{"id":2777,"date":"2026-03-09T18:32:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T22:32:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/?p=2777"},"modified":"2026-03-15T17:58:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T21:58:04","slug":"the-quotable-bud-powell-part-two-or-its-a-little-crazy-how-time-flies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/2026\/03\/09\/the-quotable-bud-powell-part-two-or-its-a-little-crazy-how-time-flies\/","title":{"rendered":"The Quotable Bud Powell, Part Two (or: It’s A Little Crazy How Time Flies)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Top: The cover of The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 5 (Blue Note Records, 1959) featuring Powell’s son Earl John Powell \/ below: Earl John Powell and myself at a screeing of Haeyong Moon’s documentary ‘Bud Lives!’ in November 2025 (photo: Amber deLaurentis) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please<\/em> note: there are a number of footnotes throughout this post marked by very small numbers that I currently don’t know how to enlarge, so keep an eye out for them! Clicking on the number should take you to the footnote. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the second post I have written on improvised solos that quote Bud Powell.  Since I wrote the first post, The Quotable Bud Powell Part 1<\/a>, I\u2019ve done some research on the study of quotation in literature and music.  I think this research has been partly motivated by a need to put my own interest in researching Powell quotations in some context, to reassure myself that my interest in researching quotations is not an isolated phenomenon and to try to understand why people research quotations.  I began by looking at a few examples from the fairly common genre of books that list quotable phrases by a specific author, like The Quotable Thoreau, or from a wide variety of sources, like Bartlett\u2019s Familiar Quotations (originally published in 1855 and still in print today with a 2022 edition).  The word \u2018familiar\u2019 in the title of Bartlett\u2019s Familiar Quotations implies that the reader might have heard them someplace, but the lack of examples of where the quotes are used implies that the reader is supposed to trust that the editors have chosen quotations that are truly in common use, even though the book doesn\u2019t cite examples of specific uses.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are also studies of quotations used in a particular work, like T.S. Eliot\u2019s footnotes on his own quotes in The Waste Land<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> my UVM colleagues Dennis Mahoney and Wolfgang Meider\u2019s study of quotations or proverbs used in the novel Insect Dreams<\/a> by the late, great Vermont writer and activist Marc Estrin, and my own study of the quotes Ella Fitzgerald uses in her solo on C Jam Blues with the Count Basie Orchestra from the 1972 album Jazz At The Santa Monica Civic.  This can be found in my blog post Ellavolution<\/a>, which was commissioned by musicologist Judith Tick and quoted in her recent critical biography Becoming Ella Fitzgerald<\/a>.  There are also lists of quotes used by a particular creator in multiple works, like this website<\/a> that catalogs musical quotations in Charlie Parker\u2019s solos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Curiously, I found it more challenging to locate studies of where and how a particular creator or work is quoted.  So far, other than my own posts on Powell and Fitzgerald cited above and the posts on Parker to which I link below, the only examples I have found of this kind of study are this article on Shakespeare quotes on the Merriam-Webster website<\/a> that I linked to in Part One, this blog post and audio lecture<\/a> on how Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn all used quotations from Handel\u2019s Messiah, <\/em>and this article<\/a> detailing two prominent quotes from the Messiah in the U.S. Christmas hymn Joy To The World1<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many collections of phrases Parker uses in his solos that appear to originate from him.  These range in size from this list of 14 Charlie Parker licks at Jazz Guitar Online<\/a> to the recent encyclopedic Pathways To Parker<\/a> that runs to more than 900 pages of Parker licks.  Like Barlett\u2019s Quotations and The Quotable Thoreau, Pathways to Parker lists quotable phrases but not examples of where they are quoted. The only source I have found so far <\/del>that lists examples <\/del>of improvisers incorporating Parker phrases into their<\/ins> solo<\/del>s is this video on Parker’s ‘Cool Blues’ lick<\/a> which <\/ins>I expand on in my blog post <\/ins>Taking The Fifth<\/a>. <\/ins>  My hope in compiling examples of great jazz soloists quoting Bud Powell is that they might form a \u2018cloud of witnesses\u2019 testifying to the ongoing relevance of Powell\u2019s melodic language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many recorded examples of great jazz players who are also Parker devotees exchanging quotes from the master in small congregations, like members of a faith community taking turns reading from holy texts.  