Pinocchio

Wayne Shorter (tenor sax), Miles Davis (trumpet), Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass) and Tony Williams (drums). From the album Nefertiti (1968).

Pinocho is a fictional character starring in the children’s novel The Adventures of Pinocchio composed by the Italian writer Carlo Collodi in 1883. It’s a marionette, not a puppet, and had the peculiarity that when it lied its nose would grow. In 1940 Disney made a film based on the story. A carpenter named Gepetto thought of building a wooden dummy that he called Pinocchio and said: “How I wish it had life and was a real boy”. That night, while Gepetto was sleeping, a fairy godmother gave life to the dummy with her magic wand. The next day, seeing that the dummy was alive, Gepetto wanted it to go to school and Pinocchio met a cricket named Pepito.

One day they saw a theater and Pinocchio decided to stay and perform for the comedian, but then he wouldn’t let him go, so the fairy godmother had to rescue it. Then she told it that Gepetto had gone out to the sea to look for it, but he had been swallowed by a whale. Pinocchio and Pepito went to release him, but the whale swallowed them too. At that point, it occurred to the cricket to make a bonfire, the fire made the whale sneeze and the three of them came out. Afterwards Pinocchio apologized to Gepetto and as a reward the fairy godmother turned the marionette into a child of flesh and blood, and the two lived together very happily.

Shorter and Davis start the theme in unison, with a recognizable and captivating melody that they repeat three times. The first one to arrive is Davis playing very short and sharp phrases while Williams makes drumrolls and ornaments below. Next the group returns to play the theme to give way to Shorter, who presents an eccentric and singular speech stimulated by Williams. Then the group plays the theme again and Hancock comes in with an inspired and well selected melodic line. To finish, the band re-exposes the theme, but Hancock ends up repeating a chord accompanied by Carter.