A Night in Tunisia - Dizzy Gilespe
Autor: Rodrigo | Publicado: 2015-04-07T23:28:00-03:00



A Night in Tunisia


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia






"A Night in Tunisia" is a&nbsp;musical composition&nbsp;written by&nbsp;Dizzy Gillespie&nbsp;and&nbsp;Frank Paparelli&nbsp;in 1942 while Gillespie was playing with the&nbsp;Earl Hines&nbsp;Band. It has become a&nbsp;jazz standard.

It is also known as "Interlude",[2]&nbsp;under which title it was recorded (with lyrics) by&nbsp;Sarah Vaughan&nbsp;(from the EP "Hot Jazz", 1953) andAnita O'Day. Gillespie himself called the tune "Night in Tunisia", although the song is usually titled "A&nbsp;Night in&nbsp;Tunisia". It appears as the title track of 30 CDs and is included in over 500 currently available CDs. In January 2004, The Recording Academy added the Dizzy Gillespie &amp; his Sextet’s 1946 Victor recording to its&nbsp;Grammy Hall of Fame.

"Night in Tunisia" was one of the signature pieces of Gillespie's&nbsp;bebop&nbsp;big band, and he also played it with his small groups.

Analysis[edit]

The complex&nbsp;bass line&nbsp;in the "A section" is notable for avoiding the standard&nbsp;walking bass&nbsp;pattern of straight&nbsp;quarter notes, and the use of oscillating half-step-up/half-step-down&nbsp;chord changes&nbsp;(using the&nbsp;Sub V) gives the song a unique, mysterious feeling. The B section is notable for having an unresolved minor&nbsp;II-V, as the V chord leads back into the Sub V of the A section. Like many of Gillespie's tunes, it features a short written introduction and a brief interlude that occurs between solo sections — in this case, a twelve-bar sequence leading into a four-bar&nbsp;break&nbsp;for the next soloist.



Cover versions and adaptations[edit]

One of its most famous performances is&nbsp;Charlie Parker's recording for Dial. (Dial even released a fragmentary take of it simply titled "The Famous Alto Break". See&nbsp;Charlie Parker's Savoy and Dial Sessions&nbsp;for more info.) The tune also became closely identified with&nbsp;Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, who often gave showstopping performances of it with extra percussion from the entire horn section. On the album&nbsp;A Night at Birdland Vol. 1, Blakey introduces the piece with the story of how he was present when Dizzy composed it "on the bottom of a garbage can." The liner notes say, "The Texas department of sanitation can take a low bow."

It has been&nbsp;covered&nbsp;in various styles by various artists, including:



Count Basie
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers&nbsp;in&nbsp;1957&nbsp;and1960
Anthony Braxton
Clifford Brown
Rusty Bryant
Don Byas
June Christy
Miles Davis
Yusef Lateef
Ibrahim Maalouf
Stefano di Battista
Paquito D'Rivera[3]
Maynard Ferguson
Ella Fitzgerald




The Slackers
Stan Getz
Dexter Gordon
Kids These Days
Bobby McFerrin&nbsp;with&nbsp;The Manhattan Transferfeaturing&nbsp;Joe Williams
Lambert, Hendricks &amp; Ross
The Modern Jazz Quartet
Charlie Parker
PE'Z
Bud Powell
Nelson Rangell
Sonny Rollins
Poncho Sanchez
Les Double Six&nbsp;in 1962




Arturo Sandoval
Jimmy Smith
Supersax
Cal Tjader
The Toasters
Lennie Tristano
The Turtle Island String Quartet
Frank Vignola
Victor Wooten
Big Sugar
Sylvain Luc
Tuxedo Junction
Roland Dyens
Snowboy and the Latin Section






Chaka Khan&nbsp;included a version of the tune (with a guest appearance by Gillespie himself as well as an electronically altered sample of Parker's "The Famous Alto Break") onWhat Cha' Gonna Do for Me.

The song was a part of the&nbsp;Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps' show in 1997.

In 2013, the song was featured prominently in the TNT mini-series "Mob City," sung by a female vocalist during an extended nightclub scene.



Bass vamp underpinning the A sections of&nbsp;A Night in Tunisia.