The 1949 recording of \u2018Then You\u2019ll Be Boppin Too\u2019 by the vocalist Babs Gonzales <\/a>features a young Sonny Rollins and Wynton Kelly quoting the same Parker phrase (which can be heard in the bridge of Parker\u2019s \u2018Koko\u2019 solo) in their back-to-back solos (a link to this tune is in Part One of this post).  (Rollins first quotes the phrase at :41 in the recording; leave a comment in the comment section if you can find the timing of his second quote of the phrase<\/strong> or Wynton Kelly’s quote of a fragment from the phrase. <\/strong>In all three quotes, the phrase is ‘rhythmically transposed’ to a different point in the 4\/4 measure.) Eight years later, on the version of \u2018Tune Up\u2019 from Rollins\u2019 album \u2018Newk\u2019s Time\u2019,<\/a> they can both be heard still using the same melodic gesture, but their rhythmic approach to it has evolved.  (Rollins’ first use of the phrase can be heard at :54; leave a comment in the comment section if you can find the timing in the video of his doubletimed quote of the phrase or of Wynton Kelly’s differently doubletimed quote of it.) <\/strong>The opening to Charles Mingus\u2019 original recording of his composition \u2018Reincarnation of a Lovebird\u2019<\/a> from the album \u2018The Clown\u2019, the opening is a kind of Parker s\u00e9ance, with all members of the quintet quoting Parker in quick succession.  (The tunes quoted include Relaxin’ At Camarillo, Salt Peanuts and My Little Suede Shoes, as well as at least two other Parker phrases from tunes I can’t identify at the moment. Leave a comment in the comment section if you can identify the timings of any of these quotes. <\/strong>You will need to listen to the original Parker tunes to be able to identify them.). My blog posts on Ornithology<\/a> and Erena Terakubo\u2019s solo on Bird Lives<\/a> analyze a composition and a solo that quote Parker frequently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By contrast, my research suggests that quotes of Bud Powell in recorded solos tend to be less frequent, more isolated and sometimes more encoded.  In the solos that I have found, the referencing of Powell tends to be more solitary than communal.  The only story I have found that comes close to a physical meeting of a Powell fan club is Jackie McLean\u2019s story, quoted in my earlier post, of meeting Sonny Rollins when Rollins was coming from a lesson with Powell and McLean was heading toward his.  Another experience I had recently of a group brought together by common love for Powell\u2019s work was a recent showing in New York City of Haeyong Moon\u2019s remarkable documentary Bud Lives!, in which I make a short appearance.  I watched the film, which I highly recommend, in the company of luminaries including jazz scholar David Berger, pianist Michael Kanan, and Powell\u2019s son Earl John Powell.  Experiencing Moon\u2019s heartfelt, soulful and expertly researched film with these people was a rare moment of reassurance that I am not alone in my desire to work toward a greater understanding of Powell\u2019s genius.  The examples I have assembled here are of Powell quotes by great improvisers encapsulated on recordings and traveling like bottled messages to other Powell fans at the far corners of time and space. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time flies, \u2018Tempus Fugit\u2019 remains – Solos that quote Tempus Fugit<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ethan Iverson counts Powell\u2019s composition \u2018Tempus Fugit\u2019<\/a>, recorded in early 1949 for Verve with Ray Brown and Max Roach, among a group of recordings that are \u2018arguably Powell\u2019s greatest studio trio tracks\u2019, adding that \u2018students should definitely learn these solos\u2019.  He also theorizes that \u2018Tempus\u2019 \u201cmight have [been] Powell\u2019s answer to the minor key Gillespie tune, \u2018Bebop\u2019\u201d, hinting: \u2018compare the similar intros\u2019.  Indeed, where the intro to Gillespie\u2019s tune, first recorded the year before \u2018Tempus\u2019 was copyrighted, begins with an minor triad arpeggio ascending over the range of an octave, Powell\u2019s \u2018Tempus\u2019 intro decorates the same arpeggio by starting a half step below and approaching the top note from a whole step above, almost as though he were trying to \u2018one-up\u2019 Gillespie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Iverson\u2019s theory about \u2018Tempus\u2019 as a response to \u2018Bebop\u2019 is also supported by a passage in In \u2018Wail: The Life Of Bud Powell\u2019, where author Peter Pullman mentions that Powell originally wrote Tempus Fugit in 1946 for a small group led by Dizzy Gillespie.  \u2018Tempus\u2019 is one of Powell\u2019s most orchestral piano parts, and I think this is likely due to the influence of Gillespie and his arrangers such as Gil Fuller.  