I’ve been listening to a lot of Woody recently, and transcribed this solo from Kenny Garrett’s debut recording, “Introducing Kenny Garrett”. it’s definitely late period Woody, he was playing and recording a lot of standards and his harmonic choices are much more straightforward than his earlier sides.

Here’s an MP3 of the solo and here is my transcription.

This transcription is not completely accurate, Woody loves to play odd groupings of notes over beats and his 16th note lines don’t line up perfectly against the beat, and I am bad at notating such things. The double time line starting at measure 17 is a great example of this kind of displaced feeling. I can play it, but can’t really notate it accurately.

This is an interesting solo in that Woody plays a lot of very conventional beboppish phrases, like the iii-vi-ii-V line at the end of the first chorus, but over the same progression in the second chorus he plays a brilliant triplet figure that is completely his own. Also interesting is the amount of variety he uses in his rhythms over two choruses. straight eights, exaggerated triplet eights, lots of triplet and 16th note lines as well as the aforementioned odd groupings. Finally, Woody’s articulation sets him apart from every other jazz trumpeter I have ever heard, his use of stacatto and shortened notes seems completely unique to me.