https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5970-924X
![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Recalling his first recording session with Charlie Parker on 26 November 1945, Miles Davis said he was so nervous that Dizzy Gillespie had to step in and play the trumpet solos on “Ko Ko,” the fast final tune of the session. Others present—producer Teddy Reig, pianist Sadik Hakim (aka Argonne Thornton), and Dizzy himself—all verified this story, that it was Gillespie and not Davis who played on “Ko Ko.” Yet despite this straighforward line of testimony, jazz writers and fans have questioned this account since the 1950s. More recently, the serious argument that it was in fact Miles who played the solos, not Dizzy, has appeared in various credible forums, including authoritative websites, Facebook groups involving professional jazz historians, and the magazine JazzTimes. This article examines this revisionist claim and finds it without foundation. In addition to the abundant and unanimous testimony of eyewitnesses, the musical evidence shows that in other solos recorded before and after the 1945 session, Gillespie reprised large portions of the complex “Ko Ko” solos. During a live performance of “Ko Ko” in 1947, he even played a sophisticated variation of the intro, a vanishingly unlikely occurrence had Miles Davis played the original.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Lewis Porter and Marian Jago, whose probing questions made this a much better article than it otherwise would have been. I am also grateful to Carl Woideck, Fernando Ortiz de Urbina, and Steve Beck for their expertise and insights on this topic. Finally, my thanks to Marcello Piras, who kindly answered an important query of mine on short notice.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Record producers, journalists, historians, and even discographers have spelled this title in various ways: “Ko-Ko,” “KoKo,” “Koko,” etc. In part to avoid confusion with Duke Ellington’s “Ko-Ko,” an entirely different piece, I use the spelling that appears on the earliest 78 rpm record: “Ko Ko.”
2 Great Performances, “Miles Ahead: The Music of Miles Davis,” directed by Mark Obenhaus, featuring Bill Cosby, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, aired 17 Oct 1986.
3 https://www.themusicofmiles.com/articles/the-ko-ko-session/session.php (accessed March 19, 2021).
4 https://www.plosin.com/milesAhead/Sessions.aspx?s=451126 (accessed March 19, 2021). https://www.lordisco.com/tjd/LeaderDetail?year=1945&month=11&day=26&submit=Search&search=date&displayName=Charlie+Parker&lid=20012 (accessed March 19, 2021). Peter Losin, the preeminent Miles Davis discographer, gives Davis credit for “Ko Ko,” explaining that Urbano “has patiently laid out the aural evidence, concluding that it is Davis, not Gillespie, playing trumpet on ‘Ko Ko.’” Tom Lord is more cautious, yet he too asserts “a strong possibility that Miles (rather than Dizzy) is actually the trumpeter on ‘Ko-ko,’” citing Losin.
5 https://jazztimes.com/features/profiles/charlie-parker-the-birth-of-bebop-and-americas-greatest-recording-session/3/ (accessed March 19, 2021).
6 Porter is also the co-founder of both this journal and the Facebook group (Jazz Studies Collaborative) mentioned previously. He has kindly given me permission to use his name in this context, but since the Facebook group containing the thread is private, I will not give the specific discussion URL here. Nevertheless, I will occasionally cite ideas by some of the participants in this discussion, crediting them by name, again with their permission. I should also note that Porter has told me that he finds my arguments in this paper persuasive, and he now agrees that Gillespie is the trumpeter on “Ko Ko.”
7 I asked for examples in an informal survey of the 367 members of Michael Fitzgerald’s jazz email list ([email protected]), all experienced academics, writers, critics, discographers, and musicians. Of six examples offered by the members, all but one were from the 1920s. Interestingly, the exception, provided by independent researcher and archivist Steve Beck, again involves Gillespie and Davis. The record is “Overtime” (long version) by the Metronome All-Stars, recorded 3 January 1949. The moment in question features brief alternating solos by Gillespie, Davis, and Fats Navarro. Though not a case of misidentification, exactly, the order of solos has long been questioned. As Beck noted to me, Ira Gitler gave his opinion of the order in liner notes to the Dizzy Gillespie Complete RCA Victor, and Tommaso Urbano has also weighed in on the matter on his website. Email communication, 3 July 2021. Note, however, that even this example is of a big band, not a small group.
8 “All the time this craziness is going on,” Reig recalled, “Herman [Lubinsky, the founder of Savoy,] is yelling at me, ‘What’s the name of this?’ So I just yelled back at him, ‘KoKo, K-O-K-O.’” Teddy Reig, interview by Bob Porter, liner notes to Charlie Parker: The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings, 1944–1948, Atlantic 92911-2, 2000, compact disc, 82.
