In Your Own Sweet Way (Wes Montgomery’s version)

Wes Montgomery (electric guitar), Tommy Flanagan (piano), Percy Heath (bass) and Albert Heath (drums). From the album The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery (1960).

This theme by David Brubeck can be adapted by each musician according to his own personality. In fact, Brubeck may have underestimated the impact of his song: jazz musicians have recorded more than 300 versions. Miles Davis made two recordings of the theme in 1956, the first with Sonny Rollins and the second with John Coltrane, in addition to slightly changing its harmony.

Brubeck wrote this theme in the early 1950s because Paul Desmond complained that the quartet was playing too many standards and needed original material, to which Brubeck replied that he was a composer and could write two original songs in half an hour. Thus he composed “In Your Own Sweet Way” and “The Waltz” in that period of time. In the early 1960s several major jazz musicians recorded this theme and in the mid-1970s, Bill Evans rendered it frequently in concert. Brubeck himself played it again as part of a high profile project in 1974 with Anthony Braxton and Lee Konitz.

Flanagan makes the introduction delicately and then Montgomery enters at slow tempo to present the main melody twice, which has a reflective and introverted character. Then Flanagan plays the bridge and Montgomery finishes the theme. The latter makes a solo whose melodic line is exquisite and full of feeling, introducing dynamic phrases in between in the middle of his sweet improvisation. At last, the group re-exposes the theme in a meditative way.