While much of Powell\u2019s work as a composer and a soloist is almost obsessively focused on the spinning out of long single-note melodic phrases, \u2018Tempus\u2019 features unusually short right hand melodic \u2018calls\u2019 and light, single note left hand \u2018responses\u2019 in its A sections as well as two-handed counterpoint in its bridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other Gillespie composition that \u2018Tempus\u2019 resembles is the iconic \u2018A Night In Tunisia\u2019, first recorded as \u2018Interlude\u2019 by Sarah Vaughan with Gillespie in 1944<\/a>, although Powell\u2019s tempo is closer to that of Gillespie\u2019s instrumental version, first recorded in 1946<\/a> but performed live the year before.   While the \u2018Tempus\u2019 and \u2018Bebop\u2019 intros share three notes (the ascending minor triad), the \u2018Tempus\u2019 intro and the \u2018Tunisia\u2019 A section begin with the same seven-note melodic pattern, albeit in different keys, rhythms and harmonic contexts.  The harmonic progression of the A section in Tempus Fugit also closely resembles the A section of \u2018Tunisia\u2019.  In my post Musical Neighbors, I mention how both \u2018Tunisia\u2019 and original tunes based on its progression were in the repertoire played and recorded by all members of what I call \u2018The Three Muskeeters collective\u2019, which includes Powell, Mary Lou Williams, Thelonious Monk, Elmo Hope and Bertha Hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u2019Tempus\u2019 solo was quoted in improvised solos by three great jazz pianists who were younger than Powell but close enough in age to have heard him live as well as on records.  Rather than listing these quotations following the historical order in which the recordings appeared, I will list them following the order in which the quoted phrases appear in Powell\u2019s solo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walter Davis was the pianist in Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers during Wayne Shorter\u2019s time with that band.  On the band\u2019s 1961 recording of Shorter\u2019s composition \u2018United\u2019<\/a> from the album \u2018Herbs and Roots\u2019, near the beginning of Davis\u2019 solo<\/a>, he quotes the opening phrase of the \u2018Tempus\u2019 solo in its original key.  This is followed by two transposed variants of the phrase.  In all, Davis quotes Powell\u2019s opening phrase or variants on it eight times during the course of his short solo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the opening of his second chorus of solo on \u2018Tempus\u2019<\/a>, Powell plays a three-beat pattern starting on the third beat of the first bar of the form.  He repeats this pattern six times, and the mathematics of a three-beat pattern repeated in 4\/4 time leads the pattern to land on a different beat of the measure each time.  In Horace Silver\u2019s recording of his composition \u2018Safari\u2019 from the album Horace Silver Trio<\/a>, near the beginning of his solo<\/a>, he uses a variation on Powell\u2019s phrase which he begins (as Powell does) with a triplet including the fifth of the minor scale, but rather than decorating the fifth degree with its chromatic upper neighbor (5-b6-5) as Powell does, Silver approaches it from its chromatic lower neighbor (b5-5-b5).  Silver repeats the pattern four times, two less repetitions than Powell, but given that Silver told interviewer Len Lyons<\/a> that he \u2018used to play a lot of Bud Powell solos off the record\u2019,  the likelihood is high that Silver is directly referencing Powell here (as he does in a number of other places on the same record.). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the beginning of the second A section of his second chorus on \u2018Tempus\u2019<\/a>, Powell sequences another descending three-beat pattern over the 4\/4 measure which uses the same melodic rhythm as the phrase in the first A but a different melodic shape.  This shape is a variation on a phrase that, as I discuss in my post Emulate, Assimilate, Innovate Part 2, Powell used as a closing gesture in at least two solos and which Wynton Kelly quoted in a number of his solos.  In these solos, the phrase ends with a descending whole step on scale steps 6 and 5, and is played only once. In the \u2018Tempus\u2019 solo, Powell alters the phrase so that it ends on the seventh degree of D melodic minor and takes it through the six repetitions that he introduced eight bars earlier.  On a quartet version of \u2018Walkin\u2019 with John Coltrane recorded in a TV studio, Wynton Kelly quotes the version of the phrase from Powell\u2019s earlier solos in the tenth chorus of his solo<\/a>.  He begins it on beat four of the last measure of the blues form and repeats it just three times so that it fits neatly into a phrase over the first four bars of the blues form.  The phrase also includes Kelly\u2019s unique and inspired blend of bop chromaticism and hand-to-hand conversation.