A departure from his swinging dance music, Duke Ellington’s Mood Indigo softly conveys an intimate, ruminative and melancholy mood.
By John Edward Hasse
Oct. 16 - 17, 2020 edition of the Wall Street Journal
“In the fall of 1930, if you were listening to a radio broadcast from Harlem’s hottest night spot, the Cotton Club, you might have heard something surprising. From just the first four notes of its opening chorale, you’d realize here is something fresh. You’d never forget its ravishing timbres, languid beat and poignant feeling. The song was Duke Ellington’s resplendent “Mood Indigo.”
By then, the composer-bandleader had shaken up the music world with his jazz band, which sounded unlike any other because of its imaginative harmonies and kaleidoscopic sonorities. He didn’t write for nameless trumpet, trombone or clarinet players, but for the signature sounds of his trumpeter Arthur Whetsel, his trombonist Joe “Tricky Sam” Nanton and his clarinetist Barney Bigard, mixing their colors like a master painter. Ellington didn’t compose for the instrument, but for the man behind it.
Projecting urban sophistication and breaking barriers for Black musicians, Ellington had reached a new peak of popularity, thanks to the reach of radio and recordings. But one piece raised his renown to new heights—“Mood Indigo,” one of the most original and memorable musical miniatures of the 20th century. It would become his best-known composition, a career milestone, a hit, a standard, and a classic.
In late 1930, he made three recordings of the composition. The first and second, on Oct. 14 and 17, featured his band pared down to a septet. For the third, on Dec. 10, he used his full ensemble of 12 players and added an orchestral accompaniment that showcased the diaphanous, haunting solo of trumpeter Whetsel and the gentle, flowing sound of clarinetist Bigard.
Departing from swinging dance music, “Mood Indigo” softly conveys an intimate, ruminative and melancholy mood. It launched a new avenue for Ellington: quiet pastel pieces, some, like this one, denoting his favorite hue, blue: “Azure,” “Blue Light,” and “On a Turquoise Cloud.”
Jazz band arrangements typically contrasted three families of wind instruments — the trumpet, trombone and sax sections. True to form, the maverick Ellington rejected this norm, instead combining here a single trumpet and trombone — each using a mute and avoiding vibrato—with a clarinet. He placed the trumpet in its usual register, above the other instruments, put the trombone slightly below, in its high range, unexpectedly gave the clarinet smoky low notes, and assigned the instruments unusual harmonies. “The resulting tone colors,” observed composer Gunther Schuller, “had never been heard before in all of music history.” Even experienced musicians must have wondered “What was that?”
The song’s authorship is disputed. Ellington’s star clarinetist Bigard said that he developed the second theme based on a melody written by his New Orleans teacher Lorenzo Tio Jr., and that Ellington wrote the first. (Publisher Irving Mills, a known credit-grabber, listed himself as co-author, but it’s not clear if he contributed.) Neither Ellington nor Mills was scrupulous in giving credit to band members who contributed melodic ideas, and Bigard said he received only $25 for his role. Decades later, he sued and won a share of royalties.
Despite — or perhaps because of — its singularity, “Mood Indigo” became a national hit, Ellington’s first. Not only did critics and the public embrace “Mood Indigo” — so did musicians. A quintessential standard, it ranks 16th among jazz tunes in its number of recordings: more than 1,300. By the late 1930s, the song was used as the theme of 16 different radio shows.
“Mood Indigo” came to be a staple of Ellington’s repertory. To keep the piece novel, he — and later composer/arranger Billy Strayhorn — would periodically fashion a new orchestration. Strayhorn’s striking 15-minute concert version for the 1950 album “Masterpieces by Ellington” even goes into waltz time. Clarinetist/saxophonist Russell Procope commented, “a new arrangement would freshen it up, like you pour water on a flower, to keep it blooming. They’d all bloom — fresh, fresh arrangements.”
No fewer than 10 orchestrations of “Mood Indigo” lie among the roughly 100,000 pages of Ellington’s unpublished music at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. One manuscript puzzled catalogers until they realized that the title “Ogidni Doom” was “Mood Indigo” playfully spelled backward.