9 Urbano: “Mute flats the instrument tonal quality so we can’t recognize who is playing on a sound basis: we need to use different evaluation criterias.” https://www.themusicofmiles.com/articles/the-ko-ko-session/session.php.
10 Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 75.
11 Email communication with Lewis Porter, 24 Mar 2021.
12 Reig, Charlie Parker, 81–2.
13 I am indebted to Fernando Ortiz de Urbina for some of the following citations and for other points of logic in this paper. See his own excellent take on this issue at his website: https://jazzontherecord.blogspot.com/2013/11/november-26-1945-at-savoy-records.html (accessed March 19, 2021).
14 “Record Reviews,” Metronome 62 (May 1946): 24. The review is unsigned, but Metronome reviews in that issue were credited to Barry Ulanov, Leonard Feather, and George Simon, all well-informed critics. It is fashionable these days to dismiss early jazz critics for their presumed myopia and insensitivity to cultural issues that engage us today, but in fact these writers laid the foundation for our current understanding of jazz and in many cases produced highly accurate and insightful reports. Partly this resulted from their ability to interview and spend time with the players themselves, an advantage not to be underestimated in any assessment of their work.
15 Sadik Hakim, “The Charlie Parker KoKo Date,” Jazz Review 2 (Feb 1959): 11.
16 Reig, Charlie Parker, 81–2. See also Teddy Reig with Edward Berger, Reminiscing in Tempo: The Life and Times of a Jazz Hustler, Studies in Jazz No. 10 (Metuchen, NJ, and London: Scarecrow Press, 1990), 19–21, and Dizzy Gillespie with Al Fraser, To Be, or not … to Bop (New York: Doubleday, 1979), 299–300.
17 Ira Gitler, liner notes to Miles Davis, The Musings of Miles, Prestige 7007, 1955, LP.
18 Paul Maher Jr. and Michael K. Dorr, eds., Miles on Miles: Interviews and Encounters with Miles Davis (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2009), 57. This is an odd account, since it suggests Davis got his intimate ballad-style playing on Harmon mute from Gillespie’s fast and rowdy use of the cup mute. Maybe he was just referring to the general idea of playing with a mute. In any case, this question doesn’t affect the material point of the exchange: Dizzy played trumpet on “Ko Ko.”
19 Gillespie, To Be, 234; see also 299, fn. †.
20 Davis, Miles, 75.
21 Producer Teddy Reig said that “when I went up to 2040 [where Bird lived] for the ‘roundup,’ here comes Bird with Dizzy in tow. I asked, ‘Where’s Bud?’ Bird told me Bud went to Philadelphia with his mother to check out a real estate deal. ‘Dizzy’s going to play piano.’” Reig, Reminiscing, 19–20. As for Thornton, he later recalled, “I was living in the same apartment with Charlie Parker at that time … . He asked me if I wanted to play on the date. Naturally I was quite thrilled and honored to be working with him.” Hakim, “Ko Ko Date,” 11.
22 As Carl Woideck points out, Parker’s habit of pawning his horn for drug money often left him with an inferior instrument at performance time. Carl Woideck, Charlie Parker: His Music and Life (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), 112–13.
23 Reig, Charlie Parker, 81.
24 Reig, Reminiscing, 20.
25 Davis, Miles, 76.
26 Reig, Reminiscing, 20.
27 Davis, Miles, 76.
28 Reig, Reminiscing, 20–1.
29 Reig, Reminiscing, 20; Gillespie, To Be, 299.
30 Email communication with Lewis Porter, 24 Mar 2021.
31 Reig, Reminiscing, 20.
32 Davis, Miles, 75–6.
33 Hakim, “Ko Ko Date,” 11; Sadik Hakim, “Reflections of an Era: My Experiences with Bird and Prez,” Jazz Journal International 49 (August 1996): 17.
34 John Mehegan, liner notes to The Charlie Parker Story, Savoy MG-12079, 1956, LP.
35 Charlie Parker: The Complete Savoy Studio Sessions, Savoy S5J-5500, 1978, LP; Charlie Parker: The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings, 1944–1948, Atlantic 92911-2, 2000, compact disc.
36 Patrick, Complete Savoy 2000, 41.
37 Hakim, “Ko Ko Date,” 11.
38 Gillespie, To Be, 234.
39 https://www.themusicofmiles.com/articles/the-ko-ko-session/session.php (accessed March 21, 2021).
40 Hakim, “KoKo Date,” 11.
41 https://www.themusicofmiles.com/articles/the-ko-ko-session/session.php (accessed July 8, 2021).
42 Lewis Porter remarked to me that Thornton was “a terrible pianist at that point” (note his cringe-inducing solo on “Thriving from a Riff”) and wondered if his time was unsteady at the “Ko Ko” tempo, or, more simply, if Gillespie and Parker just “wanted [him] to play as little as possible.” Email communication, 24 Mar 2021.
