502 Blues

Jimmy Rowles wrote this jazz waltz in 1958, and Wayne Shorter's recording of it eight years later is the reason most musicians know it. The 502 Blues chords and the backing track here can be taken at any tempo and moved to any key.

Who wrote "502 Blues"

The composer is Jimmy Rowles, the Californian pianist better known through most of his career as an accompanist to singers — Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan — than as a writer. He wrote it in 1958. The tune also goes under the title "Drinkin' and Drivin'", which is how it is often listed, and it is played as an instrumental. The earliest recording of it on record is by Bill Holman with the Mel Lewis Quintet, on Jive for Five in 1959, the year after it was written. The piece remains under copyright.

Recordings that made it a standard

• Bill Holman with the Mel Lewis Quintet, Jive for Five (1959) — the first time it was put on record, in a West Coast small group a year after Rowles wrote it.
• Wayne Shorter, Adam's Apple (1967) — the performance that made it a standard. Shorter is the only horn, with Herbie Hancock, Reggie Workman and Joe Chambers behind him, and he plays the waltz unhurried, leaving the harmony to do the work rather than filling it in. Every later version answers to this one.
• Harold Danko Trio, Three of Four (1998) — a pianist's reading, which returns the tune to the instrument Rowles wrote it on.
• Jeremy Pelt, Close to My Heart (2003) — trumpet led, taken at ballad weight rather than as a blowing vehicle.