In 1931, slangy lyrics were added, opening with:
You ain’t been blue—
No, no, no—
You ain’t been blue,
Till you’ve had that mood indigo.
Mitchell Parish, a staff lyricist for Mills, credibly claimed in a 1987 interview that he wrote the words to “Mood Indigo” but never got a byline or a royalty. “Mood Indigo” also became a popular-song standard, interpreted by singers ranging from Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone to Dr. John and Annie Lennox.
If you listen to just one vocal rendition, however, it should be Frank Sinatra’s, from his landmark 1955 album “In the Wee Small Hours.” Cradled by Nelson Riddle’s lush orchestra, Sinatra—a wizard with words—vivifies the lyrics and summons the song’s 3 a.m. loneliness as only he could.
But because of the unique sonorities that Ellington’s band conjured in performance, the piece will always belong to the maestro. Its mark on music having lasted for 90 years, who’s to deny that the matchless “Mood Indigo” just might prove indelible?”
—Mr. Hasse is curator emeritus of American music at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.
His books include “Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington” (Da Capo) and “Discover Jazz” (Pearson).
It's not often that one gets to read first-hand accounts about the early makers of the music - primary source material about Jazz masters like Pops, Duke, Fats, Billie and Eddie Condon. That's because there aren't too many people around from those halcyon days to tell their stories from a first person perspective. Timme Rosenkrantz's memoirs is one such book. It first posted to the blog on April 17, 2012 and I wanted to reprise it to edit out some flaws, add photographs and include the Eddie Condon video which you'll find at the conclusion of this piece.
“This book is not a sociological or jazz-historical work; it is not a reference book on the evolution of jazz over the ages. There are lots of those!
This is a book about my adventures during many, and sometimes long, visits to the jazz capital of New York; about the thrill it has been to meet the great and lesser jazz musicians and their friends. It had to be a happy book about happy people and their music, and it is written by a happy man who is happy because he has been lucky enough to get close to that world, even to live the life he had, so to say, chosen as his own.”
- Baron Timme Rosenkrantz
Every time I’m the least bit inclined to forget bassist and Jazz author Bill Crow’s admonition that “Jazz should be fun,” something comes along to remind me of the import of this remark.
Most recently, it came in the form of Fradley Garner’s superb English adaptation of Timme Rosenkrantz’s Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron’s Memoir, 1934-1969.
As these dates denote, Mr. Rosenkrantz, a Danish baron, spent a good portion of his life in New York City when Jazz was first coming into existence and he offers exciting and enthusiastic glimpses of this time-gone-by in the thirty-six vignettes that comprises the chapters of his memoirs.
Each chapter is a short essay and collectively they form an episodic stroll through the Jazz clubs, theaters and gin joints of Harlem [and later 52nd Street] during its heyday as the “must visit destination” for any Jazz fan.
Mr. Rosenkrantz’s lovely stories are also a brilliant example of the power of one of William Zinsser’s key points in his On Writing Well when he enjoins us to “ … let the person speak to the reader in his own words.”
The very manageable chapters and the cozy manner in which the stories contained in them are told create a much welcomed first-person narrative at a time when many of the books being published on the subject of Jazz are overly analytic and coldly academic in nature.
Credit for the engaging “tone and tenor” of Mr. Rosenkrantz’s memoirs must be given to Mr. Fradley Garner for his brilliant English translation/adaptation which is replete with a number of explanatory footnotes that help make the book even more lucid.
And while Mr. Rosenkrantz’s commercial Jazz ventures [record producer, record shop owner, concert producer, Jazz club owner] ultimately failed causing him to comment – “You can say I was born under an unlucky star if you want to.” – he’s quick to also acknowledge: “But every so often that star shone brightly and made up for all the sunshine that I slept through.” [p. 186].
Mr. Rosenkrantz was to experience first-hand the old adage: “The best way to make a million dollars in Jazz is to start with two million!”
Yet, it’s difficult to feel too sorry for him, as based on the experiences he shares in his book, Mr. Rosenkrantz met everyone who was anybody in the world of Jazz during its formative years and had the time of his life while doing so.
If this book is a testimonial to anything, it is to the fact that Mr. Rosenkrantz definitely knew how to have fun with Jazz.