43 Or, if Thornton didn’t play on “Ko Ko,” Porter speculates: “It is possible, even likely, that Gillespie played the trumpet part while sitting at the piano. In fact, that might be the only way that he could have gotten to the piano so quickly.” Complicating the question of whether there were two pianists or one, he adds: “It is very likely that Thornton would have used the same voicings as Gillespie—the [consistent] voicings are one of Urbano’s [main] points—especially since Gillespie was in the habit of teaching voicings to pianists.” Email communication, 18 Apr 2021.
44 https://jazzontherecord.blogspot.com/2013/11/november-26-1945-at-savoy-records.html (accessed March 21, 2021).
45 Urbano takes his examples from “Thriving from a Riff,” takes 1 and 3 (recorded the same day), “Anthropology” (Live at the Finale Club, Los Angeles, Mar 1946), and “Moose the Mooche,” take 3 (Dial, 28 Mar 1946).
46 The underlying harmony for the “Ko Ko” lick is invariably a B-flat tonality, often a ii-V-I or related progression, in which A-natural would eventually be the norm. Dizzy’s use of A-flat suggests instead a borrowed Aeolian or possibly blue-note conception to this harmony.
47 Samuel A. Floyd Jr., The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 95.
48 Charlie Parker, The Complete Live Performances on Savoy, Savoy Jazz, SVY-17021-24, 1998, compact disc.
49 Gillespie quoting Davis would be so unusual, in my opinion, that it would merit a scholarly investigation of its own. He quoted or channeled Armstrong and Eldridge early on, but after he achieved prominence in his own right there’s no evidence (of which I’m aware) of Gillespie quoting another trumpet player, particularly not a disciple.
51 It’s worth comparing this incident with a hypothetical parallel in another recording context, say, a regular studio date for a soundtrack or commercial, in which a stymied or unwilling soloist might well be fired on the spot. But Miles benefitted not only from personal friendships with the musicians on “Ko Ko,” but also from a long jazz tradition of experienced players extending mentorship, fraternity, and at times needed patience toward young aspirants still struggling to prove themselves. Famously denied such patient nurturing during his own youthful forays in Kansas City jam sessions, Parker may have felt moved to show more compassion when he became a mentor to the young Miles Davis. As Davis himself recalled, Parker would reassure him during anxious moments. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Go ahead and play.” Maher and Dorr, Miles on Miles, 10–11.
52 Needless to say, he worked very hard to improve. Trombonist Al Grey recalled that in the months after the “Ko Ko” session, while touring with the Benny Carter band, Miles “would go and just practice all day long—practice, practice, practice. We used to get worried about him because he’d practice so much.” Ira Gitler, Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 186–87. Such woodshedding paid off. Within two years, as Fernando Ortiz de Urbina has noted, he played a formidable solo on “Bird Gets the Worm,” which at ♩ = 340 surpasses even “Ko Ko”’s hurricane tempo, verifying his own recollection that “I finally learned how to play that fast [i.e. as fast as Parker] and feel comfortable.” https://jazzontherecord.blogspot.com/2013/11/november-26-1945-at-savoy-records.html (accessed March 21, 2021); Davis quote originally from Great Performances, “Miles Ahead.”
53 Metronome 60 (Jul 1944): 16.
54 Whether such knee-jerk skepticism is more commonly directed toward Black sources is hard to say, but to them it is certainly more insidious. Since the end of Reconstruction African Americans were denied a voice in American society, and their muted status continued as they entered show business, where white managers often spoke for them or even dictated their responses to reporters. This legacy of voicelessness heightens the obligation of present-day scholars to take African Americans’ words seriously, particularly for the modern jazz era, when Black musicians began gaining unprecedented autonomy over their own lives, careers, and stories.
55 This trend is especially evident in documentary films like Ken Burns’s Jazz (2000) and the more recent Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (2019), in which talking-head authorities too often spend more time praising musicians’ self-evident genius than in elucidating their art.
56 See, for example, Davis, Miles, 60, 68–9, 70, 75; Gary Carner, ed., The Miles Davis Companion: Four Decades of Commentary (London: Omnibus Press, 1996), 8; Frank Alkyer, Ed Enright, and Jason Koransky, eds., The Miles Davis Reader (New York: Hal Leonard Books, 2007), 64, 66.
57 This is especially true in the case of discographies and archival research. See, for instance, the websites maintained by Michael Fitzgerald (https://jazzmf.com/) and Noal Cohen (https://attictoys.com/).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Brian Harker
Brian Harker is Professor of Music at Brigham Young University. He has twice won the Irving Lowens Award for best article on American music. He is the author of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings and Sportin' Life: John W. Bubbles, An American Classic (forthcoming).