Composition for undetermined instruments, recorded as the fifth track on the album Blue Boyé (1977), on which Hemphill plays all the parts through overdubbing. The score appears in Music Manuscript Notebook 1 (MM1), where it is titled “Fifth Blues.” It takes the form of two twelve-tone rows with transpositions.
Found on: Blue Boyé.
From Marty Ehrlich: In the notebook, there are two twelve-tone rows that are then transposed up a fourth and a fifth, calling to mind the I, IV, and V chords of the standard blues progression. It seems plausible that, as compositionally conceived, “Dirty Row” combines the elements of a twelve-tone row and the blues harmonic progression.