Judging from a reading of Mr. Rosenkrantz’s anecdotes, tales and yarns, perhaps the book might have been alternately subtitled: A Danish Baron’s Book of Enchantments, Revelations and Amusements in The Land of Jazz.”
Take for example the title of the work’s very first chapter: Get Off at 125th Street and God Be with You” which refers to the warning given by his midtown Manhattan hotel clerk when Mr. Rosenkrantz’s asked subway directions to uptown Harlem during his very first trip to New York in 1934.
“God certainly was with” Mr. Rosenkrantz for over the next thirty-five years he was to meet and, in many cases, become personal friends with Jazz luminaries such as Don Redman, Chick Webb, John Hammond, Benny Carter, Billie Holiday, Adrian Rollini, Benny Goodman, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Mezz Mezzrow, Eddie Condon, James P. Johnson, Slim Gailliard and Slam Stewart, W.C. Handy, Stuff Smith, Erroll Garner, Mildred Bailey, Bud Powell, and most especially – Duke Ellington – whom he [I think] correctly refers to as “The King of Jazz.”
Among the book’s many, other enchantments are the following stories from Mr. Rosenkrantz:
- “I'll never forget that first 1934 visit to Harlem!
I walked upstairs from the subway platform at the corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue and blinked twice as I stepped out on the sidewalk. I felt as if I had entered another world. Huge neon signs blinked around me and over me. Beckoning shop windows caught my eye. The traffic was frightening. Music blared from every open shop door. You might think you were standing on Times Square, Piccadilly Circus, or—stretching the imagination—Vesterbrogade, Copenhagen's main street, except for the people around you. They were all people of color. A solid mass of blacks, browns, yellows, grays moved along the broad avenue with a swinging, rhythmic gait that held this Nordic visitor in a trance. Their clothing was gay, their faces animated, their voices rang in the February evening air, as they fairly skipped along under the trees (now uprooted) on Lenox Avenue.
Following the crowd, I walked up the street, past several big movie houses, and suddenly, there I was standing in front of the Apollo Theater.
The Apollo was the last variety theater in New York City. Here the colossal show goes on at ten in the morning and runs nonstop until two the next morning—and to think I had wasted nearly my whole first day in conversations, cafeterias, and clouds!
In the lineup were the greatest black artists in the world—singers, dancers, comedians, strong men and weak women, balancing acts, jugglers, and magicians. And the best Negro bands of the day—plus, of course, a line of the prettiest and darkest chorus girls this white man has ever seen.
And there was nearly always a full house. The program ran over two hours and changed every Friday. In between performances, they showed some Mickey Mouse films and newsreels and a feature film, something with lots of action. The black audience—and it's almost entirely black—demands action. Something has to happen!
Still and all, the films were so bad, I still believe they were chosen to empty the house. They usually succeeded.
My first night, there was a big revue with Don Redman's Orchestra as the main attraction, costarring with the Mills Brothers, those fantastic tap dancers the Step Brothers, and a funny, blues-singing comedian, Pigmeat Markham. He later gained TV fame on the Ed Sullivan Show….” [pp. 14-15] …
- “And then Billie Holiday came on. I shall never forget her, standing there in the dim spotlight. Young and beautiful as a dream, her sensitive, full lips half open; those almond eyes almost closed, as if she were having a blissful dream. Her voice wasn't big, but it crept under your skin and stayed there. She sang like an instrument—sometimes like the softest plea of a saxophone, sometimes like the shrill command of a trumpet. Never had I heard anybody sing like this. You sat there, almost clenching your fists in ecstasy. Her way of phrasing the words was so different, yet so right. You instantly knew that this was the way a jazz lyric should be treated. That voice clutched you like coiled fingers.” [pp. 43-44]
- “Anyone who knew Fats loved him. He had a heart of gold. No one came to him in vain when they were needy. No one could resist his always buoyant and contagious spirit. His laugh could be heard for miles around.
I remember one of our mutual friends, Adrian, a young Dutch composer of whom Fats was very fond. Adrian had come over to New York to try to make it as a composer and arranger, but nothing was happening. To make ends meet, he had taken a job as a wastepaper basket emptier in an office. One night, when the three of us were together, Adrian started dreaming out loud. "If only I could afford to rent a little piano, I could really start writing some tunes and working on arrangements, and get out of that office. It's killing me!"
