The song Lady Bird by Tadd Dameron was made a cornerstone piece of the bebop movement. It was made famous by the great Charlie Parker and was said to feature in most of his sets at the height of this period. Bebop was a genre of great technical virtuosity and imaginative soloing within the confines of a fairly rigid set of rules. Lady Bird was actually a 1940′s composition and as with so many songs of the era, was originally quite a sweet and slow song. This obviously changed with the like of Mr Parker got hold of it, various accounts place the maximum live performance tempo of the piece to be around the 300bpm mark. That is such a ridiculous speed and shows the dexterity that these players achieved after a few years of laying the foundations for a new genre and establishing show ground rules.
Whilst we would never suggest trying to play this at such fast speeds on the piano or any instrument for that matter, a nice starting tempo would be around the 190 beat per minute mark. At the end of the day, this sort of composition needs to be played quickly in order to fully use the stylistic idiosyncrasies that occur in this genre. As a general rule, everything that lands on an off beat should be given a little accent. Also, the quarter note triplet patterns should be played with a slight crescendo rising to land on the first beat of the following bar each time. Otherwise you should pretty much just read through this and keep increasing the tempo every time, as with most piano pieces of this era…
Anyway, here is the sheet music / chords / lead sheet for Lady Bird, we sincerely hope that you enjoy playing it as much as we do. A great recording of this piece is on the album Bird’s Eyes by Charlie Parker which features the great Buster Williams on piano. Other notable recordings of this song have been made by Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron (the composer), Count Basie and numerous other luminaries of the jazz world. Obviously, when dealing with bebop heads like this one, when soloing really try to stick to the changes as more modern, dissonant scales really don’t fit the style in a traditional sense. However, if you are attempting to create your own sound or take on this genre then do whatever you think sound nice!
Useful Links:
Learn more about the bebop movement from Wikipedia: Bebop.
View some more Jazz Piano Pieces.
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