TT 491: Miles Davis and "Solar"

RIP Larry Appelbaum

Sorry to hear of the passing of Larry Appelbaum, a force for good in the music. From the obituary:

Among his many accomplishments, he is perhaps best known for discovering the lost Thelonious Monk-John Coltrane Carnegie Hall tapes…He worked at the Library of Congress for over four decades, serving as Supervisor of the Magnetic Recording Laboratory and later as a Senior Music Reference Specialist in the Music Division. Through his work transferring, editing, and mastering historical recordings, he ensured their preservation for future generations. His expertise contributed to major Jazz anthologies, including Jazz: The First Century and Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology. He also curated a long-running Jazz film series and wrote extensively for many publications, including JazzTimes and DownBeat magazines.

I didn’t know Larry well but he seemed kind and personable. One time at the Library of Congress Larry took me through the archives, where he showed me Charlie Parker’s handwritten chart on “Chi-Chi,” a letter from Billy Strayhorn, and other treasures.

---

Appelbaum found definitive proof concerning one of the longstanding mysteries, “Who wrote ‘Solar?’”

a page from The Real Book (5th edition)

“Solar” is generally credited to Miles Davis, who tracked the first recording in 1954. However, in the 1990s and 2000s, I heard from people like Jim McNeely and Lee Konitz that “Solar” was written by guitarist Chuck Wayne. McNeely was quite specific, claiming that the tune was Wayne’s, but that Miles had changed the first chord from major to minor. Konitz would start many of his gigs with “Solar,” and say to the audience, “That was not by Miles Davis, but by Chuck Wayne.”

Both were right. Larry Appelbaum published a 2012 Library of Congress blog post with audio of Wayne’s group playing “Sonny” in 1946. It’s the same tune — but the first chord is major, not minor.

Changing the first chord to minor was a masterstroke. I doubt “Solar” would be nearly as famous without the minor key start.

---

There are many other odd things about this friendly little tune:

Bill Evans played one of the earlier versions of “Solar” on his famous Sunday at the Village Vanguard album from 1961. Miles Davis and Prestige Records did not copyright the composition until 1963 — was this in response to Evans’s hit record? (It’s also worth noting that Davis never added the piece to his active repertoire. After recording it in 1954, Davis was done with “Solar,” except for collecting royalties beginning in 1963. Update: “Solar” is on the very recent Miles Davis archival release In Concert At The Olympia, Paris 1957. Thanks to Julian Koslow for pointing that out. More on the copyright issue below. )

A relationship between the names “Sonny” and “Solar” seems likely, especially since Miles might have heard the Wayne title as “Sunny.” However, the chord progression is also like “How High the Moon”: if the first two bars of “Solar” is replaced with G major, both are exactly the same for 8 bars. “Sun” and “Moon"?” At any rate, one way to think about “Solar” is “a minor blues meets ‘How High the Moon.’”

Lewis Porter pointed out that the way all musicians pronounce "Solar" (the tune) is weirdly different than "solar" (like "solar rays"). Sole-lahr instead of sol-ehr. What the heck. (IMPORTANT UPDATE: Lewis has gone into the topic of “Solar” extensively at his own site under the heading, “Miles Davis Did Not Exactly ‘Steal’ Tunes.” Lewis is protective of Miles, as he should be, I also dislike people who jump up and yell, “Miles didn’t write anything!” right out of the box. I should have looked at Lewis’s posts before writing this page, but the only thing that Lewis writes that adds what I have here is that Prestige records was the person to file for copyright in 1963, they owned half the tune going back to 1954. Very important detail! I admit that Lewis’s comment “Jazz musicians often bring pieces to a recording session that have no known composer” does not exactly strike me as exactly right, but I suppose in the case of “Solar” is is possible Miles genuinely didn’t know where he got the tune. At any rate, in the larger scheme, Chuck Wayne could have used the money more than Miles, that much seems obvious, it’s a shame this wasn’t all sorted out 60 or 70 years ago.)

The version of the melody in the popular 5th edition of The Real Book (seen above) has become “the way to play the tune” although neither Miles Davis nor Bill Evans played it that way. (Chuck Wayne’s original “Sonny” is also far less syncopated.)

It is doubly ironic that the monument at Miles Davis’s gravesite is decorated with that syncopated version of “Solar,” for Miles did not write the tune, nor did he phrase it that way on his 1954 record. Whoever inscribed the granite just opened up The Real Book and took it as gospel — not the first time this has happened, although seldom with such permanent results.