Salt Peanuts

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"Salt Peanuts" is a bebop tune composed by Dizzy Gillespie in 1942, also credited as "with the collaboration of" historical bebop drummer Kenny Clarke. It is unique in that it has a small sung part in which the singer sings "Salt peanuts, salt peanuts." Most bebop songs have no singing (aside from Scat singing.) It's by now considered a bop jazz standard by many. Perhaps one of the most famous recordings of this tune is the one on the album Live at the Massey Hall, Toronto, 1953, where Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker play with one of their most successful line-ups, which included Max Roach on drums, Bud Powell on piano and Charles Mingus on bass.

The "Salt Peanuts" motif predates Gillespie/Clarke by at least several months, as it appears as a six-note instrumental phrase played on piano by Count Basie on his July 2, 1941 recording of "Basie Boogie" for the Columbia/OKeh label. He repeated it in a recorded live performance at Cafe Society later that year.

"Salt Peanuts" emphasizes the beats two and four, the weak beats in a 4/4 measure. This was a rhythmic innovation of early bebop, giving the music a significantly different rhythmic feel from the prevailing swing styles that preceded bebop.