Wendy is an instrumental jazz tune written by Paul Desmond as a contrafact of the 1934 standard For All We Know. The chords are borrowed from For All We Know, while Desmond provides a new melodic line for the tune. It was first released in 1976 by The Paul Desmond Quartet. The piece follows an ABAC form, with the theme building up in the first eight bars from B flat below the staff to C, then descending in the next eight from F on the staff to B flat below, with the same rise and fall echoed in the later sections. Desmond’s solo begins with quick sixteenth-note figures and then expands the phrasing, introducing two core ideas: a two-eighths plus eighths triplet figure and a repeated note rising to a sixth. The performance is noted for Desmond’s singable, balanced phrasing rather than dense bebop lines, and the bar-room ambience—including Ed Bickert’s guitar introduction with the clatter of plates—adds a human touch to the composition.
