

Part one of this two-part post uses examples from Shakespeare and Mozart (via Leonard Bernstein) as well as T.S. Eliot and Charlie Parker to introduce the concept of deletion, which I find useful in analyzing Erena Terakubo’s solo on ‘Bird Lives’ by Jackie McLean. It also includes an analysis of Charlie Parker’s solo on Billie’s Bounce, which includes a number of phrases from Parker’s melodic language that also appear in Terakubo’s solo. Incidentally, In the analysis below, I highlight patterns used by Terakubo that also appear in melodies and solos by Charlie Parker, Wardell Gray, Benny Harris and Sonny Rollins. In noting the connections that I find between Terakubo’s melodic language and that of other players, I am trying to be careful to not imply that I am certain about what her sources might be. Bebop is a melodic language where a given pattern is used by many players, and while I think it can be fun and instructive to speculate about the origin of a phrase, my understanding is that one can never be exactly sure about such things. Also, in speculating on the origin of some of these phrases, I am not at all intending to imply that this solo lacks originality. On the contrary, I believe this solo is full of evidence of Terakubo’s brilliance, one facet of which is her ability to not only listen deeply to these kinds of historical sources and to the musical ideas her bandmates share in the present, but to reflect in her improvising that she is both listening and thinking about what she’s hearing.
First chorus: a ‘Tenor Madness pattern’ is revealed through deletion and ‘the Jumpin’ fragment’ appears for the first time
‘Bird Lives’ requires the soloist to play the twelve-bar head twice and then play the first two measures yet again at the top of the first chorus of improvised solo. After this prescribed opening, Terakubo begins her solo with a descending tritone (D-Ab in m. 3-4). This is followed by two seven-note phrases (marked A and A1 on the transcription) that work with the notes of m. 2 from Tenor Madness by Sonny Rollins. She then plays a phrase that matches the notes and rhythm from the first phrase of ’Tenor Madness’ (B) (which are also the first four notes of Kenny Clarke’s nearly identical tune ‘Royal Roost’ and Dizzy Gillespie’s ‘Oop Bop Sh’bam’ and ‘Oop Pop a Da’, all recorded before Rollins’ tune.) Drawing first two longer phrases and then a shorter phrase from essentially the same pitch collection, as Terakubo does, is very skillful deletion. (See part one of this post for examples of where deletion is used by T.S. Eliot in ‘Ash Wednesday’ and Charlie Parker in his solo on ‘Billie’s Bounce’.) Terakubo demonstrates here that one way to make fresh and original use of standard melodic language is to use it in an altered form first before using it in its original form. (As we will see, she also takes the same approach with her use of what I call ‘The Happening lick’ in the second and fourth choruses.)
Terakubo concludes her first chorus with what could be described as two separate Parker licks: in m. 11, she plays a pitch collection similar to the one that Parker uses to begin two of his most famous solos: ‘Billie’s Bounce’ and the best known version of ‘Now’s The Time’ (marked C on the transcription). I’ll call the phrase at m. 12 (marked D on the transcription) ‘the Jumpin’ fragment’, as it occurs in one of Parker’s earliest recorded solos, on Jay McShann’s ‘The Jumpin Blues’. As I mentioned in part one, it also appears three times in Parker’s solo on Billie’s Bounce. There are at least two other prominent places in Parker’s recorded work where it shows up as well: at the opening of the Now’s The Time solo and at the beginning of the tune ‘Ornithology’, which became his theme song. (In my post Cracking The Bebop Code, I make the case for why I believe ‘Ornithology’ was composed by Charlie Parker superfan Benny Harris, to whom it is sometimes attributed, rather than Parker, who is more often listed as the composer.) While Parker used these licks as opening moves in the examples I’ve cited, Terakubo personalizes them by transforming them into closing moves.
