Donna Lee

The Savoy label credited Charlie Parker, but Davis is now widely held to be the author. Gil Evans asked Parker for permission to arrange it for Claude Thornhill, and Parker referred him to Davis. It is in A-flat over the chord changes of "(Back Home Again in) Indiana" and opens with an unusual half-bar rest. The title most likely comes from the daughter of the bassist Curly Russell, Donna Lee Russell, probably named by the producer Teddy Reig.

The Charlie Parker Quintet recorded it in New York on May 8, 1947 for Savoy, the first of four tunes that day, with Parker on alto, Davis on trumpet, Bud Powell on piano, Tommy Potter on bass and Max Roach on drums. Wikipedia says there were four takes and the fourth was the master, while Lewis Porter says the issued 78 was master take five, so we leave the take open. The label carried three errors, in Potter's name, Parker's first name and Roach's surname, and the 78 was advertised for sale by August 1947; we found no catalog number. The master runs about 2:31 to 2:36 on compilations. JazzStandards calls it the definitive version, a high point of bebop.

Our upload runs 3:06 and comes from the 2014 digital EP Ultimate Miles, which does not match that length, so we cannot say which recording it is. Covers include the Claude Thornhill Orchestra in 1947 on Decca in Gil Evans's arrangement, Wardell Gray in 1952, Clark Terry in 1957, Anthony Braxton in 1974, Jaco Pastorius in 1976 as a solo-bass piece on his debut album, and John Beasley's MONK'estra in 2021 in a Grammy-winning arrangement. It is an instrumental and we found no statement from Davis about it.