Chick Corea Now He Sings Now He Sobs

Getting Started With Chick Corea Now He Sings Now He Sobs

The album came out in 1968 on Polydor. It's his debut solo record and it's split into two halves that sound like completely different projects. The first disc is a trio recording with Miroslav Vitous and Roy Haynes. The second disc is a piano solo affair. That structural choice matters more than most people give it credit for. The trio side opens with "La Fiesta" and moves through original compositions that show Corea already operating at a level most pianists don't reach until much later in their careers. The solo piano side is where the record becomes unusual. Most jazz albums from that era used the quartet format as a safety net. Here Chick strips everything away and plays long-form solo pieces including his arrangement of Bartok's "Mikrokosmos" piece and the title track "Now He Sings, Now He Sobs." That second side runs about twenty-two minutes and it's not comfortable listening in the way a background jazz record is comfortable. The harmonies move in directions that don't resolve where you expect them to. I've had people ask me where to find this and what format works best. Streaming platforms carry it. Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal all have the full double album. If you want the highest fidelity version the 180-gram reissue on vinyl is the one to look for. The CD pressings from the '90s had some compression issues that make the solo piano side sound a bit harsh. The Blue Note reissue from 2009 remastered it properly and that's the version most people end up keeping.

Why This Album Comes Up in Practice

It shows up a lot in piano instruction circles. Not because it's easy, but because it forces you to deal with harmony in a way standard chord changes don't. The solo pieces require you to think about voice leading and bass movement at the same time, which is something most players don't practice deliberately. I spent about three weeks trying to learn "You Levitate Me" from the trio side and kept failing on the left hand. The problem was I was treating it like a standard walking bass line when it isn't. Chick uses displaced accents and rests that break the regular pulse. Once I slowed it down to about 60 percent tempo and wrote out the exact resting beats instead of trying to feel them, it clicked. That took me maybe four sessions over two weeks. Before that I was wasting hours every day going nowhere. The solo piano side is genuinely difficult in a different way. "Now He Sings, Now He Sobs" runs through multiple tempo sections and modulations that don't follow common jazz forms. If you're transcribing this you should know that live recordings of the solo material exist but they differ substantially from the studio versions. Corea reworked several of these pieces considerably in later performances. The 1968 studio take is the reference point most people need first.

How to Actually Use This Record

Don't just listen to it passively. Pick one tune. "La Fiesta" is a reasonable starting point because the form is more predictable than the solo material. Transcribe the piano part by ear first before you look at any transcription. Write out the chord changes. Then compare what you wrote against a real book or a well-made lead sheet. The discrepancies are where you actually learn something. For the solo side, start with "Spain" if your goal is performance. It's the most accessible track even though it's still not simple. The opening ostinato pattern is repetitive enough that you can memorize it in a few practice sessions. Then work on the right hand melody against it. I found that practicing the left hand ostinato alone for ten minutes before attempting the full piece made a noticeable difference. Most people skip that step and try to play both hands together immediately, which takes three times longer for worse results. If you're a performer looking to add this to your set, the trio material works well in a club setting. The solo piano pieces are better suited to a recital context or a practice room. Don't try to play the solo material in a standard trio gig without arranging it first. It doesn't translate naturally to a group format and audiences tend to lose interest when the texture gets too sparse without preparation.

Where to Get It

Streaming is the easiest route. Apple Music has it in lossless. Tidal Master Quality Authenticated version exists too. For physical copies check Discogs for the original Polydor pressing or the Blue Note remastered edition. Vinyl pressings vary widely in quality depending on the year and pressing plant. The 2009 Blue Note reissue is consistently good. Anything pressed after 2015 tends to be quieter with less surface noise than earlier reissues. The album is also available on Chick Corea's official catalog through Concord Music. If you want the complete recording sessions with alternate takes those are on the expanded deluxe editions that came out later. The basic double album is sufficient for most purposes. The bonus tracks are interesting but not essential.

Common Mistakes

People treat this as a beginner album because some of the melodies are memorable. It's not. The solo piano side alone will expose gaps in your harmonic knowledge pretty quickly. Another mistake is assuming the trio side is straightforward hard bop. It's not. The harmony on tracks like "Matrix" and "Tones for Joan's Bones" uses intervals and voicings that go well beyond standard bebop language. If you're learning this to sound like Corea you need to study his later work with Return to Forever too, because the harmonic vocabulary here is different from what he developed later. They're related but not identical. The recording itself has a quirk worth noting. The solo piano tracks were recorded with the microphone positioned closer than typical for jazz piano records of that period. This means transcribing by ear requires you to account for the proximity effect giving the lower register more weight than it would have acoustically. I noticed this when I tried matching the recording to a live performance at the Blue Note in 2014. The low end sounded completely different between the two. Once I adjusted my mental model of the balance everything aligned.