Mid Nite Lament – Bennie Harris

This obscure, haunting ballad deserves much wider recognition. It has all the emotional depth of the classic minor-key post-bop ballads such as Lucky Thompson's Deep Passion or Charles Mingus' Goodbye Pork Pie Hat. Mid Nite Lament has a stretched-out AABC form, with 9-measure A and C sections and an 8-measure bridge. There's plenty of drama in the melody, with many rising arpeggios to the 9th or 13th of the chords, as well as several phrases where D♭ replaces the expected leading tone D♮ for a particularly dark blues feeling. The changes are also quite dark, with the A section full of tritone sub II-V7s (Bm7-E7-E♭m). The bridge lightens a little, visiting C major and D♭ major before a descending series of dominant chords.

Don Sickler originally found Bennie Harris' copyright registration manuscript from 1961, written in the key of F minor. Before this recording was discovered, we assumed this was the concert key. Trumpeter Dupree Bolton, featured on the recording, makes the song sound so good in E♭ minor that we transposed our lead sheet to the key from the recording. Being a trumpeter himself, it's likely Bennie Harris registered the song with a B♭ lead sheet. Click on Historical Notes for more about this recording.

We've used Bennie's original manuscript as the basis for our lead sheets; the melody and form on the recording are a bit different. Most notably, Dupree Bolton doesn't play the pickup into the A section. The bridge melody is also not played on the recording, which has an unusual form: two A sections of melody, two more A sections of alto sax solo, B with a piano solo, and out melody C. There is also a rhythm section intro, which reappears as a coda with a three-horn arrangement; this is not included in our lead sheet.

The placement of chord symbols is a bit ambiguous in Bennie's manuscript. On the recording, the eighth measure of the A section has two beats of Bm7 and two beats of B♭7; we feel that holding E♭m7 from the previous measure and moving the Bm7 and B♭7 to beats 3 and 4 makes more sense with the melody, and that may be what the manuscript indicates. In the seventh measure of the bridge on the recording, G♭7 is held over from the previous measure; this is as shown on the manuscript, but there may be a missing chord symbol here as the melody moves down in sequence. We show E7 below the staff here as an option.

An exclusive video of this song is available by Elijah Shiffer on alto sax and Ben Rosenblum on piano (scroll up). There are a few chord alterations in this version, including the aforementioned E7 in the bridge; these are shown below the staff in our lead sheets. This version has a piano intro based on the original recording, but no coda; it ends at the last measure of the out head.