Promised Land – Cedar Walton

Promised Land is quite a fun song with its bouncy theme and rhythm section stop-time. The melody is quite simple and catchy, almost entirely within the blues scale. There's a conversation between the melody and rhythm section throughout; besides the stop-time figures, the bass has a solo fill answering the melody in the third and fourth measures.

The form of the head is 40 measures, AAB with 16-measure A sections and an eight-measure B section. Though the A section is close to blues changes, it doesn't feel like a 16-measure blues chorus but rather a 12-measure blues with a tag; the last four measures are the same as the second four. In a reversal of typical blues changes, there's really a "turnaround" in the 5th and 6th measures, with F7 (the IV chord) not showing up until the 9th measure. The B section changes are mostly chromatic descending sequences. Solos are on standard 12-measure blues changes.

The bass fill in the 3rd and 4th measure is shown in cue size, treble clef and an octave higher in our C treble clef, B♭, and E♭ lead sheets. Bassists should read the C bass clef lead sheet where this fill is in the correct range. A bass melody part is available; click on the Bass Corner tab for more details.

On the recording, Freddie Hubbard plays the B section melody slightly different from the way it's written: in the second measure the "and" of beat 2 is a G (as in the first measure) rather than an F. Our lead sheet shows the way Cedar Walton wrote it. It's played as written on his quartet recording; click the second album cover for more details.

About the arrangement: We have "as recorded" horn parts (trumpet 1st, tenor sax 2nd, trombone 3rd) and a rhythm section part for the sextet arrangement. The trombone and tenor sax harmonize most of the rhythm section hits, but also catch some of the melody around the hits with the trumpet. In several places the trombone is voiced above the tenor.

This arrangement includes two sets of backgrounds for the solos. Background 1, based on the head, is repeated twice. Background 2 is a two-chorus background: these choruses have a slightly different trumpet melody but the same tenor and trombone harmony notes. On the recording, the tenor and trombone play background 1 behind the trumpet solo; background 2 is played by the trumpet and trombone for the tenor solo, and by all three horns for the piano solo. Background 2 goes right up to the end of the last measure, so the piano (or whichever instrument is soloing last) must play at least one more chorus after this background for the horns to come in with the pickup to the out melody.

A separate lead sheet is available for this quartet version, which is slightly slower than the original Art Blakey recording. This version is similar, but with a different bass fill that lands on the "and" of 4 in the third measure, rather than extending into the fourth measure. A few chords are different, notably a IV-I cadence (F-C) in the seventh measure which highlights the "gospel" element that the title implies. Instead of hits on the last two notes as in the Blakey version, this arrangement has one hit only on the final note. This hit is played short in both in and out heads for an abrupt ending.