Fried Bananas is a hard bop composition by Dexter Gordon, written in 1969. It is a contrafact, built on the chord changes of the standard It Could Happen to You, with Gordon's new melody giving familiar harmonic territory a distinct personality and rhythmic drive. The tune was first recorded on April 10, 1969, for Gordon's Prestige Records album More Power!, featuring James Moody as a second tenor saxophonist alongside Barry Harris on piano, Buster Williams on bass, and Albert Tootie Heath on drums. Just two months later, in June 1969, Gordon recorded the piece again in Hilversum, Netherlands, with Kenny Drew on piano, Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen on bass, and Heath again on drums, a version later released under the title Fried Bananas on Prestige and SteepleChase. The European recording demonstrates a more relaxed swing and lyrical phrasing, showing how the same composition can take on notably different character depending on ensemble and tempo. Within Gordon's catalog, Fried Bananas became a signature original that he returned to frequently in live performance, much like his composition The Panther. It is not a universally known jazz standard in the manner of Body and Soul, but rather a respected working composition that appears regularly in recordings and performances by musicians familiar with Gordon's repertoire, representing the kind of straightforward but characterful hard bop vehicle that defined his artistic identity.
