Our Delight

"Our Delight" is a 1947 jazz standard, composed by Tadd Dameron. It is considered one of his best compositions along with "Good Bait", "Hot House", "If You Could See Me Now", and "Lady Bird". A moderately fast bebop song, it featured the trumpeter Fats Navarro, who is said to "exhibit mastery of the difficult chord progression". One author said, "'Our Delight' is a genuine song, a bubbly, jaggedly ascending theme that sticks in one's mind, enriched by harmonic interplay between a flaming trumpet section led by Dizzy, creamy moaning reeds and crooning trombones. The written accompaniments to the solos-in particular the leader's two statements-are full of inventiveness, creating call-and-response patterns and counter-melodies. What is boppish here is the off-center, syncopated melody, as well as the shifting, internal voicings of the chords, especially at the very end. These voicings, along with a love of tuneful melodies that one walks out of a jazz club humming, were Tadd's main legacy to such composers and arrangers as Benny Golson, Gigi Gryce, and Jimmy Heath." Rolling Stone describes it as a "bop gem". Bill Evans recorded his version of it for his debut album New Jazz Conceptions in 1956.