This composition, Chuck Wayne's tune, was named after a trumpet player named Sonny Berman. Chuck Wayne told me personally that Miles came up to him at a gig interested in the tune Chuck was playing. Chuck showed him and sometime later he heard his tune being played by Miles who had taken credit. For years Chuck had no way to prove this until the recording he made out west surfaced.

No! It matters! Performing well and being famous is not the same thing as composing a song. It's hard enough being a composer without other people stealing your songs and getting away with it.

Typical Miles, appropriating tunes and then taking the credit lol

Love your videos, such a high production quality! Didn’t know about Sunny, but I’m not surprised either. 😊

Never knew this and it’s been one of my favorite miles tunes for years 😭😂

It does make a big financial difference (not to mention contributing to their artistic legacy). One person makes money and the other doesn't. Also, along with Miles, you can also include Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones, Berry Gordy, Chuck Berry etc.

Played Solar in a band 45+ years ago and still play it every once in a while by memory. Now I know Chuck Wayne composed it and titled it "Sunny". Thanks Tim.

Chuck Wayne wrote Solar. It is about Sunny Berman.

it is horrible to steal a song blatantly. I dont understand why you are glad he did. You should write a song and lose out on royalties and credit.

I’m shocked! Great video! Thanks a lot

There are a lot of strong opinions here (e.g. "He changed a chord! Have some respect!" to "He's a thief! How can anyone defend this?") As Mr. Beau says, there can be a tension that doesn't need to be resolved here. No, it's not okay to blatantly take someone's song, and the evidence is ample in this case (the title is virtually an admission of guilt). If I change the opening chord of "A Hard Day's Night," but keep the melody and structure of the rest of the song, I haven't written anything new. On the other hand, I think the point of the statement "I'm kind of glad he stole it" is that it's a great tune, and it might not have been recorded other than in the circumstances it was (and if it hadn't been recorded by Davis, the other wonderful versions done by others wouldn't have been either). And if it hadn't been recorded then, would any of us know it in any version? It also gets murky when talking about instrumental jazz, so much of which is at least semi-improvisational. Is "Solar/Sunny" a great tune because of what's captured on a lead sheet, or is it the Davis recording of it that is great? I think the discussion can be fruitful, but I don't think there can be objective, definitive answers to such queries.

Interesting video thanks. Are they songs? Or tunes? I think calling them "songs" is quite a recent thing. It irritates me, but I am not such a recent thing myself. I play in a band called "Four" and I always give Eddie Cleanhead Vinson credit for our theme tune. We've just started playing Tune Up, and I'll have to remember to credit Eddie with that one as well, so thanks for that info.

He did this often, it's surprising that musicians didn't lean on him about it. One person he gave credit to was Wayne Shorter. Perhaps Wayne gave Miles a good talking to. Other members of the 2nd Great Quintet were also given composer credit occasionally.

Listen to some of Conti Candoli's work and playing. Candoli played four before Miles. Miles Davis's style is similar.

I think there's an interview with Charlie Parker, where he talks about Dizzy Gillespie erroneously being credited as the writer of Donna Lee. Bird claims that he was the absolute composer of that tune. However, somewhere along the line, Miles Davis claimed he wrote it.

I've known this for years. The first notes are on Miles gravestone. This really angers me. He even takes credit for Nardis and Blue in Green, written by Bill Evans and Four and Tune Up, written by Eddie Cleanhead Vindon.

Chuck Wayne recorded with Miles and many others.

So glad I found your channel man

The clip of Miles Davis at the beginning is "So What", not "Solar"

GOD BLESS CHUCK WAYNE !

I love Miles musically but I hate him when he changes the bridge of Monk's Well, You Needn't, or Benny Carter's When Lights Are Low

1:42: "eerily similar"? It's note for note and bar for bar identical.

Ahmad Jamal might have become huge anyway, but Poinciana made him extremely wealthy for his time and hardly anyone cares that he didn't write it. Yet it became a jazz standard and whenever we hear any instrumental version of Poinciana, we think of Jamal. That song would barely exist on the planet today if not for Jamal's transposition. It'd be a rare big band piece that few would ever hear.

Lee Konitz New Quartet (Florian Weber, p; Jeff Denson, b; Ziv Ravitz, d), Jazzwoche, Burghausen, 2012. Definitive version. Imho. The footage of Miles is of course not of him playing Solar. The saxophonist was the relatively obscure alto player Dave Schildkraut. Donna Lee is typically attributed to Bird though there’s a case for crediting Miles! Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh collaborated to produce some sensational Bach-like lines. They grew from solos played at Lennie’s apartment studio. Different scores credit different players. Like you say, it’s not the most important aspect of this remarkable cultural legacy.

solar was the first transcription i ever did its an awesome song

Immortal tune. Amazing your channel. Could you ever consider talking about Jim Pepper's Witchi-Tai-To?

