Bud Like – Charles McPherson

As you hear from our excerpt, this one has a lot of great rhythmic interplay between the melody and the rhythm section right from the start, so all three recordings start with a drum set up to get everyone in focus.

Get ready to have some fun! On this recording, the drums has eight bars to set up the melody.This snappy medium-up blues head combines bebop and post-bop influences with lots of built-in rhythmic drive. During the melody, the rhythm section punctuates the melody with a series of hits in a repeated two-measure pattern, except for the last two measures of the head where everybody, including the piano and bass, gets to play the melody. These measures either set up the return of the melody, or propel you into the first soloist or into the ending.

The melody often switches from outlining the changes to more patterned phrases, such as the pentatonic phrase in the 5th and 6th measures which contrasts with the more linear phrase two measures earlier. The changes of the first four measures are based on a classic bebop-era blues variant used in Bud Powell’s Dance Of The Infidels, with a distinctive tritone substitute II-V7 in the fourth measure going to B♭. The rest of Bud Like’s changes are more standard, without descending II-V7s in the 7th and 8th measures.

Please note that the lead sheets available under this album cover are identical to those under the other two album covers.

On this recording, there is a four-measure drum set up for the melody. This quartet recording uses the same head changes as the original quintet version. The rhythm section activity is slightly different: in each two-measure phrase, the hit on beat 4 of the second measure is played by bass and drums but not piano. On the last two measures the bass doubles the melody, but the piano holds out an F9 chord on beat 2 of the second to last measure (the start of the melody phrase).

On this version, the drum set up for the melody is back to eight bars, as was done on the first recording.This live quintet version has slightly different changes from the two studio recordings. Those two versions have a “walk up” of ascending changes in the 5th and 6th measures; this one adds a similar “walk up” in the first two measures. The guitar doubles the melody with the alto; the piano and bass join for the last two measures as on the original recording.