F minor · Camelot 4A · 87 BPM
Night in Tunisia
by Dizzy Gillespie
- 87
- BPM
- F minor
- Key
- 4A
- Camelot
- 62
- Danceability
- 83
- Acousticness
On 22 February 1946, Dizzy Gillespie led a studio session for RCA Victor that produced one of the defining recordings of "A Night in Tunisia." The personnel that day included Don Byas, Milt Jackson, Al Haig, Bill DeArango, J.C. Heard, and Ray Brown. That recording entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in January 2004, and decades later CBS News placed the piece on its list of 250 essential American songs from the past 250 years.
Gillespie wrote the composition in 1942 while playing with the Benny Carter band, and he said he composed it at the piano at Kelly's Stables in New York. He gave Frank Paparelli co-writer credit in compensation for some unrelated transcription work, though Paparelli had nothing to do with the song. Gillespie titled the tune "Interlude" and remarked that some genius had decided to call it "A Night in Tunisia" instead. Art Blakey told a different story on the album A Night at Birdland Vol. 1, introducing his 1954 cover by saying he was right there when Gillespie composed it in Texas on the bottom of a garbage can.
The earliest recording came in January 1944, when the Gillespie-Pettiford Quintet captured the song live at the Onyx Club in New York City. Sarah Vaughan later recorded a vocal version of "Interlude" on 31 December 1944, issued on the Continental label in 1946.
Night in Tunisia runs at 87 BPM, the tempo of boom-bap hip-hop, reggae and slow R&B. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.76 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 690 ms. It is in F minor, Camelot 4A, which shares its notes with Ab major and mixes cleanly with Bb minor and C minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.