“Donna Lee” is a bebop classic first recorded in 1947 by Charlie Parker’s quintet with a young Miles Davis on trumpet. It’s credited to Parker, though Davis later said he wrote it. Either way, its long, twisting head is one of the great bebop melodies, and learning it is a rite of passage for horn players, guitarists and even bassists, thanks to Jaco Pastorius’s famous version.
The tune is a contrafact: a new melody written over the chord changes of an older song, in this case “(Back Home Again in) Indiana.” It’s typically played in Ab major, in a 32-bar ABAC form. The changes start on Abmaj7 and quickly move to F7 (a secondary dominant), then Bbm7 and Eb7, back to Ab, and then through more secondary dominants and ii-Vs, including a move to Db and a minor iv. There are no surprises in the harmony, but the tempo is fast and the melody is dense.
The melody is the lesson. It’s built from bebop language: chromatic approach notes, enclosures around chord tones and arpeggios that land on the third or seventh on strong beats. When you solo, borrow those devices. A classic exercise is to take one bar of the head and use its shape over other chords in the tune. Target chord tones on beats 1 and 3, and use passing tones on the off-beats; that’s the essence of bebop line construction.
Practice the head in two-bar chunks, starting at 120 BPM or slower, and gradually work toward performance tempo over weeks. Memorize it completely; reading a bebop head at speed is nearly impossible. Then learn the chord changes separately with roots and guide tones. Transcribing a chorus from Parker’s solo will teach you more than any scale book.
Common mistake: starting too fast and practicing mistakes. Accuracy first, speed later. Learn more about the credited composer on Charlie Parker’s Wikipedia page, and find more bebop lead sheets on Minedit.