Talk:List of jazz contrafacts

Inline Citations

I've added about 60 citations to articles about many of the Contrafacts, including all of Charlie Parker's ones, many added here for the first time.

Is this sufficient to merit the removal of the "insufficient inline citations" warning?

Watty62 (talk) 01 September 2020 (UTC)

I've also been adding all these contrafacts to [Wikidata https://w.wiki/b6b] which may be of interest to some.

Watty62 (talk) 12:02, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

I've removed the template for insufficient inline citations. If someone things that is wrong, we can discuss. Thanks

Watty62 (talk) 09:15, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Untitled

Also:

"Four Brothers" (Jimmy Giuffre) based on "Jeepers Creepers".
"Walk, Don't Run" (Johnny Smith) based on "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise".
"Prince Albert" (Kenny Dorham) based on "All the Things You Are".
"Inca" (Barry Harris) based on "Lady Bird" (Tadd Dameron) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.68.183.28 (talk) 17:06, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

MBG 119.11.26.2 (talk) 16:09, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

"Notable"

What makes a contrafact "notable"?BassHistory (talk) 23:37, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Notability (music). Hyacinth (talk) 06:41, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

please add this to the list. thanks The song Klactoveedsedstene was written by Charlie Parker and was first released by Charlie Parker Quintet in 1947. It is a jazz contrafact of the tune "I Can't Believe That Your In Love With Me — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.186.6.204 (talk) 05:11, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Cleanup: Unreferenced items

This article smacks of original research. Clearly, many bebop performance or compositions are based on old standards. Some of the entries in the list may be mentioned in one or more of the references listed, but inline citations are needed showing that each composition is tied to the origin claimed. In some cases where the new composition has its own article, one could go to that article and find a reference to verify the claimed connection, but many of the entries are redlinks so that doesn't work. It would be all too easy for anyone to hear a tune and conclude it is derived from the chords of some earlier composition, and add it to the article based on this original research. So I suggest that the entries be referenced and if no reference can be found, removed. Having some refs listed at the bottom of the page is far from adequate to support items being in a list. Edison (talk) 16:12, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I understand the sentiment here, and of course this is WP policy. However this seems like a special situation. This list is highly useful in its current form, and by and large I'd say that the entries have been edited by professionals who are deeply aware of the subject matter. In many cases it will be extremely hard to find a good citation for existence of a contrafact, despite it being widely known among professionals.

It seems to me that there are legitimate gray areas where, by strict definition, a piece of information would be considered to be WP original research, and yet by removing that useful information we would be doing our users a disservice. Can we not find a way, in certain situations like this, where unsourced information that is widely-accepted by professionals could be left in place, and flagged as such? If there's any serious dispute, throw it out. But I think that, in this kind of list, that is used primarily by serious students of the subject, we should err on the side of usefulness rather than pedantry.

This is not an argument for blanket acceptance of unsourced material, of course. But there are a few situations like this where I'd rather have a pro's best opinion, even if there is not a good source.

"Notability" guidelines

On lists like these, especially when the word "notable" is included in the definition of the list, we almost always expect that entries will have either sources or Wikipedia articles. But well over half the list has neither of those; it's a sea of red links. Who says that 317 East 32nd Street is a contrafact of Out of Nowhere, as just the very first example? Need a contrafact be deliberate? Is every blues song a contrafact of every other blues song? Is every ice cream chord song a contrafact of every other? --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 18:14, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Celia

This Bud Powell composition is not based on I Got Rhythm, except for the bridge. Compare the chords. I Got Rhythm, A section:

Bb Gm7 Cm7 F7 Bb Gm7 Cm7 F7 Bb Bb7 Eb Eb7 Bb Gm7 Cm7 F7 (and more or less repeats, as A')

The bridge: D7 D7 D7 D7 G7 G7 G7 G7 C7 C7 C7 C7 F7 F7 F7 F7 (and back to A')

