Salt Peanuts

"Salt Peanuts" is a bebop tune composed by Dizzy Gillespie in 1941, co-written by drummer Kenny Clarke. The song was copyrighted on October 13, 1941 and credited to both musicians. It has also been erroneously cited as Charlie Parker's.^[1] Parker himself publicly credited Gillespie as the composer on May 15, 1953, as may be heard on the Jazz at Massey Hall live recording. The original lyrics have no exophoric meaning. Instead, they are a skat/bebop vocal which matches the octave note interval played predominantly throughout the song.^[2] The Pointer Sisters subsequently included vocalese lyrics for their rendition of Salt Peanuts as recorded on their That's a Plenty album.

Composition

"Salt Peanuts" is a contrafact of "I Got Rhythm": it has the same 32-bar AABA structure and harmony, but its melody is different.^[3] It is a simple piece – "a four-measure riff phrase played twice in each A section, and a slightly more complex bridge (which incorporates the ubiquitous ♭9–7–8 figure twice)".^[3]

While the verbal exhortation "Salt Peanuts, Salt Peanuts!" is closely identified with Dizzy Gillespie, the musical motif upon which it is based predates Gillespie/Clarke. Glenn Miller recorded sound-alike "WHAM (Re-Bop-Boom-Bam)" on August 1, 1941, and prior to this it appeared as a repeated six-note instrumental phrase played on piano by Count Basie on his July 2, 1941 recording of "Basie Boogie".^[4] Basie also played it in a recorded live performance at Cafe Society later that year.

The refrain also appears in the song "Five Salted Peanuts" by Charlie Abbott and Bert Wheeler which was recorded by both Tony Pastor & His Orchestra and The Counts & The Countess in 1945.

Performances

The first known recording was by Georgie Auld, Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster as the Auld-Hawkins-Webster Saxtet, released on the Apollo label in 1944.^[5] Bebop historian Thomas Owens described the version recorded by Dizzy Gillespie and His All-Stars in May 1945 as "the definitive version".^[3] The lineup was Gillespie (trumpet), Charlie Parker (alto sax), Al Haig (piano), Curley Russell (bass), and Sid Catlett (drums).^[6]

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter sang the two-word lyric of "Salt Peanuts" with Gillespie in a White House concert.^[7][8] This was the first White House Jazz Concert^[9] and was the only time that a president has performed a jazz song while in office.^[10][11] According to Gillespie, Carter (who was also nicknamed "The Peanut Farmer") requested the song, and Gillespie responded that he would "play it if [Carter] will come up here and sing it with us."^[12]

See also

• List of jazz contrafacts
• Groovin' High (Dizzy Gillespie album)
• Dispute over the definition of jazz in France in 1945 when Hugues Panassié first heard "Salt Peanuts".

References

1. Yaffe, David (2005). Fascinating Rhythm: Reading Jazz in American Writing, p.17. ISBN 0-691-12357-8. "Charlie Parker's 'Salt Peanuts'".
2. "Salt Peanuts": Sound and Sense in African/American Oral/Musical Creativity, Clyde Taylor Callaloo (Oct.1982)
3. Owens, Thomas (1996). Bebop. Oxford University Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-19-510651-0.
4. Jazz Forum: The Magazine of the International Jazz Federation. International Jazz Federation. 1974. p. 50.
5. "Cover versions of Salt Peanuts by Auld-Hawkins-Webster Saxtet". SecondHandSongs.
6. Martin, Henry; Waters, Keith (1 January 2011). Jazz: The First 100 Years. Cengage Learning. p. 201. ISBN 978-1-4390-8333-8.
7. "WASHINGTON TALK: BRIEFING; 'Salt Peanuts'". The New York Times. 1987-05-08. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-07-31.
8. Chinen, Nate (June 1, 2003). "George Wein: A Great Day in Washington". JazzTimes.
9. Trescott, Jacqueline; McLellan, Joseph (1978-06-19). "A Who's Who of Jazz on the South Lawn". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2018-07-31.
10. Horowitz, Murray; Spellman, A.B. (August 1, 2001). "Charlie Parker: 'Jazz at Massey Hall'". NPR. Retrieved 31 July 2018.
11. Reich, Howard (March 28, 2016). "Before time runs out, how about a White House jazz summit?". The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 31 July 2018.
12. Franklin, Benjamin (2008). Jazz & Blues Musicians of South Carolina: Interviews with Jabbo, Dizzy, Drink, and Others. Univ of South Carolina Press. pp. 29–30. ISBN 9781570037436.