Second chorus: ‘the Happenin’ lick’ and ‘the Reets and I lick’ are introduced and ‘the Jumpin’ fragment’ returns
In the opening bar of Terakubo’s second chorus, the last seven notes of m. 13 (marked F) match a fragment from the opening of Parker’s second chorus on ‘Blues for Alice’. I hear the second half of m. 15 and the first half of m. 16 (marked F) as the first appearance of what I’ll call ‘the Happenin’ lick’, which appears closer to its original form in m. 40 of her solo (F1). I call it ‘the Happenin’ lick’ as it occurs in the first chorus of Wardell Gray’s solo on ‘Twisted’ (where it has a different rhythm), and in Annie Ross’s vocal version of the solo, she gives it the lyric ‘I knew what was happenin’. When Terakubo plays ‘the Happenin’ lick’ with its original pitches at m. 40, in the context of this solo, it becomes a shortened version of the phrase from m. 13-14, its impact sharpened through deletion of two notes from that earlier use. This is the second time the solo that Terakubo uses a borrowed lick in an innovated form before returning to its original form.
Terakubo makes her first innovative re-use of a phrase at m. 14, where only two measures after her first use of the Jumpin’ fragment, she uses a shortened version of it (marked D1 on the transcription). Here, besides shortening the fragment, she transforms it in four other ways: by moving it to the second measure of the twelve bar blues form, moving it to beat 3 of the 4/4 measure (rather than beat 1 where it initially appeared in this solo), by embedding it in the middle of a longer phrase where is preceded and followed by descending stepwise motion (rather than being followed by F6 arpeggio) and playing it over a Bb7 chord instead of F7. Her third use of ‘the Jumpin’ fragment’ is in the fourth chorus at m. 39 (D2), where she keeps the scalar ‘tail’ she added at D1 but once again shifts the lick’s placement in the twelve bar blues form from the second half of the second measure to the first half of the third measure. These kinds of transformations are all examples of the ‘innovate’ stage of Clark Terry’s ‘emulate, assimilate, innovate’ process, which I illustrate using various Ella Fitzgerald solos in my post Ellavolution. They are also the kind of alterations that Tony Pietricola describes in his ‘TAMPER’ system.
The lick marked ‘G’ on the transcription (m. 16-19) descends an augmented triad from C#5, uses C-Bb with the ‘Charleston’ (dotted quarter-eighth note) rhythm and ends with scale steps 3-4-3-5. Terakubo’s first re-use of this lick (G1) is in the next chorus at m. 28-31, where she changes the rhythm somewhat and brings the phrase to an earlier end after the 3-4-3-5 move. After leaving some space (which results from deleting eight notes of the original lick marked G on the transcription) she deftly varies the end of the phrase (J1), which she plays at m. 32-33 with a more upbeat-oriented rhythm than in her first use of it (J). Her second re-use of this lick is at m. 52-55 (G2). This has the highest ending of the three instances of the lick. Terakubo hits a G5, the kind of quick and effortless move into her powerful upper range that abounds in her solos, and which she seems to deliberately use somewhat less in this solo on of ‘Bird Lives’ than in her earlier version of the tune from ‘Little Girl Power’.
I’ll call the first six notes of m. 20 (H) the ‘Reets and I lick’, as it can be found in m. 6 of Benny Harris’s tune ‘Reets and I’, first recorded by Bud Powell. The phrase begun with this lick is concluded with a four note pattern (J) that can be found, in a different harmonic context, in melodies including ‘Peg O’My Heart’ and ‘Memphis Blues’ by W.C. Handy as well as solos including Jelly Roll Morton’s solo on ‘New Orleans Blues’, Louis Armstrong’s solo on ‘Hotter Than That’ and Terry Pollard’s solo on ‘Oboe Blues’. I’ll call m. 22-24 (letter K on the transcription) ‘the closing phrase’, as Terakubo makes innovative re-uses of it at the ends of her third and fourth choruses. In its original form at m. 22-24, it ends with an F repeated five times with a rhythm very similar to m. 3-4 of Parker’s ‘Now’s The Time’ solo. In her re-uses of the lick at the conclusions of her third and fourth choruses (K1 and K2), Terakubo leaves out the last two of the five repeated Fs from m. 22-24, once again innovating through deletion.