Compare the A section of Celia:

Bb Bb Cm7(b5) Cm7(b5) Dm7 Dm7 Ebm7 Ab7 Dm7 Dbm7 Cm7 B7 (and more or less repeats, as A')

The point is that the crucial shift in I Got Rhythm to Eb Eb7 has no analogue in Celia. Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 05:28, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

which is the fault with this entire list; it's mostly original research. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 15:59, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Bird of Paradise; Kim; Meandering

Some original research here: I listened to all three of the Charlie Parker (with Miles Davis) studio takes of Bird of Paradise. In the first take, Parker begins with the melody of Jerome Kern's All the things you are. The other two takes are not compositions, but improvisations on the harmonic sequence (the chords, in jazz parlance) of All the things you are. So what is the composition Bird of Paradise? Would anyone ever play it except as a solo transcription exercise?

The situation is similar with Parker's recordings of Kim and Meandering. What is the composition? They are two distinct improvisations, each with a harmonic source in one or another Gershwin composition. Does anyone play Kim or Meandering, or Bird of Paradise?

One might as well call Parker's recording of Embraceable You a contrafact, since it uses only the chords of Embraceable you and not the melody except in the closing ensemble measures. Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 17:01, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Henry Martin's views in "Charlie Parker, Composer"

The article extensively cites Charlie Parker, Composer for Parker recordings that are improvisations on the chord changes of some stadnard or another, as if they were compositions. Quoting the publisher: "The view is advanced that the Western concept of a music composition needs to be expanded to embrace practices typical of jazz composition and forming a significant part of Parker's work. While focusing on Parker's more conventional tunes, the book also considers his large-scale melodic formulas. Two formulas in particular are arguably compositional, since they are repeated in subsequent performances of the same piece."

This calls into question all the citations in the article of Parker recordings as compositions when they are improvised. Jazz musicians call these formulas "licks." Parker had many of them. They do not make his improvisations compositions, except in Martin's idiosyncratic definition of composition.

References

Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 22:25, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I believe you are misunderstanding about Parker's compositions. It appears the book/article you cite is about something else other than his "compositions" as usually understood. Bird wrote (beforehand) and usually wrote out or taught to the other musicians very detailed precise complex melodies, sometimes with intros also, and sometimes (often, really) played in unison with the trumpet. These compositions may have ORIGINATED in improvs, but they are not improvs. Yes, there are many "licks" or (as the book you cited calls them) "formulas", but a lick or formula is not a whole melody. And of course Bird and the other musicians then took (improvised) solos that are also not "compositions". So, for example, Parker's "Ko-ko" is played above (uses) the chords of the song "Cherokee" but it has a complex melody of its own that is played at the beginning and end of every performance (a common practice in bop for a long time afterwards). David Couch (talk) 05:33, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Actually, I misunderstood YOU. You are simply pointing out that Martin's book may have an idiosyncratic definition of composition, perhaps calling simply any formula or lick a composition. This, you fear, calls into question the validity of using Martin's book for any citations. However, looking through the list of Parker compositions in this article, I see there is at least one other citation for every composition, so I think you don't need to worry that the citations lack validity. David Couch (talk) 05:44, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

In earlier versions of the article, Martin's book was used as a source for considering solo-only recordings, like Kim, as compositions. That is what my note above was responding to. As a result of this discussion, another editor removed all such spurious alleged "contrafacts." Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 16:27, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

But the complex melody played in unison as intro and outro to Parker's improvisation (not composition) on Cherokee's harmonic sequence is not a contrafact, as far as I can determine. What other tune, if anything, is it based on? So where is the contrafact, "a musical composition built using the chord progression of a pre-existing song, but with a new melody and arrangement"? The solo is not a contrafact, and the intro and outro are not contrafacts, most certainly not of Cherokee. Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 16:24, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Should "notable" be removed as a criterion?

