Catfish – Cecil McBee

Catfish is one of Cecil McBee's most fun compositions, though not without some tricky lines and harmonies. It's built on a hard-swinging shuffle groove, with a catchy rhythmic "hook" used as a piano intro and a background for the solos. There is no key center, but this "hook" implies an F major tonality. The head is full of stop-and-start rhythms and rhythm section hits that fill in around the melody phrases, with several breaks. The A section is seven measures long, ending with a quiet variation of the "hook" as does the nine-and-a-half-measure B section. In this latter section this phrase is answered by a suddenly loud hit in the rhythm section. This is followed by a 10-measure C section, with everyone tutti on the melody for the first four measures. Our audio clip starts eight measures before the melody.

Solos begin open on F7. In each solo, there is an interlude on cue based on the first four measures of C, followed by 16 measures with the "hook" from the intro repeated as a background, leading to the next solo.

The intro is 24 measures long, starting with a solo drum groove for eight measures. The next eight measures add bass hits that fill in the intro melody, and the piano comes in with the "hook" for the last eight measures.

About the arrangement: A Concert Condensed Score is available; this is also the rhythm section part. Our lead sheets are the first horn parts, and we also have second parts. The horns mostly play in unison or octaves, but in a few places they are voiced in sevenths or ninths, such as in the first measure of A.

"Unspoken" is Cecil McBee's only recording so far with pianist David Berkman. Cecil has played with trumpeter James Zollar in the big bands of Yosuke Yamashita and Charles Tolliver. Another recording with Zollar and drummer Matt Wilson is "A Trumpet In The Morning," a big band album by saxophonist Marty Ehrlich recorded in 2012.