Ichi-Ban – Ronnie Mathews

The melody is an ABAB form. As you'll hear in our audio excerpt, the A section is even eighths, and the B section is swing. In this arrangement, the piano starts the A section alone, with the bass and then drums entering each a measure later in canon style. This is a quintet recording, with the horns entering at and playing the B sections. The horns are written in fourths. The original horn instrumentation was trumpet and baritone sax, so the recorded horn parts are actually an 11th apart. If a baritone sax player reads the bottom notes of the E-flat lead sheet, he or she will be in the same octave as the recording.

Ronnie came up with a different solo section format (AABA), as you'll see. The horn backgrounds for the piano solo are also shown in the solo section in all versions of the lead sheets.

"Doin' The Thang" was recorded at the legendary Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs.

This was Ronnie's first recording of Ichi-Ban, a composition he would record several times. In 1975, he introduced it to Louis Hayes, who was the drummer on Ronnie's 1975 trio recording "Trip To The Orient" (East Wind EW-8018). It became the title track for the Louis Hayes/Junior Cook Sextet 1976 recording for Timeless Records. Ronnie also recorded it on his "Legacy" album for Bee Hive Records on September 21, 1979.