Do jazz solos have to be improvised Overthinking Old Jazz Episode 4

I m a musician specialising in 1920s and 30s jazz and popular music, but I also used to be an English Literature teacher, so I love overanalysing things and listening to myself talk. Overthinking Old Jazz is a series designed to allow me to do all those things at once. In this thrilling instalment, I compare and contrast two clarinet solos by William Thornton Blue from different takes of Cab Calloway s Happy Feet, and use them as the basis for a discussion of whether or not jazz solos need to be improvised. Many thanks to Dave Bock for providing the transfer of the alternate take, which I only heard for the first time last week. By the way, these solos were tricky to transcribe, but I got them pretty close before giving up as poet Paul Valéry wrote of poems, jazz solo transcriptions are never finished, only abandoned. Noteheads that appear as crosses indicate guesstimation. All expenses have been spared in the making of this video.