& on the subject.....

I have no idea when I wrote the lyrics below, only that they're old, old, old, & I was young, young, young, & obviously had been listening to King Pleasure, who wrote words to jazz standards &, quite often, expanded that to write words to the musicians' solos on those standards.

& I don't know why I have a copy of it on my PC. Christ, computers weren't invented then. Well, yes they were, but not for personal use, & not small enough to fit into a room let alone sit on top of a desk. Maybe I copied it from a typewritten sheet when I was transcribing stuff for the book of my poems from that time, The right foot of the giant. Or maybe it was buzzing around in my head, triggered by hearing NiT again, & I decided to commit it to silicon.

I don't know if I ever expanded to do the solos vocalese for this Dizzy Gillespie & Chano Pozo number. I doubt it, because whilst King Pleasure was interpreting the 78 rpms records of his time that ran for no longer than three minutes, by the time I came along, long playing records had arrived.

Night in Tunisia

I will remember always,
always to my delight,
I will remember always
you in Tunis that night.

Walking in the casbah
you were a glorious sight.
I saw you coming from afar
there in Tunis that night.

O how I really want
to have you close to me.
O how I wish it wasn’t
just a memory.

I will remember always,
darling, just we two.
I will remember always
a night in Tunisia with you.

I hope you won’t think me rude if I say
I never wanted to see the day
For I knew you would go away
By your side is where I wanted to stay
For your return I will always pray
Until that time the skies will be gray
I’m blue.......

But the version of Night in Tunisia I would have had in mind is the one from the YouTube clip embedded below. It's a poor clip—crappy audio under a still photo—but this was a SuperGroup. Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Charlie Mingus, Max Roach. Brought together for one night only, a concert at Massey Hall in Toronto, in 1953.