Most of the compositions here don't actually have articles. Besides, applying notability strictly would mean that every contrafact listed in List of compositions by Thelonious Monk that was merged from a standalone article would have to be removed, which seems excessive. IMO expanding the criterion to "by notable artists" makes more sense. Mach61 (talk) 19:16, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

BOLDly changed. Mach61 (talk) 02:32, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

How do we know?

How do we know any of these are contrafacts in the absence of sources? This list is almost completely unverifiable, and likely, in some cases, contrafactual. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 15:52, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

@jpgordon — there are sources for some of this, not referenced in the article. Carl Woideck's Charlie Parker: His Music and Life, available at Open Library, mentions sources for some tunes, sometimes with the more esoteric (but explained) "Rhythm changes." Yardbird suite: a compendium of the music and life of Charlie Parker by Lawrence O. Koch, likewise available at Open Library, is assiduous in listing the source of tunes that Parker recorded.

It would be more work than I'm willing to undertake to source from these works! I leave that to another more dedicated Wikipedian. But to your question, "How do we know any of these are contrafacts...?" I, like many another improvising musician, just know. But the whole question belies working practice, in which some tunes derive only partly from a source (e.g., "Dizzy Atmosphere"), or some from more than one source, e.g., glossable as "Rhythm changes with a Honeysuckle Rose bridge."

Regardless, I sometimes find the article useful, although as noted above, I am irked by the inclusion of pure improvisations like Parker's "Ko-Ko", which is based on another composition's harmonic sequence but is not a composition based on them; and many other Parker examples listed here.Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 22:31, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

"Just knowing" is utterly useless as far as Wikipedia is concerned. At least for the Parker tunes we have an scholarly source. I guess I don't mean "how do we know", I mean "WP:V, please. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 16:37, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

@jpgordon — FWIW, I agree in principle with your objection to "just knowing." But I don't know where else I could find such a list. It seems not unlikely that someone has published a book on the subject.

I think another possible source would be liner notes from some of the LP's where some of these contrafacts appear; in my recollection, Ira Gitler was particularly assiduous in calling out the pop tune sources. Mosaic Records also has been good about this, but most of their liner notes are not online. A chapter in The American Musical Landscape lists contrafacts of "I Got Rhythnm." Again, it's work for somebody to run all this down.

As to the worth of the scholarly source for the Parker performances as compositions, that writer's opinions are tendentious as well as idiosyncratic in my view. If you hew to them, why not take every jazz improvisation on every chorus of every recording as a composition, worthy of inclusion? Why limit it to Parker's admittedly brilliant flights? Where does this logic halt? Why not include (among countless others) tenor saxophonist Ben Webster's famous and oft-repeated (inexactly, to be sure) chorus on Duke Ellington's "Cotton Tail" as a contrafact of I Got Rhythm, as is Cotton Tail itself? That would certainly be Wikipedia's longest article, duplicating virtually the entire jazz discography -- multiplied by the number soloists (or even of choruses) per recording. Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 18:39, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, to be honest, I didn't want to shell out $40 for the Kindle edition of the Parker book, so I'm not speaking from a scholarly point of view myself. I don't think quoting from another tune during a solo should be considered a contrafact; are some of these doing that? (I'm jealous of it; when I'm improvising, I've never been able to do the quotation trick.) In Wikipedia land, though, not a single tune should be on this list without a WP:RS referring to it as a contrafact, in those precise words. Everything else is WP:OR. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 19:40, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

@jpgordon — It's not in any library near me either... However, Amazon lets you read a lot of sample pages, at Charlie Parker, Composer. Early in the Introduction, he states his view:

I argue that because of features of characteristic of jazz, certain Parker creations, and by extension similar creations of all jazz musicians, should be thought of as compositions despite lacking features generally considered necessary.

This is Humpty Dumpty's view, likewise idiosyncratic and tendentious:

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.

— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Among the "features generally considered necessary" for work to be considered a musical composition: reproducible performance from a published or self-published score. I don't think the Charlie Parker Omnibook qualifies, though. Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 20:23, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Hm. In that case, one might say that the author's POV is WP:FRINGE. That's a lot of exclusion, but I think it's justified. I wonder if anyone else is reading this? --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 23:44, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm guessing that you mean Kim rather than Ko-Ko, Larry, as you noted on my Talk Page. I tend to agree with you on the former. Larry (though obviously not the latter, which has an easily-recognisable melody and has been recorded by dozens of artists. I'll review the Parker ones which I added three years ago. These were added in good faith from Prof. Henry Martin's book, which is an excellent academic work on the subject. Watty62 (talk) 20:25, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@Watty62 I did mean Ko-Ko, but I see your point; . Still, I don't take Parker's intention was to compose a tune, as opposed to "Now's the Time" and "Billie's Bounce" which he recorded at the same 1945 session. Rather, it was his show-stopper improvisation on "Cherokee," with fragments and licks from many previous performances, as well as whatever occurred to him right at the moment. You can get a sense of this from the fragmentary "Warming up a riff" from the same session, as well as the even more fragmentary version of "Cherokee" interrupted by a producer calling out something like "what's that tune" because he didn't want to pay royalties.

In my mind, we're back to the dozens of players' solo transcriptions of Ko-Ko, which are effectively homemade versions of pages in the Charlie Parker Omnibook. (Second Hand Songs lists 27 versions; I only listened to one.) So I wonder if your rational for including Ko-Ko as a composition applies more widely. If other players transcribed Parker's "Kim," would that change "Kim" from an improvisation into a composition? Would vocalese performances convert the original solos on which they're based, into compositions? If one or two or three players began playing transcriptions of Coltrane's solos on Giant Steps, would that turn his solos into a composition?

Semi-related: looking up other compositions in the article based on "Cherokee" turns up "Blue Serge," which is an improvisation, not a composition, but whose structure bears at least a passing resemblance to Ko-Ko — per my original research; but listen yourself. A mis-attribution in the article?

Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 21:38, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi. I am going to remove 'Kim' and 'Warming Up A Riff' as I agree that these aren't compositions as such.

I am going to leave Ko-Ko as I believe it to be a composition (at least in significant part). Not only have other artists recorded it using the same notation as Parker / Gillespie - but the fact that portions of the original recording feature either unison or harmonised passages with trumpet alto (even if it is otherwise partly improvised), AND that other Parker recordings - from memory at Carnegie Hall, Ulaanov's Bands for Bonds broadcast, at the Royal Roost etc - all use the same structure, suggest a strong, deliberate compositional approach. Which I accept may have stemmed from years of improvising on a chord structure while trying to avoid playing the head for royalties purposes.

I need to go back to listed to Blue Serge again - a good excuse to listen to great music! Watty62 (talk) 13:38, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

This is pretty much the definition of WP:OR. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 15:13, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Please explain, @Jpgordon.

Are you referring to removing Kim and Warming Up a Riff? Of the debate about KoKo? Or @Larrykoen's suggestion regarding Blue Serge? Watty62 (talk) 16:19, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Our personal analyses regarding whether songs are compositions are not have no place in determining whether they should or should not be in a Wikipedia article. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 16:32, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Accepted. Dare I say it, but @Larrykoen raised concerns about Kim and other Parker recordings and whether these are compositions or not. I'd included Kim etc quoting Prof Henry Martin's scholarly work Charlie Parker, Composer, of which I have a printed copy. It is copious, and (overly) generous in what it considers a contrafact - ie a new melodic composition on the chords of an established other composition. Paraphrasing Larry, some of the recordings - on which Parker simply improvises - are not new compositions, so miss the definition of a contrafact. I was simply responding to those concerns. None of this is original research.

