‘Round About Midnight (Art Pepper’s version)

Art Pepper (alto sax), Russ Freeman (piano), Bob Magnusson (bass) and Frank Butler (drums). From the album Art Pepper Among Friends (1978).

The most important moment of this song was when Miles Davis played it at the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival with a muted trumpet. Thanks to this performance, Columbia Records, the world’s most powerful recording company, signed a contract with the trumpeter. Davis was not on the official festival program, but was added at the last minute for a jam session. After playing the theme the spectators stood up to applaud him, and later Davis said that when he got off the bandstand everybody watched him as if he was a king.

During the taxi ride home, Monk told Davis that he had not played the theme correctly, but for the jazz audience, Davis’s performance would be the definitive version of this jazz ballad, even more than Monk’s own. The most extraordinary thing is that in his interpretation, Davis did not even make any solo, just a brief taciturn exposition of the melody with some inventive alterations and adornments.

The ballad starts with Pepper exposing it and gradually the other musicians joining in. Magnusson accompanies him with a lyrical and poetic discurse, and then begins his solo expressing his deepest emotions. Pepper follows him being faithful to the original melody, but now it is Butler who stands out for his accompaniment. Then Pepper develops his solo more freely until he finally re-exposes the theme.