A Child Is Born

Thad Jones wrote this waltz in 1969 for the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, and it has been played as a ballad ever since. The A Child Is Born chords and the backing track here can be taken at any tempo and moved to any key.

Who wrote "A Child Is Born"

The tune is credited to Thad Jones and it came out of the band. Roland Hanna was playing the figure at a rehearsal at the Village Vanguard; Jones took it, shaped it into a piece and wrote it down in 1969. Alec Wilder heard the orchestra play it at the club, went back to the Algonquin Hotel and set words to it on his own, unasked — the lyric is generally reckoned the best he wrote without a collaborator. It reached record first through the pianist who started it: Hanna recorded it in 1969 on Richard Davis's Muses for Richard Davis, opening with three low notes and announcing it as a Thad Jones composition. It is still under copyright.

Recordings that made it a standard

• Richard Davis, Muses for Richard Davis (1969) — the first version on record, with Roland Hanna at the piano playing the tune he had found in the first place.
• Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Consummation (1970) — the composer's own, scored for the full orchestra. This is the reading that put it in the books, and it is why the tune is heard as a big-band ballad rather than a piano piece.
• The Singers Unlimited, In Tune (1971) — Wilder's words sung in close four-part harmony, which is where most people first heard that the piece had a lyric at all.
• Tony Bennett and Bill Evans, Together Again (1977) — voice and piano alone, no time kept, the waltz allowed to drift. The version singers learn from.