Our Delight

"Our Delight" is a 1946 jazz standard, composed by Tadd Dameron, and recorded by Dizzy Gillespie.^[1] It is considered one of Dameron's best compositions, along with "Good Bait", "Hot House", "If You Could See Me Now", and "Lady Bird".^[2][3] It has an AABA construction.^[4] A moderately fast bebop song, it featured the trumpeter Fats Navarro, who is said to "exhibit mastery of the difficult chord progression".^[5] 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."^[6] Rolling Stone describes the song as a "bop gem".^[7]

There are more than 120 cover versions of "Our Delight".^[8] Bill Evans recorded his version of the composition for his debut album New Jazz Conceptions in 1956.^[7]