Wake Up! – Gigi Gryce

For a description of this song, click on the other album cover. Although Blakey's is the first recording, a more complete description is shown for the recording which included the composer, Gigi Gryce.

Art Blakey's version is taken considerably faster than the later Gigi Gryce recording. The arrangement is generally similar but with several important differences. There is no send-off for the drums; the out head is the same as the in head, followed by the intro again as an ending. Several rhythm section figures are different. In the intro, the pedal is on 1 and the "and" of 2, rather than the "and" of 3. Most notably, at the beginning of the A and C sections the piano and bass play a different descending series of chords in half notes, while the drums hit over-the-barline dotted half notes with the horns. These new chords reharmonize the melody in some clever ways; for example E♮ becomes the 3rd of C7 where it is the sharp 5th of A♭7 on the Gigi Gryce recording.

The melody phrasing is also slightly different. The second measure of the A section ends with a rest, without the "slide" used in other repeats of the same pattern. The high B♭ in the 6th measure of the A section is on the downbeat, not anticipated as in the other version; when this phrase is developed at the beginning of the bridge, the same phrasing is used.

The B-flat lead sheet is the first part for the quintet arrangement.

A suitably rousing "rhythm changes" variation with a classic Gigi Gryce sound. The melody starts a real hard-bop "shout"—a series of half notes sliding down to quarter notes in an over-the-barline 3 against 4 pattern, descending the blues scale. The rest of the melody features an energetic mix of blues and bebop vocabulary. The bridge changes start with two measures each of D7 and E♭7, followed by dominant chords descending in half steps back to B♭—related to the bridge of Sonny Stitt's The Eternal Triangle. In fact the beginning of the A section of Wake Up! is similar to The Eternal Triangle's intro. The rhythm section plays hits that complement the over-the-barline pattern at the start of the A and C sections, in stepwise descending chords; standard "rhythm changes" are used in these sections of the solo choruses.

There is an eight-measure intro, with a bluesy fanfare-like melody over a rhythm section pedal on F on beat 1 and the "and" of 3. On this recording, the out chorus starts with a four-measure send-off on the A sections for four measures of drum solo. Trumpet and alto sax solo for four measures each on the bridge, and they take the C section out followed by the intro one more time as an ending. The arrangement is shown on our lead sheets, second parts, and condensed score. The horns play mostly in octaves, but are voiced in fourths and fifths on the intro and ending. In the second half of the bridge the horns harmonize in thirds, with contrary motion in the last measure to return to octaves.

The B-flat lead sheet is the first part for the quintet arrangement.

Click on the other album cover for details about the arrangement on the Art Blakey recording.