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still Un Poco Loco After All These Years (70 years of solos that quote \u2018Un Poco Loco\u2019<\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the Bud Powell discography at jazzdisco.org<\/a>, \u2018Un Poco Loco\u2019 was originally recorded and released by Blue Note records as a single in 1951. As we will see in this survey of quotations from the \u2018Un Poco Loco\u2019 solo, Powell\u2019s recording had an immediate impact on the musicians who listened to it when it was released as a single in 1951, as four of the recordings I mention that quote Powell\u2019s solo were recorded within four years of the session that produced \u2018Un Poco Loco\u2019.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before I begin citing examples of other solos that quote Powell\u2019s solo on the master take \u2018Un Poco Loco\u2019, it is worth mentioning that, to my ear, the solo itself includes at least three prominent quotations. Early in the solo, it sounds to me like Powell quotes the Vernon Duke\/Ira Gershwin ballad \u2018I Can\u2019t Get Started\u2019, although he conceals the quote by preceding the first six notes of the tune with a turn and by playing the pattern much faster than it appears in its original ballad context.  A version of the tune from the 1963 album Bud Powell In Paris<\/a> shows that it could well have been in Powell\u2019s repertoire twelve years earlier when Un Poco Loco was recorded. Shortly after the \u2018Started\u2019 quote, whether intentionally or not, he plays a a phrase<\/a> that is a transposed version of the second bar from Charlie Parker\u2019s 1945 solo on Billie\u2019s Bounce<\/a>.  (This phrase is a core component of Parker\u2019s melodic vocabulary that includes the gesture I call \u2018the Jumpin\u2019 fragment\u2019 in my my post on Erena Terakubo\u2019s \u2018Bird Lives\u2019 solo<\/a>.)  Shortly before the end of the solo, Powell plays a pair of phrases that clearly quote the \u2018clip-clop\u2019 accompaniment figure from \u2018On The Trail\u2019, a movement from Ferde Grofe\u2019s Grand Canyon Suite.  (A condensed version of the main melody from this piece became a jazz standard, recorded by many jazz instrumentalists and vocalists, such as Wynton Kelly, who recorded a buoyant version.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the solos quoting the UPL solo by other pianists that I have found, the one that quotes from the earliest point in Powell\u2019s solo is by pianist Gene Rizzo, whose transcription of the UPL solo appears in The Bud Powell Collection published by Hal Leonard.  A little online research reveals that Rizzo was a club date musician the Philadelphia and New Jersey areas who was born only 11 years before the recording of Un Poco Loco and died in 2021.  In a recording of the tune \u2018Avalon\u2019 by the Midiri Brothers Orchestra<\/a> (from a 1998 radio broadcast of an Atlantic City, NJ performance \u2013 a band in one Jersey Shore town playing a song about a town a few miles down the coast) Rizzo takes a fine piano solo which near the beginning (at :40) quotes the first seven notes of what I\u2019ll call the first bebop section of the UPL solo<\/a>2<\/a><\/sup>, followed quickly (at :42) by a seven-note quote from the tenth bar of that section.  Rizzo also builds another phrase at :47 from the opening of Powell\u2019s first bebop section. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first four bars of Walter Bishop Jr\u2019s solo on the 1952 Charlie Parker version of \u2018La Cucaracha\u2019<\/a>.  Bishop begins by quoting three later phrases from the \u2018first bebop section\u2019 of the Un Poco Loco solo in the reverse of the order that Powell uses them.  The first is the phrase I mentioned in the last paragraph where Powell appears to quote Parker\u2019s \u2018Billie\u2019s Bounce\u2019 solo. Bishop moves the phrase from beat 1 of a 4\/4 bar, where Parker and Powell both place it, to beat 3 of a 4\/4 measure.  This might sound on the first hearing like a Parker quote because Bishop is playing with Parker and quoting the phrase in the same key where Parker uses it, however, Bishop follows this four beats later with a five note phrase<\/a> that matches the bar in Powell\u2019s solo that immediately precedes the phrase with which Bishop began<\/a>.  This phrase transposes \u2018the Jumpin\u2019 fragment\u2019 down a perfect fourth.  The third bar of Bishop\u2019s solo<\/a> could be described as the first full bar of the \u2018first bebop section\u2019<\/a> and the first note of the second full bar with one note removed and all of this transposed to the key of F.  Bishop also ends with a quote from the end of the \u2018Un Poco Loco\u2019 solo, making his short solo a collection of quotes from Powell\u2019s solo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next section of the Un Poco Loco\u2019 solo that I\u2019ve found quoted elsewhere is what I\u2019ll call the \u2019b9-b5-triplet licks\u2019<\/a>3<\/a><\/sup>.     They include a 7-note phrase (which I\u2019ll call \u2018b9-b5-triplet lick #1\u2019), followed by a 6-note variant, followed by a different 7-note variant (which I\u2019ll call \u2018b9-b5-triplet lick #3\u2019)4<\/a><\/sup>.  (This is one of at least three places in the solo where Powell plays three similar phrases in quick succession.  