High Seas – Kenny Dorham

High Seas is an example of a distinctive category of Kenny Dorham compositions. Like Back Road and Brown's Town, it's a minor-key medium swinger whose melody begins with a long pickup from the horns alone, answered by rhythm section hits with chromatically descending harmonies. This one is particularly somber and dark, with a melodic range of only a sixth (D♭ up to B♭) for the entire head; both the A and B section melodies use the blues scale throughout.

The changes give this song a real sense of depth; though the melody is simple, many of the notes are upper extensions of the chords. The A section's rhythm section hits descend chromatically for the first six measures, then (in the first A section) start to climb again. The second A and C sections lay on G♭7 at the end, with the melody note E♭ as the rich 13th. The changes on the bridge are also mostly descending; the piano and drums have hits here "responding" to the melody, but the bass mostly walks.

The solo changes are only slightly simplified from the head changes; the rhythm section plays with a 4-feel throughout the solo chorus. There is a shout section to launch drum solo fills, which on the recording is played on the first half of the out chorus, with the out melody returning at the bridge. In this shout section, the horns, piano, and bass play the same hits that the rhythm section has on the head. The ending tags the last melodic phrase, four times instead of the expected three.

Full Score and parts are available for the quintet arrangement, along with alternate parts. The horns are in octaves for most of the head, harmonized mostly at the ends of melodic phrases. In the second measure of the A and C sections (not counting the pickup), there is a 16th-note triplet turn on the third beat that, on the recording, is played differently by the trumpet and tenor sax. The trumpet plays A♭, A♮, A♭ while the tenor sax has A♮, B♭, A♮ in the lower octave. This may sound like a mistake but we have included it in our parts—these notes are played every time the phrase appears, and it seems like the kind of subtle arranging technique Dorham would use. As with Blue Interlude (coming soon), we have a Baritone Sax 2nd part because of the low register of the Tenor Sax 2nd part.