A few years ago, Zachary Woolfe, a critic and editor of the DailyExpertNews, asked a question: What are the five minutes or so you would play for a friend to convince them to fall in love with classical music? What about Mozart? Or the violin? Or opera?
Over the course of more than 25 submissions, dozens of writers, musicians, critics, scientists and other music lovers tried to answer, sharing their passions with readers and each other.
Now we’re shifting the focus to jazz – and what better place to start than at Duke Ellington? A nonpareil composer, pianist, and bandleader, he arrived in New York from Washington, DC, just as the Harlem Renaissance was getting underway; soon the Duke Ellington Orchestra had become the soundtrack of an era. He went on to become a black American icon on the national stage and then an ambassador for the best of American culture around the world. Jazz’s status as global music has a lot to do with Ellington: in particular, his ability as a leader, collaborator and spokesperson, who rarely reminded his audience, “We love you madly.”
Here are 13 songs that we think will make you love Ellington. Have fun listening and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.
◆ ◆
Darcy James Argue, bandleader
An underappreciated part of Ellington’s artistry is his mastery of deception. You think you know where the music is going… then you blink and realize that Duke has taken you on a wild detour. This magic trick animates the A side of ‘Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue’, Ellington’s 1937 masterpiece in inverted arc shape. It’s a blues; what could be simpler? But Ellington bobs and weaves, stretches chords and inversions, rolls back the 12-measure form like an ouroboros, and hurtles through a dizzying array of modulations: five keys in under three minutes! But the journey isn’t just loud to soft – it’s a denouement to clarity. The ’56 live version from Newport is legendary for saxophonist Paul Gonsalves’ immortal 27-chorus ‘pity interval’, but it’s ‘Diminuendo’ that sets the stage.
◆ ◆
Ayana Contreras, critic
Mahalia Jackson’s resonant yet winged vocals soar masterfully over the expressive string and horn arrangement of “Come Sunday,” Ellington’s ode to the singular day when black workers historically dressed in the best of Sundays could shed the sweat and grit of labour. : appearing like glittering butterflies, gathered to praise the Lord. According to Irving Townsend’s 1958 liner notes for “Black, Brown and Beige,” the album it comes from, Jackson hums “an extra chorus as if she was aware of the power of her performance and wanted to let it linger for a little while longer.” .” Of course she knew. “Come Sunday” communicates with crystal clear Ellington’s admiration for workers and his elegant insistence on unconditional respect.
◆ ◆
Giovanni Russonello, Times jazz critic
Here’s Johnny Hodges, delivering the most seraphic alto saxophone playing ever on record for four minutes on this Ellington chestnut and Billy Strayhorn’s “Far East Suite.” That title is more or less a misnomer: almost every piece in the suite has some Middle Eastern inspiration. And Strayhorn — Ellington’s composing and arranging partner of more than 25 years — actually wrote “Isfahan” before their visit to that Iranian city in 1963. (The original title was “Eleven”.) This is one of Strayhorn’s classic cascading melodies, and it arrangement is Ellingtonian balladry at its peak, with its luxuriously dragged tempo and drum-like scrapes of trombone harmony. As usual, it’s a featured band member that really makes the recording – this time, Hodges, cradling every note between his teeth, firm but not too tight, lubricating and giving them all sorts of feel without clouding or obscuring anything. It’s a standard, but when was the last time you heard a pianist cover this tune? That’s Hodges’s job.
◆ ◆
Billy Childs, pianist
I can’t listen to the first 50 seconds of the opening credits of “Anatomy of a Murder” without seeing shapes: cubist shapes like a Picasso painting, with fragmented shards of sound from the different sections of the band, punctuated by the pointillist drumming pattern . From the opening “wah” of the bowl-shaped trombone, through the red-hot trumpet blasts, to the saxophone mini-cadenza, this piece grips me like a vise. The main part of the melody, a gutbucket blues passacaglia over which trumpet, clarinet, saxophone and piano solo, evokes in me a sublime sense of doom that perfectly sets the mood for the entire film.
