The Not-Pop Jukebox

I’ve a bass-playing friend, of the upright sort, who’s a massive jazz buff. Today he heard a phone ring in the office and turned to me. “What’s that great bebop tune that starts with those notes?” My blank look said it all but eventually he got it: Groovin’ High.

Then he told me that this song came about because Dizzy Gillespie was so tired of playing the standard ballad Dream so he wrote Groovin’ High based on the same chord progression. I could hardly take him at his word so off I ran to Grooveshark and found both songs.

Whether my pal’s anecdote holds water or not I had to post Groovin’ High. Dizzy Gillespie does a fantastic job in general but this version with Charlie Parker had me boppin’ all over my desk. Hold tight through all of the noodling in the middle and catch some clean Dizzy at the end, stringing out to an end note that will absolutely pierce you. The notes do, indeed, coincide with the the ring of that phone, by the way.

If you like, you can catch both Sarah Vaghan and Michael Buble performing Dream below and let me know if you think the chords really do follow the same progression, despite the utterly different moods of the songs. In other words, related or not?