Bemsha Swing

"Bemsha Swing" (also known as "Bimsha Swing") is a jazz standard co-written by Thelonious Monk and Denzil Best.

The tune is 16 bars in the form of AABA. It is in 4/4 meter but is often played with a 2-feel. The 4-bar melody is essentially in C major but borrows tones from the parallel C minor scale, and is transposed up a fourth to create the B section of the form. Thelonious Monk and Denzil Best wrote “Bemsha Swing” in 1952, with the copyright application showing the title as “Bimsha Swing”. The word Bemsha is a re-spelling of "Bimshire", a nickname for Barbados, Denzil Best’s family home.

The song was first recorded by Monk on the sessions for the album Thelonious Monk Trio in 1952. In 1954, it was recorded by Miles Davis with Monk as a sideman, for an album Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants which was released in 1959. Monk himself revisited the song on his acclaimed 1957 LP Brilliant Corners.

Bemsha Swing was recorded by many other New York jazz musicians. After its initial publication free Jazz pianist Cecil Taylor covered the tune on his 1956 album Jazz Advance. Four years later, in 1960, sax player John Coltrane recorded a version with Don Cherry on their The Avant-Garde (released 1966). Ed Blackwell, the drummer on that session, revisited the track with Cherry on their duo record El Corazón in 1982. Cherry recalled the tune again on his 1989 Art Deco.

In 1963 Bill Evans released a piano solo interpretation on his acclaimed record Conversations with Myself. Slightly more than two decades later Geri Allen recorded another piano solo version on her Home Grown in 1985. The year after trumpeter Woody Shaw put the tune on record and released it in 1997 on his album of the same name.

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