raney or Joe Pass as well as those by Mike Stern , Peter O'Mara or Larry Coryell .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f Hans-Jürgen Schaal, Jazz-Standards , p. 370ff.
  2. Song portrait at jazzstandards.com
  3. Spaces Revisited (review) at Allmusic (English)