Adding the more unusual Cmin/maj7th makes it more unusual, but I'm not sure if that really improves it. It's not a blues either even though it is 12 bars long

"Four" . I still love Miles.

Tune Up another dispute?

Question is, did Miles ever claim to have written Solar? Many artists secure rights to record other artists and composer's tracks in their own versions.

Everybody here is discussin' around the fact of having the credit of a tune, but from an artistic point of view. It's allright, but to me the economical point of view is more important : the copyright generate money, and the money doesn't go to the real author. That is unfair and bad, expecially in the jazz world where the great majority of musicians are not rich, and have to struggle to survive as an artist. The majority of them can't simply afford to pay expensive layers to defend there rights. So, OK , thanks for the posterity given to "Solar", but Mr. Miles was paying his apartment on Central Park or his Lamborghini also with money that he shouldn't have earned, and, on top, he didn't need that to be rich as he was, anyway

Who wrote Tune Up?

I think the first bar of this song is on Miles tombstone. I love the tune by Miles but there’s no doubt he took it from sunny.

After Charlie Parker's dead . Miles tried to stole Charlie Parker`s Donna Lee ... each time that he listened new chord changes and/or ways of playing 'jazz' ... he wanted to be credited by that ...

Yes, Miles was guilty of this more than once in his career...and he also was the victim of same more than once in his career as well (usually by none other by Charlie Parker, who tended to have "head arrangements" of his compositions and his producers/record label owners would, as Parker himself said, "...name those things after I leave the studio.")😊 This is an old, old, OLD problem -- Louis Armstrong famously stated that he actually wrote Muskrat Ramble, and Kid Ory named it...but Ory received the sole writing credit. The year this occurred: 1926. So...

Interesting video!

One rumor I’ve heard is that Miles bought many songs from other musicians who were not as well known and did not have the necessary connections that Davis did but needed the money, maybe sad to say for a fix. So Miles paid the composer a few dollars for the song, put his name on it, copyrighted it and collected future royalties.

Walkin’ -Richard Carpenter, Gene Ammons!

The melody fits the major chord progression better than the minor version.

well given that in jazz the tune is less relevant than the actual execution still it's not nice to learn that Miles credited himself for many beautiful standards that he didn't write. This actually sucks.

Miles the freeloader.

Great way to end it: “If Miles DID steal the tune Solar, I’m glad he did.”

Ok let's start stealing things from others. After all life is dynamic innit?

I have another question about this tune. When people say the word"solar" in the context of something related to the sun,it is pronounced a certain way, but when jazz musicians refer to the song "solar" they pronounce it a different way. Why is that?

Great video, except for the part where you invoke racism. That argument is totally incoherent and stupid. Beatles never appropriated someone elses tunes without crediting them, they've done covers of the tunes they liked. How you can compare this with stealing other people's songs and calling them your own? I'm pretty sure no white artist is or ever was being celebrated for not crediting black composers. That's messed up, dude. You don't have to include incoherent nonsense for the sake of being woke, just stay on topic.

What do you mean, “It doesn’t matter…”. This statement is just as jive as Miles stealing Chuck’s tune. What you’re saying is that you endorse the theft of someone’s intellectual property and hence their money. Publishing matters. In fact that’s where most musicians make their money in terms of their careers. Miles got all the royalties on the tune that a player like Chuck rightfully was entitled to. That’s called theft!

I only have my toes dipped in the jazz scene, but does Miles really get more shit than Led Zeppelin or Bob Dylan for song theft? Because they get a lot.

If you take away all the songs he stole, there isn't much left to his legacy as a composer of songs (in contradistinction to his history as a trumpeter and band leader). The apologetics toward the end are rather ridiculous, including the strained attempt to inject some politically correct bullshit about racism.There is no "if" about "if he stole it"; rather, he stole it. And there is no reason in the world to be "glad he did". He could have recorded it, given credit to Wayne, and it would be just as famous.

What's with the intentional mispronunciation of the word solar? SOUL ARE is NOT how the word (or the song title) is pronounced. Why all the blatant pretension? This is not directed at you specifically -- I've heard the same pompous mispronunciation from others through the years. Where does it come from?

Do you personally dislike Miles Davis ? This awful photo you posted here you are really it seems you are trying to propagandize this claim. The fact that Miles changed the opening, major chord to a minor, makes it unique enough to get a copyright by Prestige Music. We can ask Dave Schildkraut, Wayne Shorter, and Ron Carter who are still alive, and see if they felt they were playihg some stolen song, since this involves them too. Miles is not here to defend so have some respect.