The very next morning two moving men showed up at Adrian's doorstep bearing a new grand piano. With love from Fats. It had a great sound. I'm sure Fats had taken the time to choose it personally. In fact, he came by often to play it himself, much to the joy of everyone within hearing range on West 87th Street. At least Fats wasn't to blame for our European friend never making it. "The Flying Dutchman" managed to do a few arrangements and place them, but at last hearing, Adrian was still trying to get paid.” [p. 75]
And here are some of the book’s revelations as recounted by Mr. Rosenkrantz:
- “C-R-R-R-R-R-R-ASH! An ear-splitting drumroll unfolded into a cymbal crash at the other end of the ballroom. Then the orchestra fell in, heralding the arrival of a little hunchback drummer, the greatest in the world, Chick Webb. Something happened to me I shall never forget, impossible to put into words. Only to be felt. And I’ve learned a great drummer is to be felt before he is heard. Chick seemed to turn a light on in me.” [p. 19]
- “Young Garner's father was a singer who played several instruments, as did his older brother, Linton. Erroll was an entirely self-taught musician who hit the keys when he was three years old and never did learn how to read music. But he played like no other pianist, and his flamboyant style was a delight to the ears. He would start a ballad with a long, discordant introduction that didn't even hint at the melody to come. At last when he swung into it, his left hand lay down chords like a guitar, keeping up a steady pulse, while his right hand never seemed to catch up, improvising chords or playing octaves that lagged way behind the beat for the rest of the number. Just a pinch of Fats Waller added spice.
I was fascinated by this fellow's joyously swinging piano, and I sought him out while Louis Prima was on. Erroll was anything but happy. He didn't know many people in New York and was downhearted. No one was interested in listening to him—Louis Prima was the showman attraction. And Erroll was only making forty dollars a week!
He told me he thought he'd go home soon, as it seemed nothing was going to happen for him in New York. Somehow, I had to stop him. I invited him home to 7 West 46th Street, showed him my rented Krakaur grand, and once he got started, it was impossible to pry him off the bench. Little did I know at the outset that he had a bad case of asthma and couldn't sleep lying down!” [p. 176]
- “An odd commentary on the vicissitudes of life is the fact that Ellington does not like the business of getting from one place to another. He cannot sleep on trains, ships, or in cars, and he especially dislikes flying. Constant traveling for forty years has not changed him at all. Approximately 14,650 sleepless nights account for those heavy bags under his eyes. Come to think of it, he doesn't like to go to bed at home, either. Life fascinates him so much, it seems a terrible waste of time. He just seems to thrive on not sleeping!
On the road, he prefers to play cards with the bandsmen, very often winning all their loot—but he is a gracious loser, too. Until recently, when he bought an apartment in a skyscraper on New York's Central Park West, Duke had a modest little flat on Harlem's Sugar Hill. He fell for New York the first time he glimpsed the bright lights—which, to his imaginative soul, were an Arabian Night's dream.
A born big-city man, he has a deep-seated dislike for expanses of green grass, saying they remind him of cemeteries. Can't bear any kind of outdoor sports; regarded the walk down three flights of stairs in his old Harlem apartment as his daily constitutional; laughingly describes himself as "a hot-house flower."
"You have to be careful, Timme," he once told me. "There's nothing more dangerous than fresh-air poisoning!"”[pp. 158-59]
The following excerpts are examples of the book’s many amusements:
- “Pod's and Jerry's, also known as the Log Cabin, at 133rd Street near the corner of Seventh Avenue, was usually the last stop for uptowners and downtowners alike. Here you could bump into celebrities like Tallulah Bankhead, Frederick March, Franchot Tone (or his mother, playing drums), and other New York theater people and Tin Pan Alley types. Many had been slumming at the Cotton Club, where they watched floorshows featuring the Duke Ellington, Cab Galloway, or Jimmie Lunceford orchestras. They'd show up in top hats and tails or dripping in ermines. As a rule, they circulated incognito, wearing oversize sunglasses to make themselves unrecognizable, which never worked nor was it intended to.
