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5 Sharp Dissonance to Smooth Harmony with Mona  T his part of my life was entangled with drugs, so it wasn’t the most productive musical time for me. That would come later, after 1959. Despite my drug use, I did develop musically because the environment was always conducive to learning. I was around future giants like Miles, who was devoutly working on his music, but he was also sidetracked by drugs and was in a holding pattern. He didn’t really arrive until the Coltrane era, 1955–1956. That’s when he really started to take off as “Miles Davis,” although before that he had a number of recordings. Many of us didn’t have much notoriety at that time, since we had a limited number of recording sessions, and I didn’t have a recording in my own name. I was recording with the good guys, but I wasn’t a leader. This is what using drugs did to my career. Trane was like me at that time because he didn’t have a recording session in his own name. In New York in 1953, my musical relationship with trumpeter Kenny Dorham began to develop with a recording on December 15. I played tenor and baritone saxophone for Debut Records, which Charles Mingus and Max Roach owned. They were trying to go on their own without having to deal with distributors, who were usually considered to be gangsters and unfair to jazz musicians. On this recording, Walter Bishop, Jr., was on piano, Percy on bass, and Kenny Clarke on drums. I had made three record dates in 1953, with Miles, J.J., and Kenny Dorham—April, June, and December , respectively. I wasn’t on Miles’s 1953 Prestige date, where my tune Sharp Dissonance to Smooth Harmon y with Mona  | 79 “The Serpent’s Tooth,” named by Ira Gitler, was recorded. It was later part of a recording called Miles Davis Collectors’ Items and included a 1956 session as well. That 1953 recording was historic because they say it was the second and final occasion when Bird, under the name Charlie Chan, was recorded playing tenor sax. Also, Sonny Rollins and Bird were together on that session, which we’re told never happened again. The Debut Records date was fascinating because of Kenny’s playing and his musical ability and quest. We were very close in our search for new harmonies and new ways of playing, as was Miles. We would regularly discuss the music, and our conversations would deal with reharmonization and modernization of songs, especially standards. These sessions would start at the piano, which reminded me of how I learned from Dizzy when he came to my house in Philadelphia. I learned that I needed the piano to create. Kenny could play piano. He would say, “Hey, Shorty. Dig this change here. You can play this here instead of playing that. You can play a half-step up on this instead of the usual change.” These were innovations he thought of or had learned from being around Charlie Parker or Dizzy. We would transfer information, and the information in musical terms would usually be about altered chords, what scales could be played on those chords, and how to enhance a composition by selecting certain notes to play the melody. These concepts were part of reharmonizing melodies. We compared original compositions and got suggestions and opinions from each other. Reharmonization involves working with melody notes. If a composition has a melody note on the third, that might be changed. One of the songs Kenny was working on was “Be My Love,” a popular tune made famous by Mario Lanza. Kenny changed the chords. Instead of playing G minor to C7 at a certain point, he would put in a passing chord of C-sharp minor 7 to F-sharp 7, a tritone away. Reharmonization also involved working with the melody. If the melody was on one function of the chord, the 3rd or the root, it might be changed to the 5th or the flatted 5th, 9th, or some other note to give it another quality. For example, you could change a song such as “The Girl from Ipanema.” If the melody is on the root, the song sounds “churchy,” but if you put the melody on the 5th of the chord, it sounds a little better. When you put it on the 7th of the chord, it has a different sound. Jobim put the melody on...

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