This is an example of what I call \u2018live revision\u2019 in an earlier post, where I discuss how Mozart, T.S. Eliot and Charlie Parker used this process.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u2018b9-b5-triplet lick #3\u2019 appears in Benny Harris\u2019s tune \u2018Reets and I\u2019, recorded by Powell in August 1953, the first half of the tune concludes<\/a> with the \u2018b9-b5-triplet lick #3\u2019 from \u2018Un Poco Loco\u2019.  While not all of Harris\u2019 borrowed licks may have been consciously selected, given that his other tunes \u2018Ornithology\u2019 and \u2018Crazeology\u2019 (aka Bud\u2019s Bubble, aka Little Benny) are both clearly a superfan\u2019s melodic collage of favorite licks from the lexicons of Powell, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, I would venture to posit that the Powell licks in \u2018Reets and I\u2019 are likely conscious borrowings5<\/a><\/sup>.  The \u2018b9-b5-triplet lick #1\u2019 is also quoted by Walter Bishop, Jr. in his intro solo on \u2018Stockholm Sweetin\u2019 from The New Oscar Pettiford Sextet<\/a>, recorded in December 1953.  The minor third interval with which Powell begins the lick, moving from the flat seven to the flat nine of the C major scale, becomes a whole step in Bishop\u2019s quotation.  Like Davis in his \u2018United\u2019 solo, Bishop repeats the phrase and then transposes it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after the \u2019b9-b5-triplet licks\u2019 section of the \u2018Un Poco Loco\u2019 solo is a section that begins with what I\u2019ll call the \u2018expanded Charge! lick\u2019<\/a>, where Powell takes the six notes often played by ballpark organists to incite the response \u2018Charge!\u2019 from the crowd<\/a>, changes the rhythm so that the triplet occurs one note later, and expands the lick by one note, bringing it into the realm of the jazz melodic line by adding the sixth degree of the C major scale, implying a C6 harmony.  (Powell alternates throughout the solo between implying a C6 or Cmaj7 chord in his lines at some points and implying a C dominant 7th<\/sup> chord at other points through repeated use of Bb.).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u2018expanded Charge! lick\u2019 is quoted by Herbie Hancock in the fourth chorus of his astonishing solo on ‘Walkin\u2019 from the Miles Davis album \u2018Four and More\u2019<\/a>, recorded live in 1964.  Although Hancock was only 25 years old at the time \u2018Four And More\u2019 was recorded, throughout this solo (and particularly in the chorus preceding his Powell quote) he shows a deep knowledge of the playing of Wynton Kelly, one of his predecessors in Davis\u2019 band, through the use of what might be called \u2018conversational bebop\u2019 (see the section above on Kelly\u2019s quote of \u2018Tempus Fugit\u2019), and through his quotation of a lick Kelly had previously used in his solo on Pfrancing<\/a>, another F Blues, on the Davis album \u2018In Person Friday and Saturday Nights At The Blackhawk\u2019, recorded and released in 1961.  Hancock\u2019s quote from Powell shows that he also understood jazz piano lineage; my post Emulate, Assimilate, Innovate Part 2<\/a> gives just a few examples of how Kelly\u2019s melodic language is clearly based on Powell\u2019s.  While Kelly\u2019s quote from the \u2018Tempus\u2019 solo is one more example, an exhaustive compilation of Kelly\u2019s Powell quotes could fill a sizeable book.     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Powell closes his \u2018Un Poco Loco\u2019 solo with a final group of three phrases<\/a> that begin with a gesture he had used in 1947 in bar 11 of his first chorus on Charlie Parker\u2019s recording of \u2018Buzzy\u2019 (I go into more detail about this, including a transcription of Powell\u2019s \u2018Buzzy\u2019 solo, in an earlier post<\/a>).  I have found two improvised solos and a composed melody that quote parts of this ending phrase.  As I mentioned earlier, Walter Bishop, Jr. quotes an adapted version of Powell\u2019s closing phrase near the end of his \u2018La Cucaracha\u2019 solo.  (Bishop\u2019s solo is preceded with one of Benny Harris\u2019s rare recorded trumpet solos, in which he quotes \u2018Reets and I\u2019.  Jazz composers quoting their own tunes during improvised solos, such as was a kind of mid-century jazz equivalent of the ubiquitous customer-targeted product suggestions one finds today while shopping online6<\/a><\/sup>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Pianist Terry Pollard starts her solo on vibraphonist Terry Gibbs\u2019s 1955 recording of his tune Nutty Notes<\/a> with a phrase beginning on beat two that starts with a lick which adapts the beginning of Powell\u2019s closing gesture to a minor key, moves on to a lick adapting the motive from the \u2018b9-b5-triplet licks\u2019 section, and includes the end of Powell\u2019s closing gesture before concluding with another adaptation of the beginning of Powell\u2019s closing gesture.  Pollard\u2019s remarkable gift for melodic summarizing can also be heard in her solo on Yusef Lateef\u2019s Oboe Blues<\/a>, where she begins her solo with a brilliantly compressed version of the lick Bernard McKinney uses to end his euphonium solo.  (McKinney would later change his name to Kiane Zawadi.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Powell\u2019s concluding phrase from the \u2018Un Poco Loco\u2019 solo is also quoted in the 2021 tune \u2018Happy Hour\u2019 by the Italian jazz pianist Yuri Storione<\/a>.  I discovered this tune, and Storione, on the 2021 album This Time The Dream\u2019s On Us, where he plays in a trio with drummer Jorge Rossy.  The album contains a number of Powell allusions, including a tune called \u2018Viva Bud Powell!\u2019.  The melody \u2018Happy Hour\u2019, which is credited to Storione and bassist Dominik Schurmann, uses (:48) the same section of Powell\u2019s closing phrase from \u2018Un Poco Loco\u2019 as Bishop, but quotes it with less alteration \u2013 beginning it on beat one instead of beat four and removing the last two notes of the first phrase.  Storione quotes a number of bop and bop-adjacent motives in his solo, including \u2018The Irish Washerwoman\u2019 (I wrote a whole blog post<\/a> on Ella Fitzgerald\u2019s use of this motive), \u2018Reets And I\u2019 and \u2018Confirmation\u2019.  If you can find the timing of these quotes, please leave them in a comment in the comments section. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a coda to this collection of possible Powell quotes, I have a theory about another Horace Silver solo that may reference an alternate take of \u2018Un Poco Loco\u2019.  Silver was quoted in a 1964 New York Times article about Powell\u2019s return to Birdland as saying: \u2018Bud is one of the great sources.  He says more in five measures than most players say in five minutes\u2019.  This quote, combined with the one I mentioned earlier where Silver mentions playing Bud Powell solos \u2018off the record\u2019, as well as the Powell quotes in Silver solos that I mention earlier in this post and in my posts Bud Powell, Bard Of Bebop and Conversation Pieces, Part Two, establish Silver as an ardent enough superfan of Powell to pay attention to the alternate takes from his recording session.  In April 1956, Blue Note followed its 1952 release of The Amazing Bud Powell, the first full-length album to include \u2018Un Poco Loco\u2019 (which followed the single release in 1951) with The Amazing Bud Powell Volume 1.  The expanded playlist of this album included two alternate takes of \u2018Un Poco Loco\u2019.  In Un Poco Loco alternate take 1, Powell plays a pair of phrases<\/a>, the second longer than the first, which together imply the C whole-half diminished scale by traversing six of its eight notes.  In his solo on Senor Blues, Silver plays a series of five phrases<\/a> which use the exact same notes, although in the context of an E flat minor six-nine chord rather than Powell\u2019s C drone.   Silver plays two shorter phrases with a four-note span which lead to a longer phrase with the same six-note span of Powell\u2019s phrase and a similar melodic shape.  He then transposes the short phrase and the long phrase up a minor third, so that they cover the <\/ins>two missing notes of the scalethat <\/ins>Powell had left unplayed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way that Silver conjures this phrase first partially and then completely from his melodic imagination, steeped as it was in Powell\u2019s language, reminds me of the way he gradually brings forth his quote of Powell\u2019s Dance Of The Infidels in his solo on Silver\u2019s Serenade (see my posts Conversation Pieces Part One and The Quotable Bud Powell Part One for more discussion of this).  The way he transposes Powell\u2019s idea is an example of the \u2018Assimilate\u2019 phase of Clark Terry\u2019s \u2018Emulate, Assimilate, Innovate\u2019 process (which I discuss in Ellavolution among other places) and reminds me of how Benny Harris emulates and assimilates ideas from Parker in ‘Ornithology\u2019 as I detail in my blog post on the tune), from Powell in \u2018Reets and I\u2019 and from Powell and Gillespie in \u2018Crazeology\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One form of a 19th<\/sup> century proverb that uses a term often associated with Powell is: \u2018imitation is the highest compliment mediocrity pays to genius\u20197<\/a><\/sup>.<\/strong> While Powell may have appeared to be a somewhat isolated genius in his time, in the wider lens of jazz history, he has become an essential innovator who is genuinely loved by the generations of jazz players.  One of the more touching sections of Haeyong Moon\u2019s documentary is when she asks a series current jazz luminaries what they would say to Powell if they met him today, and more than one says they would start by giving him a hug.  I hope the examples I have cited show how Powell enabled players who followed him to transcend mediocrity by introducing or passing on musical ideas that they were inspired to not just borrow (emulate), but also transpose to different musical settings (assimilate) and transform (innovate) so they could be integrated into newly imagined surroundings.  In this way they were not just following Powell\u2019s lead as a melodic innovator, but also emulating the ingenious ways (in his quotes of Duke, Parker and Grofe) that he adapted the ideas of others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Footnotes<\/p>\n\n\n

