A Night in Tunisia

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For the Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers albums, see A Night in Tunisia (1957 album) and A Night in Tunisia (1960 album).

"Night in Tunisia" is a musical composition written by Dizzy Gillespie (recorded with musicians including Hal McKusick and Al Cohn) in 1942 while he was playing with the Earl Hines Band. It has become a Jazz standard. It is also known as "Interlude"^[1], under which title it was recorded (with lyrics) by Sarah Vaughan. Gillespie himself called the tune "Night in Tunisia".

"Night in Tunisia", along with "Manteca", was one of the signature pieces of Gillespie's bebop big band, and he also played it with his small groups. One of its most famous performances is Charlie Parker's recording for Dial (Dial even released a fragmentary take of it simply titled "The Famous Alto Break"); it also became closely identified with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, who often gave showstopping performances of it with extra percussion from the entire horn section.

On the album A Night at Birdland Vol. 1, Blakey introduces the piece with the (probably apocryphal) story of how he was present when Dizzy composed it "on the bottom of a garbage can." The liner notes say, "The Texas department of sanitation can take a low bow."

The complex bass line in the "A section" is notable for avoiding the standard walking bass pattern of straight quarter notes, and the use of oscillating half-step-up/half-step-down chord changes gives the song a unique, mysterious feeling. Like many of Gillespie's tunes, it features a short written introduction and a brief interlude that occurs between solo sections — in this case, a twelve-bar sequence leading into a four-bar break for the next soloist.

It has been covered in various styles by various artists, including Bud Powell, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, Maynard Ferguson, Miles Davis, Don Byas, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Sonny Rollins, Arturo Sandoval, The Modern Jazz Quartet, Anthony Braxton, Clifford Brown, Stefano di Battista, Bobby McFerrin, Victor Wooten, The Turtle Island String Quartet, The Toasters, Poncho Sanchez, Frank Vignola and PE'Z. Chaka Khan included a version of the tune (with a guest appearance by Gillespie himself as well as an electronically altered sample of Parker's "The Famous Alto Break") on What Cha' Gonna Do for Me.

While Jon Hendricks had originally written lyrics for the tune in 1942, some forty years later he would revisit the song. Using both lyrics and vocals he was able to reproduce the sound and feel of the original instrumentation and this vocalese version of the song, retitled “Another Night in Tunisia,” won a Grammy award for “Best Vocal Arrangements for Voices.” Jon Hendricks would also write all of the lyrics to the 1985 Manhattan Transfer album Vocalese, which received 12 Grammy nominations.

Although the song is sometimes titled “A Night in Tunisia” the proper title is “Night in Tunisia.” The song appears as the title track of 30 CD’s and is included in over 500 currently available CD’s. And in January of 2004, The Recording Academy added the Dizzy Gillespie & His Sextet’s 1946 Victor recording of “Night in Tunisia” to its Grammy Hall of Fame.

The similarly titled “Tunisian Fantasy” was produced by Lalo Schifrin, pianist and arranger for the Dizzy Gillespie Band from 1960 to 1962.

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