There is unlikely to be a source to say "Kim" or "Warming up a Riff" are NOT contrafacts - but other than Martin I find little or no support for their being contrafacts. I think Larry is right to say that Martin is alone is suggesting these are contrafacts, and is overgenerous in his applying the term to them.

Many other contrafacts are oft-played in the musical community - and musicians who play them know that the chordal structure beneath composition X or Y are the chords of All The Things You Are, or I've Got Rhythm, for example. Those are facts whether citable or not - but I am patiently going through the list and finding sources where these are obtainable. I added about 20 yesterday. ie where citations are available I am adding them. Watty62 (talk) 17:18, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate this. I think an overly broad application of the term "contrafact" makes this a less than useful article. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 17:55, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Appreciated, thanks. Watty62 (talk) 19:19, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

As I plough through possible sources, adding citations where I can find them, i find it useful to monitor progress.

I've built this Google Sheet which monitors how many rows there are in the table of contrafacts (267), the number without citations (150) and how many have 1, 2, 3 or more citations. All figures are current analysis and will hopefully improve. Another 15 or so and the majority are cited, Watty62 (talk) 20:31, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

A simple search https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Jazz+Contrafacts%22 turns up lots of websites that list jazz contrafacts. It seems that they are all by musicians (although there's a research paper that presents "a novel vector-space model to represent chord progressions, and uses it for contrafact detection" -- only a small amount of help there). The musicians' websites are their own versions of Original Research, so I wonder if citing them as appropriate? There are already a number of entries in the list that use one or more such websites as references.

It would be lovely if Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians could help here, but I think we're generally stuck with citing musicians' websites — as a compromise between Grove and its ilk (so useful in other contexts) and WP:OR.

Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 20:47, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

References

SecondHandSongs as a citation

I posted the following at SecondHandSongs:

Hi there. I've been involved in a discussion of a Wikipedia list of jazz contracts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_jazz_contrafacts#How_do_we_know?). Some of the contrafact listings on SecondHandSongs (SHS) are cited as sources for contrafacts listed in the Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_jazz_contrafacts).

Many of the contrafacts listed in the Wikipedia article, while correctly described, were provided without a citation. I worry that an SHS contributor used the Wikipedia article to update an SHS entry, and subsequently a Wikipedia editor then used that entry to provide a citation for the composition in the Wikipedia article.

That would be a violation of Wikipedia standards, which state (at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Wikipedia_and_sources_that…), "do not use websites mirroring Wikipedia content or publications relying on material from Wikipedia as sources. Content from a Wikipedia article is not considered reliable unless it is backed up by citing reliable sources."

Unlike Wikipedia, SHS does not require sources for contrafact assertions. From what I've seen, these assertions are reliable, but I assume that they are based only on the "big ears" of SHS's contributors. I'm contributing this post to start a discussion of this topic.

Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 17:52, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Good idea. I love using SHS for exploring the recording history of songs; I'm studying singing, and it's an invaluable resource for diving into different versions. But you're right about using it as a source. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 19:06, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

An SHS user, baggish, posted the following at https://secondhandsongs.com/topic/78624, in resonse to my post at SHS quoted immediately above:

I have done this, but only in the last six months of 2023. So, any wikipedia citation from before then is less likely to be a violation of standards. I do know which ones I updated in this way. SHS actually does require sourcing for each entry, but the sources used are not shown publicly (there is an ongoing internal debate whether to make them so). Generally (i.e. outside contrafacts and possibly dates of birth/death and birth names) we do not rely on wikipedia as a source because of the circularity problem that you mention.

I responded. Our complete dialog, including my response is posted at the referenced URL.

