Trompeta Toccata – Kenny Dorham

Trompeta Toccata has all the beauty and majesty of Kenny Dorham’s iconic sound, condensed into a brief, concise but complete theme. The powerful melody is essentially a single phrase, 11 measures in length, which descends in long notes with triplet pickups through a two-octave range. The basic key seems at first to be B♭ minor, but ends in the parallel major. Though the chord progression is beautifully deep and subtle in that unique K.D. style, the focus in this song is very much on the melody.

The head is played twice: first rubato, with trumpet alone on the melody and the other instruments filling in each long note with chords after the downbeat. Then the drums set up a Latin 12/8 groove for two measures, and the horns come in with the melody together. Piano comping rhythms are shown in our lead sheet, but the bass part is left open to interpretation; Richard Davis on the recording constantly varies his lines in each chorus. After solos, the head is played in time and then rubato.

The solo form has a chord progression similar to the head; however, solos are not on the changes but really on the melody. The length of the solo chorus is not fixed: the soloist uses each phrase of the melody to cue the piano and bass for the next chord change, with each one of these extended indefinitely until the next melody phrase. Our lead sheets show a 16-measure solo form based on Kenny Dorham’s first solo chorus on the recording, with the melody phrases cued. On the recording, bassist Richard Davis is the last soloist; the rhythm section holds out the last chord at the end, and he plays the melody once rubato before drummer Tootie Heath sets up the groove again for the out melody. The last soloist also has the option of going directly into the out melody.

Second parts are available for the quintet arrangement; the first part is the lead sheet. The second part is with the rhythm section for the rubato first chorus, then in octaves with the first part when the melody is repeated in time.