‘Weathervane’ – a tune on ‘Yesterdays’ changes

‘Weathervane’ is a tune I composed based on the chord changes to the standard ‘Yesterdays’ by composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Otto Harbach.  Some charts for the tune are below. It is inspired by the melodic language of Charlie Parker, Jimmy Giuffre and Horace Silver, including some of the fragments that appear in my exercise ‘Jody, Donna, Four Brothers and Koko’. It can be practiced along with this scale outline of the progression. Like a number of my tunes, including ‘Birdhouse’, ‘You Are Here’ and ‘Simple Paris Dancers’, it can played as a freestanding melody line or in a contrapuntal version.  The version shown here is a single-line version that can be played in the standard bebop unison style of most Charlie Parker tunes.  This single-line version also works as a countermelody to the Kern tune.  It is meant to be played at a medium-up tempo, which is how I’ve become accustomed to playing the tune in instrumental settings.  This kind of tempo can be heard on renditions such as the second half of Billie Holiday’s version and a version by Wes Montgomery with the great Harold Mabern on piano that is faster than Holiday’s but still has a wonderfully relaxed feel. I’ve since become aware that many instrumental versions, as well as the vocal versions by Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, take the tune at its original ballad tempo.  (It is also interesting to see the tune in its original context in a clip from ‘Roberta’, the 1935 film based on the 1933 stage musical for which Kern and Harbach wrote ‘Yesterdays’.) 

I also play ‘Weathervane’ in a contrapuntal arrangement where I add a countermelody to my original eighth-note melody.  (This kind of contrapuntal jazz head can also be heard in Parker’s tunes ‘Ah Leu Cha’ and ‘Chasin’ the Bird’ and John Lewis’ ‘Concorde’, among others.)  A recording of the contrapuntal version of ‘Weathervane’ by my quartet Birdcode (in a medley with ‘Yesterdays’) can be heard at my SoundCloud page.