So, who wants to go through the last six months of the article's history to eliminate SHS citations? I've asked this SHS user for his Wikipedia handle, to simplify the process. Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 18:06, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Don't need to do it that way. Just bulk replace every SHS citation with {{cn}}. It's not a WP:RS for the same reason Wikipedia isn't. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 18:39, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

My only known method of bulk replacement is to copy the entire article source into Notepad++, make the bulk changes, and place the result back from whence I lifted it. I know Wikipedia provides a method of doing this but I haven't learned it; I'm open to suggestion. Thanks! — or you could do it yourself, perhaps. Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 18:57, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do. WP:AWB is a great tool for this sorta thing. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 19:45, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Or we could just roll back to 22 December, when there were none of them, and replace the 10 or so other edits that were made since then. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 22:19, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I count some 70 edits made since 22 December 2023. I prefer your earlier idea bulk replace every SHS citation with . 70-odd edits is a lot to replace. I don't want to take that on and I doubt you would either. Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 22:31, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd just roll 'em all back and then replace the small number of edits that aren't problematic. But I'll keep working on the AWB approach as I have time. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 22:42, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi. I was alerted to this conversation by @Jpgordon.

Over the last week I've spent many hours, and made almost 100 edits to this article - sometimes involving multiple songs - to improve the quality.

I've used SHS as a resource amongst many others. As a practising musician of almost 50 years, I have been careful to vet the information that I added, ensuring that only factually-correct citations are used. I've rejected any dubious or incorrect information.

The SHS entries I have added have all bee 100 % accurate. Often SHS is incomplete - eg in the list of songs derived from I Got Rhythm misses many, BUT i have not found a single claim of a contrafact that isn't factually correct. If someone can point me to one that is wrong, I would be obliged,

Given the dozens of hours spent, and the fact that it is accepted by @Larrykoen that the source is right - "From what I've seen, these assertions are reliable" (as I assure you they are) - I would ask for caution in undoing these edits please. Perhaps a better approach would be to agree to not accept further SHS citations until the matter is resolved? Watty62 (talk) 16:29, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

No. SHS is not a WP:RS in general because it's a WP:UGS. It doesn't matter if you've vetted the information with your own personal knowledge. It doesn't even matter if what you are entering into the article is right or wrong; we must use reliable sources and those sources must be verifiable. It's really pretty simple. I'm also a practicing musician, for almost 65 years. I haven't found substantial errors in SHS either, and I use it a lot; at the moment, I'm taking voice lessons from an artist with a WP article, and SHS is incredibly useful for studying different renditions of songs. I'm not going to take the user-generated data on SHS and promulgate it to Wikipedia, though. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 17:23, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I can't disagree with any of that, of course.

I think we are going to struggle to find citable sources for some of these - unless other editors are going to commit time to examine album liner notes, or printed magazine reviews, of individual recordings. Watty62 (talk) 19:12, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Which continues to be the whole problem with this article; I don't see any way for this to be both comprehensive and reliably sourced. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 19:56, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I've been working away at this for the last 8 days. I've found several academic sources, plus written books in my own collection, and via Google books etc. So, while the quantity of citations has increased and so has the quality, significantly.

And, while I've been adding citations from those sources I've found a significant number of unlisted contracts which I have added.

So far this is how it stands:

• Total Contrafacts = 434
• Contrafacts with no Citations = 73
• Percentage without citations = 16.82% (ie 83.18% of contrafacts now have one or more citations)

------------------------------------

• Contrafacts with 1 Citation = 261
• Contrafacts with 2 citations = 57
• Contrafacts withThree citations = 15
• Contrafacts with 4 Citations = 10
• Contrafacts with 5 Citations = 5
• Contrafacts with 6 Citations = 9
• Contrafacts with 7 Citations = 2
• Contrafacts with 8 Citations = 2

-------------------------------------

Total citations 569

-------------------------------------

Are you in agreements that the "citations needed" template can now be removed? Watty62 (talk) 19:07, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

You've done a great job! And I went quite a way through the list until I found an uncited entry.

Help:Maintenance template removal#When to remove provides some guidance relevant to removing the "citations needed" template:

Any user without a conflict of interest may remove a maintenance template in any of the following circumstances:

...

