Bird and Diz: “All the Things You Are”

On one of my CDs I have an old 1945 version of Charlie Parker playing “All the Things You Are,” with notes that it came from “Early Bird: The Best of the 1945 Studio Recordings.”  I accidentally hit the “play button” on my iTunes site, where I put it, and listened to the song, immensely impressed. It’s done a group, but the main player on my version is Bird (his pal Dizzy Gillespie is on trumpet).

Sadly, I couldn’t find that version of the song on YouTube, but I found a couple by Diz and Bird that were close, and both show Parker’s tremendous dexterity and improvisation. I’ve put two versions below.  For some reason, jazz greats like these always recognized which popular songs, like this one, could be turned into jazz classics. But the jazz-ability of pop songs is also part of their structure (see below):

“All the Things You Are” was written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein and introduced in a play in 1939.  The Wikipedia entry says this:

The chorus has become a favorite with many jazz musicians. The chorus is a 36-measure AA₂BA₃ form with two twists on the usual 32-bar AABA song-form: A₂ transposes the initial A section down a fourth, while the final A₃ section adds an extra four bars.

. . .The modulations in this song are unusual for a pop song of the period and present challenges to a singer or improviser, including a semitone modulation that ends each A section (these modulations start with measure 6 in the A and A₂ sections and measure 9 of the A₃ section), and a striking use of enharmonic substitution at the turnaround of the B section (last two measures of the B Section), where the G♯ melody note over a E major chord turns into an A♭ over the F minor 7 of measure 1 of section A₃.

Because of its combination of a strong melody and challenging but logical chord structure, “All the Things You Are” has become a popular jazz standard. Its changes have been used for such contrafact tunes as “Bird of Paradise” by Charlie Parker,^[2] “Prince Albert” by Kenny Dorham, “All The Things That You Can C#” by Charles Mingus, and “Boston Bernie” by Dexter Gordon. “Thingin'” by Lee Konitz introduced a further harmonic twist by transposing the chords of the second half of the tune by a tritone.

Well, I don’t know from enharmonic substitutions, but I do know modulation, and I love these versions. This first one starts with Diz’s trumpet, with Parker entering at 0:43. But there’s not enough Parker in this version.

The musicians are given as Dizzy Gillespie ( trumpet), Charlie Parker (alto sax), Clyde Heart [sic, it’s “Hart”) (piano), Remo Palmieri [sic, it’s Palmier] (guitar), Slam Stewart (bass), Cozy Cloe [sic; it’s “Cole“] (drums).   Slam Stewart is particularly good on bass, but all the solos are very good. This is jazz at its best. 

This one has more Bird and hence more improvisation, but it’s still not as good as the 1945 version I have but can’t post. However, this one is still terrific. Diz comes in at 1:33.