This scene inspired Don Redman to write a tune, "Take Off Those Dark Glasses, We Know Who You Are!" Confronted by one of those notables, Harlemites would chant the melody.”[p. 27]
- “A few years ago, Eddie Condon made a tour of the British Isles that is still remembered. With him he had his jug buddies Wild Bill Davison and George Wettling. The tour turned into a contest of how much liquor can be consumed while playing trad jazz. Who won I don't have to guess: Eddie had no peers. But nobody seemed to mind, for this was a very special occasion—the very first time the Brits had heard a stomp-down, sure-enough, live Dixieland band….
Arriving in a principal city, they were met early in the morning by the I press, who tracked them to their hotel. They found Eddie in bed with the hangover of all time. He could hardly move, but the interview was important, and the road manager let the scribes in. Eddie lay flat on his back with his hat on. "Go on, shoot!" he growled. Anything else he mumbled was lost as he faded away.
"Mr. Condon, wouldn't it be better if you sat up a wee bit in bed, so we can hear what you are saying?" ventured one of the chaps.
Condon's eyelids stayed at half-mast as he cracked open his lips and croaked, "What the hell do you think I am, man, an athlete?" [pp. 153-54]
- “The New York Herald Tribune [subsequently, The International Herald Tribune]once gave a luncheon in honor of Louis Armstrong at one of the fashionable Paris restaurants. Many prominent people from the literary world and theater were there, as well as music critics and reporters from all over the continent. Louis had asked me to come along.
It was a typical American luncheon with hamburger steaks and three different kinds of ice water. I think Louis had a side order of red beans and rice, his favorite fruits.
There were many speeches, and Armstrong was praised in as many different accents.
Then it was Louis's turn to say a few words. Somebody had asked him what his greatest thrill had been on this latest European tour. Louis answered:
"Last week we were playing in Rome. We gave a great concert and those Italian cats went crazy. We could’ve filled the Forum, no question about that, if they had repaired it! Well, the next day my wife, Lucille, and I had a private audience with the Pope. And it knocked us out, man! I told His Holiness about my music and about my Swiss Kriss (a laxative), which moves me almost as much as the music, and he was real great, you know?
"'What a beautiful wife you have!' the Pope says. 'Do you have any children?'
"'No, Pops,' I told him. 'But we're still working on it.' And do you know, the Pope fell o-u-t!
And so did everybody at the luncheon party.” [pp. 127-28]
Socrates once said that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” to which, an acceptable corollary might be: the unlived life is not worth examining.
No words could form a better description of the “Jazz Life” lived by Baron Timme Rosenkrantz as depicted in Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron’s Memoir, 1934-1969.
As Jazz approaches the beginning of its second century, don’t miss you chance to read about what it was like soon after it all began.
The Great Condon, already into his 4th decade of music here, rips through the venerable standard Royal Garden Blues with the ample aid of Wild Bill Davison (ct), Peanuts Hucko (cl), Cutty Cutshall (tb), Buzzy Drootin (d), J. Varro (p) and Joe Williams (b).
“The recordings are even of more interest because this period is a black hole in jazz recording. Because of the musicians union strike, which lasted from 1942-44 we have little record of what the bands sounded like in this period. The only available evidence comes from transcriptions like these (which include blown takes), live recordings and V Discs. All three of these discs are well worth listening to.”
1943 was a milestone year in the illustrious career of Duke Ellington, not the least of which was because, despite the loss of the innovative bass player Jimmy Blanton in 1942, Duke assembled one of his finest bands.
As Gunther Schuller notes in his definitive The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz 1930-1945:
“If 1940 was creatively a banner year, 1941 and early 1942 (after which the American Federation of Musicians broke off all recording) were even more startlingly productive.”
Virtually the same band was in existence in 1943 and its skill and quality were fortunately captured in a series of World Broadcasting Services transcriptions which have recently been reissued on vinyl by Circle Records now under the banner of ORG Music as Duke Ellington and His Orchestra: World Broadcasting Services, Volume I: 1943.
Ken Dryden writing in AllMusic offers this annotation of the music on these important broadcasts.