When there is consensus on the talk page (or elsewhere) as to how to address the flagged issue, and you are reasonably implementing those changes.

I think the way to remove the "citations needed" template is to place a "citation needed" template (or "cn" template) at each entry where there is no citation; i.e., on each of the 17% of entries without a citation.

That would fix one issue. Removing every Charlie Parker improvisation cited only by Henry Martin as a composition from the list, is also needed. His view that these improvisations are compositions is WP:Fringe and contaminates the article. Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 05:39, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Larry - thanks very much.

• All compositions lacking a citation now have a cn plate have been added
• All Parker compositions which only have Martin as a source have been removed
• I've removed the Citations Needed page template.
• Also added a Short Desc text too.

Watty62 (talk) 16:07, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Fabulous work. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 19:51, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Appreciated, thank you! Watty62 (talk) 09:40, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Ko-Ko and other Charlie Parker recordings

Ko-Ko represents an interesting case, in that (1) Parker's various improvisations on Cherokee's harmonies include some of the same musical ideas, and (2) others have recorded Ko-Ko. You can hear Supersax's elaborately arranged rendition on YouTube.

But is it a composition? (I won't count the unison intro and outro, which are obviously composed but have nothing to do with Cherokee, and so need not concern us here; unless they are based on some earlier composition's chord structure.) Some of what's written at Musical composition will make almost anything a composition, but this seems too extreme for our purposes here. WP:FRINGE, I'd say.

One point distinguishing a contrafact (a musical composition) from an improvisation might be that a composer intends their composition to be communicated to another performer or performers for their reproduction. An improvisation is not so intended, even if used that way. Do various musicians' transcriptions and recordings of Ko-Ko make it a composition? I wouldn't say so; so I don't consider Ko-Ko a contrafact.

Some of the other listed Parker contrafacts are almost entirely improvisations, like Merry-Go-Round or Relaxin' with Lee. Indeed, the the latter is completely improvised except for its last eight measures. Their contrafact aspects are fragmentary. The lede covers this: "occasionally just a section will be reused." So if you can find the underlying composition for Ko-Ko's intro and outro, you could list it as a contrafact, but not based on Cherokee. How strange would that be? Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 21:29, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

If it's pop music, is it a "jazz contrafact"?

I'm wondering if the title of the article misrepresents what's in it. For instance, while "Ah-Leu-Cha" is clearly a jazz contrafact, what about "Straighten Up and Fly Right" by Nat King Cole, or his "Call the Police", a Nat King Cole song from season 3 of Theme Time Radio Hour? These seem less like jazz and more like pop music.

To be sure, categories are all too fixed in this malleable medium. Thank you for bearing with me.

We can claim Cole as a jazz singer, as we can claim Fats Waller as a jazz singer who likewise performed many pop songs. Still, is a pop song, written and/or performed by a jazz singer, a jazz contrafact just because it's based on some other song's harmonic structure? If so, no problem! If not, what to do about the pop songs sprinkled through the article? Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 18:57, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

What if only the solo is based on the borrowed chords?

For instance, "Dizzy Atmosphere" is listed as being based on the chords for "I Got Rhythm" (other than the bridge), widely known to jazz musicians as Rhythm changes. Similarly for "52nd Street Theme" (again, except for the bridge). But only the solos use those chord changes. So what exactly is the justification for the composition being listed as a jazz contrafact?

Many other tunes based on "I Got Rhythm", even disregarding the bridge from consideration, are similarly are based only on a part of the "I Got Rhythn," harmonic sequence: the repeated ii–V–I progression at the start of the tune. Does the fact that the solos use the entire "I Got Rhythm" sequence justify calling the tune a contrafact? Perhaps some distinction should be made here.

References: Jazz Fakebook, p. 98, for "Dizzy Atmosphere," The Real Book All New Volume II, p. 93, for "52nd Street Theme." Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 17:52, 15 March 2024 (UTC)