Duke Ellington - Caravan

ORIGINATION Classic Jazz Archive: Diminuendo In Blue CD
LAST LISTENED TO a few days ago
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT yes, there was some
RATING ★★★★★

Caravan is one of those pieces of music that most of us know, even if we don't know we know it. Co-composed by Duke Ellington and his trombonist Juan Tizol (or possibly just by Tizol himself), it has been recorded countless times since and is has come to be considered a jazz standard. The first recorded version in 1936 was by a band that seem very much to have been Ellington and co., however this, the first credited Ellington version was not released until the following year.

With its smooth, flowing melody, it has a strong middle-eastern flavour which combined with a jazzy primitive percussion sound, prefigures the exotica movement of the fifties. It begins with an opening statement of that melody, before giving way to a string of short solos. The longest of these goes to the trumpet, which rasps throughout the piece before busting in for a brief solo around the half-way point on a muted wave. The real star of the piece, though, is that haunting, exotic melody, which winds smokily in and out of almost the whole tune. It was that melody that has captured countless ears and been the impetuous behind the avalanche of versions over the past seventy-five years.

Duke Ellington - Blue Pepper (Far East Of The Blues)

ORIGINATION The Far East Suite
LAST LISTENED TO yesterday
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT purdy good
RATING

Duke Ellington first came to fame during the swing jazz years leading up to the second world war. He recorded numerous 78s with his big band and scored many hits, several of which he wrote himself. The changes in the jazz field and in record formats in the '40s allowed him to further hone his already considerable composing talents. Whilst he never achieved the kind of chart success he had enjoyed during the swing era, he continued recording with his big bang and toured the globe many times over. Today he is regarded as the world's most important jazz composer.

In the '63 he and his band made a State Department sponsored tour of the middle east and the sub continent, where they played in such places as Bombay, Baghdad, Kabul and Tehran. Inspired by what he found on this tour, he and his long-time writing partner Billy Strayhorn wrote and suite of music that allowed their new experiences to "seep out". The following year the band made a trip to Japan and some influence from this too was woven into the tapestry. They recorded the suite with a full big band in '66.

Blue Pepper is the part of the suite and shows the band at their most swinging. This is primarily due to the large horn charts, although the drumming is full and forceful and plays a very forward roll here also. Of the two solos, the second (trumpet) is the strongest, straying high into the stratosphere as the band pushes it on into a marvellous crescendo.

It's all a pretty impressive achievement considering Ellington was 67 when this was recorded and that several members where of an age with him. It easily swings harder than band of half their age.