Cherokee (Ray Noble song)

Cherokee is a jazz standard, the English musician and composer Ray Noble composed in 1938 for its existing five movements Indian Suite after his move to the United States of America. The piece is subtitled Indian Love Song and is a love letter to an Indian girl. Noble wrote the lyrics, the Sweet, the Indian maiden praises from a male perspective.

Structure of the composition

The song is built in the classic song form ( AABA ). In the A- part of the piece, the melody is based on a " Native American " pentatonic scale, which is lined with pretty advanced harmonies while she is deployed conventionally harmonious ' European ' B' section. The rhythm beats at twice the pace so that the chorus is 64 bars. The piece was played at a moderate pace than in the original love song and sang.

Effect story

The Indian Suite was first recorded by Ray Noble and his Orchestra. 1939 took up the bandleader and tenor saxophonist Charlie Barnet Cherokee; for his swing band, it was a new arrangement by Billy May a commercial success (No. 15 on the pop charts ) and was subsequently in modified form ( as a Redskin Rhumba ) to their signature tune. Known as a jazz song was Cherokee by photographs of the big bands of Count Basie and Duke Ellington, but later also by Lionel Hampton and Stan Kenton.

The pleasing swing version but did not sink it. 1946 Peggy Lee interpreted the piece in the movie Jasper in a Jam, 1959, was the musical highlight in the movie The Gene Krupa Story. Sarah Vaughan Also, the piece often sung (first recording 1955).

Kurt Henkels played with the dance orchestras of the station Leipzig Werner Baumgart Arrangement in the style of progressive jazz that attracted international attention. Many musicians of the bebop and Neobop published the piece again and again; famous were the recordings of Clifford Brown and Freddie Hubbard. A very nice saxophone coda contains the version of Don Byas ( 1961). On the CD I Remember Clifford by Arturo Sandoval in 1992 there together with saxophonist Ernie Watts, a version with a tempo of 320 beats per minute. Wynton Marsalis lit the piece on his album Standard Time Vol 1 in two very different versions.

Function as Head Bebop

In the early 1940s discovered Charlie Parker the piece and played it frequently because of its interesting harmonies. In the style of the Bebop but the piece was played much faster. Finally, Parker put a new tune on the slightly modified harmonies and named the piece Ko Ko. He played in 1945 with Dizzy Gillespie, since then his regular trumpeter Miles Davis refused to play the piece with its speed of more than 300 beats per minute; he " did not want to embarrass himself " ( as he wrote in his autobiography ). Often you can Cherokee / Ko -ko still heard at jam sessions, where the pace is often extremely increased.

Not only Ko Ko based on the harmonies of Cherokee, but also Charlie Parker pieces Warming Up a Riff and Home Cooking. Also Serge Chaloff ( Blue Serge ), Donald Byrd (The Injun ), Warne Marsh ( Marsh Mallow ), Horace Silver ( Hillbilly Bebopper ) and Sonny Rollins (B -Quick ) use the harmonies as a starting point for their bebop head.