Actually this is a Cherokee contrafact called Parker ’51…
This with Stan Getz, Live at Storyville, in 1952. I’ve been meaning to work up some mojo for Cherokee, and it’s an interesting problem. My mid-tempo vocabulary doesn’t work on Cherokee because of the fast tempo, not to mention the difficult key centers on the bridge. I like Al Haig’s vocabulary on this solo (one chorus only), but it’s also an interesting solo to listen to because he was having difficulty getting the eighth notes out fast enough. At the end of the bridge, you can hear Getz start snapping his fingers because Haig kept getting behind (by which I mean he couldn’t seem to play his ii-V patterns quite fast enough, so he’d finish late and need a couple of bars to “regroup”). I had to “rationalize” the timing of some of this, since certain licks dragged so much. I suspect Al had been drinking…
Parker 51 (Cherokee) – Al Haig