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313 views

DR Jekyll Transcript

music

Uploaded by

Chris Smith
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The Polyfacial Identities of Mr. Hyde http://www.kevinsun.com/2012/05/polyfacial-identities-of-mr-hyde.

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While transcribing the burning up-tempo blues head "Mr. Jekyll" from "Milestones" (1958) today, it came to my attention that,
(a) "Mr. Jekyll" was a misspelling of Jackie McLean's blues head "Mr. Jackle," and (b) that Jackie Mac and Miles had recorded
"Mr. Jackle" three years prior to "Milestones" on a record ambiguously named "Miles Davis and Milt Jackson: Quintet/Sextet."1

The version on "Milestones" is the one I (and probably most people) am familiar with:
The version on
"Quintet/Sextet" is a bit
more harmonically and
melodically adventurous, not
to mention significantly
slower (although not any less
swinging!):

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The Polyfacial Identities of Mr. Hyde http://www.kevinsun.com/2012/05/polyfacial-identities-of-mr-hyde.html

The tri-tone sub in bar (1)


was shocking the first time I
heard it (after having been
accustomed to the
'simplified' quick version),
and the horns trading off
segments of the melody in
bars (9) and (10) is nice,
although the language seems

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The Polyfacial Identities of Mr. Hyde http://www.kevinsun.com/2012/05/polyfacial-identities-of-mr-hyde.html

a bit quaint, if that's the right word, compared to the rest of the tune; I guess it makes sense that bars 1-4 might be more of Mr.
Hyde2 with regards to its harmonic and rhythmic energy, whereas bars 9-12 are much more button-downed, melodically
speaking.

The ending's also nice — a mini-canon, if you can even call it that.

---
1

I'm usually a bit reluctant to call records just "Quartet" or "Quintet" if its unclear whether those are descriptors of the band
leader(s) or the name of the record itself. "Metheny/Mehldau: Quartet" comes to mind as another example of this strange
ambiguous album title phenomenon—how much effort does it take to come up with a record title, or, more specifically, how
much effort does it take to come up with a record title better than the descriptor to the band leaders? I guess the music makes
up for it; it's all about the music, right?

Somewhat tangentially, the whole Mr. Hyde v. Dr. Jekyll dynamic can also be seen elsewhere in jazz, i.e., Josh Redman actually
describes himself as having a sort of split personality that enabled him to succeed in both the rigorously academic and the more
freely creative spheres.

Copyright 2012–2023 Kevin Sun

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