Cold Duck Time is a rock-influenced jazz standard written by Eddie Harris.  It first appeared on the album Swiss Movement by Les McCann and Eddie Harris. The first recording of this tune wasn’t well-rehearsed, and you can definitely hear that the band is learning this tune while on stage.  Swiss Movement is a live album that was recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1969.  It’s a very influential album by some killin’ cats, even if it the breaks are a little bit loose on Cold Duck Time.  The original recording is on youtube, but embedding isn’t enabled, so I couldn’t put it up.   You can search for it if you want to hear it.

This tune is a great introduction to jazz for many students because it’s a lot of fun to play.   Because it has a good back beat, even students who don’t listen much to jazz will appreciate it.  This is basically a rock tune in the jazz idiom.  It makes a nice closer or set break tune.

Cold Duck Time pdf

Cold Duck Time-C Instruments pdf

Cold Duck Time-Bb Instruments pdf

Cold Duck Time-Eb Instruments pdf

Cold Duck Time Play Along

Poncho Sanchez
My favorite recording of this tune, from Poncho’s record Latin Soul.  I LOVE this album, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes Latin Jazz!

Brian Bromberg, Dave Weckyl, Jeff Lorber, Gary Meek, Rick Braun
There is some serious firepower on this track.

Larry Carlton
The melody starts at :15.

Jeff Lorber, Jeff Golub

Rusty Bryant

Skinny Williams

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.