“Chi Chi” is one of Bird’s most eloquent blues lines, in the unusual key of A-flat.
On July 30th, 1953, Charlie Parker (Bird) recorded four sides for Norman Granz at Fulton Recording, NYC, accompanied by Al Haig, Percy Heath, and Max Roach.
Max Roach related an interesting anecdote to Phil Schaap concerning Bird’s composition, “Chi Chi”.
Bird came by my place one morning and I was laboring over this [music]. This is when I was recording, when Mingus and I formed the Debut Company and I did date with Cou-Manchi-Cou and all that stuff in it. And Bird came by and I said, “Damn!“ It was like 3 o’clock in the morning. I lived on 30th St. between 3rd and 2nd avenues and I had a basement apartment. He’d come by anytime and, of course, I let him in, whatever. He saw me laboring over this goddam music. He said, “What’cha doin’?“ I said, “I got a session I am producing; my first, myself, tomorrow.“ So he says, “OK here’s a gift.“ And this is the truth, Phil, he sat down at a little kitchen table and a cheap piano–and I wish I had saved that goddamn ‘script; I never throw anything away–he wrote off the tune like a letter and I did it the next day (4/10/53) with Hank Mobley. We recorded it, then Bird recorded it. That’s “Chi Chi.”
Someone made the observation that Mozart wrote music as though taking dictation from God. It just flowed out of him onto the manuscript paper without any apparent effort. Bird was notorious for writing out his tunes in the studio while everyone waited around, and the process appeared equally effortless. However, just because he was writing something out on the spot doesn’t mean that he came up with it then and there. He could’ve been working out and refining his compositions in his head for days or weeks in advance.