Third chorus: a question, an answer and more innovation
Terakubo’s third chorus begins with a four-note lick (L) and a variation on it (L1) back to back. This bears a similarity to the pair of one-bar phrases I have marked F and G in the second chorus of Parker’s Billie’s Bounce solo. Both pairs are antecedent-consequent (or question-and-answer) phrases. Terakubo’s pair of phrases begin with the same two pitches (A-F) and end with different pairs of pitches, while Parker’s innovation is to transpose the second phrase down a perfect fifth and add one note, but it is clear Terakubo has thoroughly and creatively adopted Parker’s practice of creating inner dialogue within his improvisations. This pair of phrases are the only new material in the third chorus; as I discussed earlier, the rest of the chorus is innovative re-uses of previously used phrases (G1, J1 and K1). The pair of question and answer phrases at the beginning of the chorus the stage for one of Terakubo’s most astounding displays of spontaneous creativity in the solo, which occurs in m. 41-45 of the next chorus
Fourth chorus: more innovation on ‘the Jumpin’ fragment’ and ‘the Happenin’ lick’ and the diminished scale appears
As I mentioned earlier, Terakubo makes creative re-use of The Jumpin’ Fragment and The Happenin’ Lick in the third and fourth bars of this chorus (m. 19-20). In m. 42, Terakubo plays a phrase (M) that begins with a partial ascending Bb half-whole diminished scale, followed with minor third leaps and changes of direction. She follows this with a phrase in m. 43-44 (M1) in which the diminished fragment from m. 41 is transposed a perfect fourth lower, and then the phrase is concluded in m. 44 by a shape that roughly inverts m. 42 (i.e. turns it upside-down). While inverting melodic shapes is a common hallmark of carefully crafted compositions by J.S. Bach and Arnold Schoenberg, Terakubo achieves the rare feat of making it happen in the context of an improvised solo.
Within my transcribing work on this blog, Terakubo’s inversion of her own phrase in the fourth chorus recalls Ella Fitzgerald’s retrograde (backwards) echoing of a Stan Getz phrase in one of the trading-fours sections of her epic performance of ‘C Jam Blues’ with the Count Basie Orchestra from ‘Jazz At The Santa Monica Civic 1972’. (I discuss this solo and have a link to the recording in Ellavolution.) The difference is that Fitzgerald made her melodic transformation during a musical conversation with a fellow improviser, while Terakubo’s inversion happens in confines of the single-player improvised solo, a more challenging environment for creating dialogue.
Fifth chorus: ‘Bird blues’ changes and a Billie’s Bounce closing move
In the first four bars of her fifth chorus, Terakubo’s line implies the chord substitutions in the head of Parker’s Blues For Alice (also known as ‘Bird Blues’ changes). After her second innovation on ‘the closing phrase’ (G2), Terakubo borrows a closing move (N) from the third chorus of Parker’s solo on Billie’s Bounce (this is marked F on the Parker transcription in part one.)
Terakubo is no stranger to trading fours; her solo is followed by some fine trading of full choruses between her, pianist Mayuko Katakura and drummer Shinnosuke Takahashi. In the trading, she moves outside the vocabulary she uses in the solo, venturing in directions like the Middle Eastern sounding phrase she plays around 3:30, which sounds influenced by the chromaticism in Katukara’s preceding chorus. With this section of the performance, Terakubo achieves three kinds of conversation within the same performance. Her use of Charlie Parker motives interspersed with her own ideas is a kind of summoning of Parker from the past for an imagined conversation in the present. This is similar to the way Ella Fitzgerald in her solo on ‘Flyin’ Home’ alternates between quoting phrases from Ilinois Jacquet’s earlier solo on the same tune and making her own melodic responses to the phrases she quotes (I discuss this in depth in my post Oh, Play That Thing!, which includes a side-by-side comparison of both solos). The kind of spontaneous and sophisticated transformation that she makes at m. 41, could be thought of as a musical conversation with herself. Near the end of the performance, these more abstract and isolated conversations are culminated in an exciting collective conversation of her and the members of her band trading full choruses.
To return to the student I mentioned in part one who shared their fear of running out of ideas, I hope this solo might make them aware that there are many great improvisers like Terakubo who move their musical story forward through revisiting ideas to innovate on and develop them. In my analysis of this solo, I have bracketed and analyzed twenty-four phrases, eleven of which are innovative re-uses of phrases that occurred previously in the solo. As we have seen, the innovations in the re-used phrases include deleting notes, adding notes, transposing notes and altering the shape of the phrase using techniques like inversion. I hope that student, and others with similar concerns, can hear in Terakubo’s solo a reminder that you can’t run out of ideas if you know how to innovate.
©2025 Tom Cleary