A Night in Tunisia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Night in Tunisia is a musical composition written by Dizzy Gillespie in 1942 while he was playing with the Earl Hines Band. It is also known as Interlude, under which title it was recorded (with lyrics) by Sarah Vaughan. Gillespie himself called the tune Night in Tunisia.

A Night in Tunisia, along with Manteca, was one of the signature pieces of Gillespie's bebop big band, and he also played it with his small groups. One of its most famous performances is Charlie Parker's recording for Dial (Dial even released a fragmentary take of it simply titled "The Famous Alto Break"); it also became closely identified with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, who often gave showstopping performances of it with extra percussion from the entire horn section.

On the album A Night At Birdland, Volume 1, Blakey introduces the piece with the (probably apocryphal) story of how he was present when Dizzy composed it "on the bottom of a garbage can." The liner notes say, "The Texas department of sanitation can take a low bow."

The complex bass line in the A section is notable for avoiding the standard "walking" bass pattern of straight quarter notes, and the use of oscillating half-step-up/half-step-down chord changes gives the song a unique, mysterious feeling. Like many of Gillespie's tunes, it features a short written introduction and a brief interlude that occurs between solo sections — in this case, a six-bar sequence that dramatically launches the soloist into an unaccompanied cadenza.

The piece has become a standard. It has been covered in various styles by various artists, including Maynard Ferguson, Anthony Braxton, Bobby McFerrin, The Turtle Island String Quartet, The Toasters and the Latin Jazz Sextet.