On the subject of who composed Donna Lee:
I can't really remember parts of an essay I read on this subject, but I'll try to rehash much of it:
The eminent trumpet players of the Bebop era were Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Navarro. The essay starts out with a quote by someone (either a bebop musician or someone involved in the Jazz scene at the time) that Fats Navarro was the better trumpet player out of the two.
The essay then delves into a whole story of the piece and its background.
Miles Davis, as we all know, was not a trumpet virtuoso, and he was even less so in the mid 40's. On the Charlie Parker Dial Records recordings, he sounds somewhat overwhelmed by the speed of many of the pieces. The virtuosity of bebop musicians is an important part of why this composition was created.
The writer states that the the trumpet player that Miles most admired was Fats. I do not remember the reason stated, but upon listening to Fats and Dizzy, I can see why Miles admired him so much rather than Dizzy.
The essay then goes into the background on Indiana, which is what Donna Lee was based on. After delving into this, the writer shifts attention towards a recording made before Donna Lee was recorded. This recording, featuring Fats Navarro and I believe Tadd Dameron and baritone saxophonist Leo Parker, was another Indiana contrafact named Ice Freezes Red.
The writer states that the head of this piece is sort of like a sandlot football creation rather than the polished heads of Confirmation and Donna Lee. It certainly sounds less polished. This is especially true after the second "A" theme when the piano comes in solo, and the trumpet and sax come in to finish off the head.
After the Leo Parker's solo, Fats Navarro comes in. The writer now presents this solo transcribed. The solo starts almost exactly like the beginning of Donna Lee, only without the G-A flat-G trill at the beginning. And by almost exactly, I mean it's almost impossible to tell them apart. The solo then breaks towards a different but similar direction that Donna Lee goes towards.
And this is on a recording that precedes Donna Lee by, I believe, a few months. The writer argues that the fact that Miles Davis held Fats Navarro up to high esteem points towards Donna Lee being a Davis rather than a Charlie Parker piece.
My thoughts on this are that this piece does not sound like a typical Charlie Parker tune. His tunes sound like his solos, which sound happy and wry. They are, in my opinion, like audio versions his smile and demeanor. Of course, I mean his clean and off-drugs demeanor, not his drugged-up and backstabbing demeanor. Also his music never seems to change until the time of his death, which may have been due to the fact that he was drugged-up.
Also, Miles' music from later periods speaks to me that he definitely could have been the composer of the serpentine tune.
Why does Miles write this, the writer asks? Remember, Miles is not the virtuoso that everyone else seems to be on the Bebop scene. They're all running circles around him and playing things so effortlessly. The only way that Miles can keep up is by catching up to them in terms of virtuosity, which never happened. Or he can make them stumble despite their virtuosity. And that he did, on a piece based on the introduction of a Fats Navarro solo on a piece based on Indiana.
Donna Lee, the writer argues, is a satire on the virtuosity of these bop musicians. It has haunted many a player for years.
) and couldn't figure out any fingerings to save my life. Recently I spent about an hour with it and got it pretty clean...so either I've gotten better at fingerings or I was a lazy sh!t back then...probably both.