“In the 1980s, the release of Duke Ellington's complete transcriptions for World Broadcasting was a major addition to his already sizable catalog. The songs on this compilation include everything recorded on November 8, 1943, with two takes from the next day's session. The fidelity is outstanding, as Circle was able to utilize the original glass masters, resulting in sound that exceeds many of Ellington's commercial recordings of the era. … . Highlights of this first volume include "Rockin' in Rhythm" (spotlighting trombonist Tricky Sam Nanton); Rex Stewart's cornet in his special feature, "Boy Meets Horn"; Johnny Hodges' lush alto sax in "Sentimental Lady" (also known later as "I Didn't Know About You"); and "Blue Skies" (also known under the title "Trumpet No End"), Mary Lou Williams' arrangement of Irving Berlin's landmark piece. Dizzy Gillespie is a special guest, taking the place of Ray Nance and Shorty Baker on the initial session. This is an essential purchase for Ellington fans.” [Ken Dryden writing in All Music.]
And lest we forget, 1943 was also a watershed year for Duke and the orchestra because it was the first time they appeared in concert at the prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York City.
John Edward Hasse, the curator emeritus of American music at the Smithsonian Institution and the author of “Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington” (Da Capo) commemorated this event in the following essay which has been excerpted from the January 18, 2018 edition of The Wall Street Journal.
“Duke Ellington (1899-1974) was always pushing against conventions and limits, creating an enormous, innovative and nonpareil body of compositions and recordings that still hold wonders for the listener. He treated his band’s rehearsals as a musical laboratory, experimenting with new harmonies, timbres and instrumental voicings. Like a magisterial chef, he alchemized his ingredients—the signature styles of his musicians—into a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts.
Ellington hated being pigeon-holed as strictly a jazz musician. He was, in fact, in a phrase he favored, “beyond category.” Over his astonishingly productive 50-year career leading the Duke Ellington Orchestra, he composed songs, short instrumentals, multi-movement suites, scores for ballets and motion pictures, and Broadway-bound musicals. He was mostly known as a miniaturist for his three-minute evergreens such as “Mood Indigo,” “Sophisticated Lady,” and “Satin Doll.” But his lesser-known, large-scale works provided him the canvases to tell bigger stories, inspired by, among other topics, African-American history and his reverence for God. Those themes inform two of his landmark works whose jubilees occur this month.
Seventy-five years ago, he made a much-publicized debut at Carnegie Hall, enlarging his place in the soundscape beyond ballrooms, nightclubs and theater stages. The highlight of that concert on Jan. 23, 1943, was his 45-minute magnum opus “Black, Brown, and Beige: A Tone Parallel to the History of the Negro in America.” “BB and B,” which finally came out on disc in 1977, evidenced the composer’s profound pride in African-American history and his intent to express “an authentic record of my race written by a member of it.”
With little experience writing long forms, Ellington struggled with continuity, transitions and the ending, yet “BB andB” is a seminal work. Its three movements—”Black,” “Brown,” and “Beige”—move from the Revolutionary War period to the mid-20th century. Its most memorable sections are “The Blues” (sung by Betty Roché ), “Emancipation Celebration” and “Come Sunday.” One of Ellington’s most ravishing melodies, the ethereal, devotional “Come Sunday” is played luminously on the recording by alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, who wrings from each phrase every nuance of tender and reverential feeling, drawing instant, awed applause from the audience.
“BB and B”...” has taken its place not only as a milestone in Ellington’s artistic career, but as a classic of American music. The premiere performance of “BB and B” is included in “The Duke Ellington Carnegie Hall Concerts, January 1943” (Prestige). Ellington’s 1958 streamlined “BB and B” with the eminent gospel singer Mahalia Jackson is on Columbia, while a 1965 version of “BB and B” highlights is on “The Private Collection, Volume Ten” (Saja). …
On April 26-28, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, led by Wynton Marsalis, will perform “BB and B.” Also this spring, Jazz Lines Publications will issue a complete edition, over 200 pages long, of “BB and B,” which should stimulate performances in the U.S. and abroad. The public can hope to hear … [this] remarkable work presented more often in the future.
The following audio-only soundcloud file features the band on Mary Lou Williams' arrangement of Irving Berlin’s Blue Skies.
