Contrafacts that became Facts

[BeBop]

I can't remember the last time I heard "Whispering".  "Groovin' High" I hear often. 

"All God's Chillun Got Rhythm" i hear once in a blue moon.  'Rose Room" or "In a Mellow Tone"?  Perhaps just my musical preferences, but "Donna Lee" hits my ears more often thank "Back Home Again in Indiana", though I hear the latter pretty often.  "I Got Rhythm"?  

You?  

[sgcim]

I found out the hard way that just because you know the changes to the contrafact, that doesn't mean you know the changes to the original it's based on.

Some keyboard player called "How High The Moon" on a gig, and I figured I wouldn't have any trouble with it, because "Ornithology" is called way more often than HHTM, and I knew Ornithology backwards and forwards. But when we played HHTM, I kept screwing up the end of the A section of HHTM, because it's different than Ornithology.

Since the keyboard player was a guy I never knew or worked with before, I figured he was playing the 'square' changes, and not the 'hip' Bird changes that everyone else plays.

When I got home, I looked up the changes to HHTM, and saw the difference between the the two tunes. I was alone at the time, so I had to self flagellate instead of ordering my harem of nubiles to punish me for my both my mistake, and my unjust condemnation of said piano player, in order to satisfy my Opus Dei requirements.

[mikeweil]

I always quarreled with my mates in one band if the changes to Wes Montgomery's "Four On Six" were identical to those of "Summertime".

[sgcim]

1 hour ago, mikeweil said:

I always quarreled with my mates in one band if the changes to Wes Montgomery's "Four On Six" were identical to those of "Summertime".

Yeah, they are, with some subs Wes added.

[JSngry]

 

[BeBop]

I've never really looked at contrafacts as 'pure' or 'sacred' things.  But, in my experience, even Rose Room or Blue Moon, original head, gets a  bunch of harmonic substitutions almost baked in over time.  Or maybe it's just the people I play with.   Heck, Rose Room was written in the 1910s.  Jazz and popular music evolved into some 'more advanced" harmonies over the next few decades.  Then   there are the contrafacts (can't recall at the moment) with a different bridge.

As for "Whispering", it was one of my father's favorite songs.  He played it often. 

[JSngry]

 

That one doesn't get played enough compared to the "fact", imo. Guilty here as well.

[mikeweil]

On 23.7.2020 at 1:49 AM, sgcim said:

Yeah, they are, with some subs Wes added.

Thanks for the clarification (I should have asked back then, ca. ten years ago)! IIRC he even quotes "Summertime" at one point in one of the recordings.

[sgcim]

On 7/24/2020 at 9:34 PM, JSngry said:

 

That one doesn't get played enough compared to the "fact", imo. Guilty here as well.

Great one on "OON" by Fats.

[medjuck]

Are "Peace Piece" and "Flamenco Sketches" contrafacts of "Some Other Time"?  (I guess neither of them follow chord changes.) 

[JSngry]

 

[medjuck]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

 

Tony Bennett does a nice version accompanied by Bill Evans.