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" Donna Lee" is a jazz standard attributed to Charlie Parker, although Miles Davis has also claimed authorship. Written in A-flat, it is contrafact of the jazz standard "(Back Home Again in) Indiana". Beginning with an unusual half-bar rest, "Donna Lee" is a very complex, fast-moving chart with a compositional style based on four-note groups over each change.
Later in 1947 it was recorded for Decca Records by Claude Thornhill and his orchestra, which included Gil Evans, Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, Sandy Siegelstein, Bill Barber, and Joe Shulman. Some of these musicians were later hired by Miles Davis for his album Birth of the Cool. Evans approached Davis for permission to write the arrangement of "Donna Lee" for Thornhill. Davis agreed and then got the idea to "imitate the sound of Claude Thornhill but with less people" for his nonet recordings, as he says in his autobiography.
Jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius recorded a version of "Donna Lee" on bass guitar, with Don Alias on congas, for his debut album Jaco Pastorius (1976). His friend Pat Metheny called this version "astounding" because of its "hornlike phrasing that was previously unknown to the bass guitar" and "one of the freshest looks at how to play on a well traveled set of chord changes in recent jazz history". "Donna Lee" has also been recorded by Karrin Allyson, Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Nick Brignola, Clifford Brown, Ryan Kisor, Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh, Tito Puente, Steve Bailey, Victor Wooten, Alain Caron and Wallace Roney.
Pianist John Beasley won the 2021 Best Arrangement, Instrumental Or A Cappella Grammy Award on March 14, 2021, for his arrangement of "Donna Lee" performed by his big band, MONK'estra, from the album MONK'estra Plays John Beasley, on Mack Avenue Records.
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