Sign Off – Kenny Dorham

The title suggests that Kenny used this song as the closer of a set; it certainly works in this context. It's a simple blues head with a funky, rhythmic riff. The piano answers the melody with rhythmic hits in the last measure of each four-measure phrase. A second theme is used to launch the solos, with eight measures of rhythm section pedal point on beats 2 and 4; the soloist begins in the last four measures of the chorus. This pedal point, like that of Windmill, is on the dominant (B♭ in the key of E♭), going to the tonic of A♭7 but back to B♭ for the next E♭7. This same pedal point section appears at the end, with one of K.D.'s classic stop-time codas (like Stage West) replacing the last four measures. This coda ends with a grand pause of just over a measure, and a final hit on the "and" of beat 2. It's easy to imagine Kenny playing with this on a gig, prolonging the pause by several measures so as to really make that last hit a surprise.