Leadsheet: "Hey, It's Me You're Talking To"

Although I've been going to Smalls less frequently than I did less summer, I've heard one tune enough times that I feel compelled to learn it: Victor Lewis's "Hey, It's Me You're Talking To."


I think the original recording is from Lewis's own Know It Today, Know It Tomorrow (1992), which features Seamus Blake, Eddie Henderson, Christian McBride, and Edward Simon. There's also a version by Mark Turner on his eponymous Warner Brothers début, and even a video of Kendrick Scott's Oracle playing it at Smalls.


The tune has two parts: an unmistakably Lydian vamp at the top, which is followed by a set of cyclical chord changes, all descending in minor 3rds. I've heard friends describe is as "Giant Steps, but with a diminished cycle instead of a major thirds cycle" and as "the major version of 'Cyclic Episode,'" but I think the tune is also vaguely reminiscent of "Bolivia," with its pseudo-Latin vamp at the top followed by changes that seem archetypically "neo-hard-bop," i.e., optimized for blowing moderately angular, pentatonic-infused bebop lines.  

Hey, It's Me You're Talking To (C)

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