  1. As it turns out, this song is deeply American in its patchwork construction. Its author may or may not be the American banker, church musician and crusader against homegrown American sacred music Lowell Mason<\/a>, but is definitely not Handel, although he is frequently cited as the composer.\u00a0 Whoever the author is, they brought a preexisiting text together with a new melody that quotes two movements of Handel\u2019s masterwork in the space of twenty measures.) \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  2. In a series of essays about bebop called The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of<\/a>, the erudite pianist and analyst Ethan Iverson includes \u2018Un Poco Loco\u2019 in a list of Powell compositions that he calls \u2018not bebop\u2019.\u00a0 in response to literary critic Harold Bloom\u2019s assertion that UPL is a twentieth-century masterpiece, which to me is an evaluation worth considering.\u00a0 Iverson writes that \u2018it\u2019s wrong to cite a non-bebop example of Powell as the greatest Powell\u2019.\u00a0 This led me to look for bebop language in Powell\u2019s solo on the UPL master take. I found non-scale tones on upbeats, the kinds of melodic moves called enclosure or surrounding, a preponderance of eighth note and triplet motion, use phrases originated by bop players like \u2018the Jumpin\u2019 fragment\u2019 and phrases frequently borrowed by bop players like \u2018I Can\u2019t Get Started\u2019 (see Cannonball Adderley\u2019s solo on Milestones), a tendency to begin and end phrases on upbeats or beats two and four and end phrases on rhythmically emphasized altered tone (F# or #11).\u00a0 For me, all these contradict Iverson\u2019s assertion.\u00a0 \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  3. I initially thought of calling this series of licks the \u2018vaguely Middle Eastern sounding licks\u2019, as they sound similar to the attempts made to melodically evoke Middle Eastern music in jazz in tunes like Ellington and Tizol\u2019s Caravan, Victor Young\u2019s Delilah and Roger King Mozian\u2019s Desert Dance<\/a>, also recorded by Machito and His Orchestra as Cleopatra Rumba<\/a>.\u00a0 All these tunes use the flatted ninth, ascending and\/or descending minor thirds, and what Klezmer musicians call the \u2018freygish mode\u2019, or the fifth mode of the harmonic minor.\u00a0 I decided that the attempts by US composers to evoke Middle Eastern music in the absence of Middle Eastern musicians need to be addressed by someone with more knowledge of Middle Eastern music than I have.).\u00a0 \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  4. The opening interval of each of these licks is, to my ear, incorrectly shown in Gene Rizzo\u2019s transcription from \u2018The Bud Powell Collection\u2019 published by Hal Leonard, one of very few errors in the transcription.). \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  5. Harris\u2019 compositional process of creating melodies that are ingenious patchworks of borrowed licks is worth delving into briefly here. Harris\u2019s first borrowing from Powell in \u2018Reets and I\u2019 is a phrase Bud plays in his solo on \u2018All God\u2019s Chillun Got Rhythm\u2019, recorded in 1949 and originally released by Mercury records in 1951.\u00a0 In this phrase Powell interpolates a lick from his own tune \u2018Strictly Confidential\u2019, recorded immediately before \u2018All God\u2019s Chillun\u2019 at the same session.\u00a0 In \u2018Reets and I\u2019, Harris kept the chord progression of \u2018All God\u2019s Chillun\u2019, followed the phrase from Powell\u2019s solo on the tune with an allusion to the melody of \u2018I\u2019ll Keep Loving You\u2019 (an original Powell ballad also recorded at the same session as \u2018All God\u2019s Chillun\u2019) and concluded the first half with the \u2018b9-b5 triplet lick\u2019.\u00a0 \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  6. These kinds of \u2018product placement\u2019 quotes include Duke Ellington\u2019s quote of \u2018I\u2019m Beginning To See The Light\u2019 at the end of his solo on \u2018Take The A Train\u2019 from Ellington Uptown<\/a> and Thelonious Monk\u2019s quote of \u2018Misterioso\u2019 at the end of his solo on the original version of \u2018Straight No Chaser\u2019<\/a>. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  7. Some forms of this aphorism have been attributed to spoken conversation by Oscar Wilde, but a synopsis of its use on quoteexplainer.com<\/a> suggests it was viral and frequently mutating in printed media. \u00a0 \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Top: The cover of The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 5 (Blue Note Records, 1959) featuring Powell’s son Earl John Powell \/ below: Earl John Powell and myself at a screeing of Haeyong Moon’s documentary ‘Bud Lives!’ in November 2025 (photo: … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"[{\"id\":\"09518fbd-a0a0-463b-b92c-0c6c2126872b\",\"content\":\"As it turns out, this song is deeply American in its patchwork construction. Its author may or may not be the American banker, church musician and crusader against homegrown American sacred music Lowell Mason<\\\/a>, but is definitely not Handel, although he is frequently cited as the composer.\\u00a0 Whoever the author is, they brought a preexisiting text together with a new melody that quotes two movements of Handel\\u2019s masterwork in the space of twenty measures.)\"},{\"id\":\"3f338798-5c23-4933-a6bb-4275b521bc57\",\"content\":\"In a series of essays about bebop called The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of<\\\/a>, the erudite pianist and analyst Ethan Iverson includes \\u2018Un Poco Loco\\u2019 in a list of Powell compositions that he calls \\u2018not bebop\\u2019.\\u00a0 in response to literary critic Harold Bloom\\u2019s assertion that UPL is a twentieth-century masterpiece, which to me is an evaluation worth considering.\\u00a0 Iverson writes that \\u2018it\\u2019s wrong to cite a non-bebop example of Powell as the greatest Powell\\u2019.\\u00a0 This led me to look for bebop language in Powell\\u2019s solo on the UPL master take. I found non-scale tones on upbeats, the kinds of melodic moves called enclosure or surrounding, a preponderance of eighth note and triplet motion, use phrases originated by bop players like \\u2018the Jumpin\\u2019 fragment\\u2019 and phrases frequently borrowed by bop players like \\u2018I Can\\u2019t Get Started\\u2019 (see Cannonball Adderley\\u2019s solo on Milestones), a tendency to begin and end phrases on upbeats or beats two and four and end phrases on rhythmically emphasized altered tone (F# or #11).\\u00a0 For me, all these contradict Iverson\\u2019s assertion.\\u00a0\"},{\"id\":\"89fe6214-8dac-42ce-8486-21ef579c0c6b\",\"content\":\"I initially thought of calling this series of licks the \\u2018vaguely Middle Eastern sounding licks\\u2019, as they sound similar to the attempts made to melodically evoke Middle Eastern music in jazz in tunes like Ellington and Tizol\\u2019s Caravan, Victor Young\\u2019s Delilah and Roger King Mozian\\u2019s Desert Dance<\\\/a>, also recorded by Machito and His Orchestra as Cleopatra Rumba<\\\/a>.\\u00a0 All these tunes use the flatted ninth, ascending and\\\/or descending minor thirds, and what Klezmer musicians call the \\u2018freygish mode\\u2019, or the fifth mode of the harmonic minor.\\u00a0 I decided that the attempts by US composers to evoke Middle Eastern music in the absence of Middle Eastern musicians need to be addressed by someone with more knowledge of Middle Eastern music than I have.).\\u00a0\"},{\"id\":\"61d173e9-6398-4f95-916b-d66100d0ac23\",\"content\":\"The opening interval of each of these licks is, to my ear, incorrectly shown in Gene Rizzo\\u2019s transcription from \\u2018The Bud Powell Collection\\u2019 published by Hal Leonard, one of very few errors in the transcription.).\"},{\"id\":\"95dc565c-a6fc-42bc-9ba9-5178be3e70c9\",\"content\":\"Harris\\u2019 compositional process of creating melodies that are ingenious patchworks of borrowed licks is worth delving into briefly here. Harris\\u2019s first borrowing from Powell in \\u2018Reets and I\\u2019 is a phrase Bud plays in his solo on \\u2018All God\\u2019s Chillun Got Rhythm\\u2019, recorded in 1949 and originally released by Mercury records in 1951.\\u00a0 In this phrase Powell interpolates a lick from his own tune \\u2018Strictly Confidential\\u2019, recorded immediately before \\u2018All God\\u2019s Chillun\\u2019 at the same session.\\u00a0 In \\u2018Reets and I\\u2019, Harris kept the chord progression of \\u2018All God\\u2019s Chillun\\u2019, followed the phrase from Powell\\u2019s solo on the tune with an allusion to the melody of \\u2018I\\u2019ll Keep Loving You\\u2019 (an original Powell ballad also recorded at the same session as \\u2018All God\\u2019s Chillun\\u2019) and concluded the first half with the \\u2018b9-b5 triplet lick\\u2019.\\u00a0\"},{\"id\":\"b8bc3b34-aefc-48e3-8a6b-f6e6df87fdea\",\"content\":\"These kinds of \\u2018product placement\\u2019 quotes include Duke Ellington\\u2019s quote of \\u2018I\\u2019m Beginning To See The Light\\u2019 at the end of his solo on \\u2018Take The A Train\\u2019 from Ellington Uptown<\\\/a> and Thelonious Monk\\u2019s quote of \\u2018Misterioso\\u2019 at the end of his solo on the original version of \\u2018Straight No Chaser\\u2019<\\\/a>.\"},{\"id\":\"8eada9dd-0e11-4349-92cb-9c4994eba8d4\",\"content\":\"Some forms of this aphorism have been attributed to spoken conversation by Oscar Wilde, but a synopsis of its use on quoteexplainer.com<\\\/a> suggests it was viral and frequently mutating in printed media. \\u00a0\"}]"},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2777"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2798,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777\/revisions\/2798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}