◆ ◆
Marcus J. Moore, jazz writer
Duke Ellington always had such a way of drawing strong emotions out of the keys of his piano. On the 1962 version of “Solitude,” featuring bassist Charles Mingus and drummer Max Roach, Ellington appropriately evokes the sense of isolation through gruff, spacious chords that reflect dark and light textures. Where the 1934 original aroused a certain optimism, this one, from the album “Money Jungle”, sounds more somber – headphone music made for bad weather. By the time Mingus and Roach pop up near the back of the track, Ellington has locked himself in the upper register of his solo, shifting the sound from ambient to a bluesy track with light drum brushes and subtle bass. It was a great victory lap for one of the pioneers of jazz music.
◆ ◆
Harmony Holiday, poet
Mingus and Roach joined Ellington on the first recording of ‘Fleurette Africaine’ for ‘Money Jungle’. Left alone with his reflection in this solo version, Duke’s swaying and near-smile evoke longing and memory. He plays with the ghosts of his friends and spares them blunt nostalgia. He hesitates as if approaching a sacred altar of sound, then surrenders to his solitude, being haunted by their absence but not diminished by it. This version is more erratic than the original, as Ellington confronts the missing tones by blurring them with his own. For a man who spent so many years maintaining a large orchestra that could play the notes he heard in his head, Ellington seems to find the most comfort on his own. It’s as if all the time he spent in public was chasing this isolated spiral, either as a soloist or with the phantoms of some friends in a garden he invented for them. He’s soloing here, but he’s not the only one, which would be scary if it weren’t so beautiful.
◆ ◆
Maurice Jackson, jazz historian
“Black, Brown and Beige” summarizes the entire orchestration of Ellington’s work. The suffering of black people at the wail of the trumpeter Rex Stewart. Their struggle through the musings of saxophonist Harry Carney. Triumph using the “tom tom” of the drums. Duke called it “a tone parallel to the history of the Negro in America,” dedicated to Haitians who fought to save Savannah, Georgia, from the British during the Revolutionary War. “I went back to the history of my race and tried to express it in rhythm,” said Ellington. “We used to have something in Africa, ‘something’ that we lost. One day we’ll get it again.”
◆ ◆
David Berger, musician and scholar
Recorded March 6, 1940 – the first Ellington recording session with Ben Webster’s tenor saxophone and Jimmy Blanton’s propulsive bass, what I would call the greatest band in jazz history. If Ellington’s oeuvre can be reduced to the marriage of the uneducated and the refined, Ko-Ko is his best example: a three-chord minor blues that tightly develops the motif introduced in the first measure through six dissonant, wild and imaginative choruses, an announcement for the coming decades for jazz composers and arrangers. Modern jazz started here with an explosion.
◆ ◆
Jon Pareles, Times chief critic of pop music
Ellington’s music remained open to jazz’s younger generations. “In a Sentimental Mood,” from an album he recorded in 1962 with John Coltrane and members of his quartet, draws on the ambiguities of a composition first heard in 1935. Ellington’s opening piano figure tiptoes around the chords which it implies; Coltrane’s saxophone floats in as if the melody is almost too exquisite to disturb. Later, Ellington’s piano solo evokes and then dissolves its own hints of 1930s swing, and Coltrane simply teases with his own skins-of-sound approach before returning to the grace of the original tune. The track is an example of mutual respect and shared, subtle exploration.
◆ ◆
Miho Hazama, band leader
The happiest music in the world! I’ve had the privilege of conducting this “Nutcracker” suite a few times, and it always makes me wish I had annual performances to continue performing it every holiday season. With a huge admiration for Ellington and Strayhorn, who wrote specific notes for each band member, this score is phenomenally done. The performance on the record is hard-swinging, exciting and authentic, from one of the orchestra’s later golden days.
◆ ◆
Fredara Hadley, professor of ethnomusicology
“A Rhapsody of Negro Life”, from Ellington’s score for the 1935 film “Symphony in Black”, shows his deep involvement with the moods and hues of black life. In nine minutes he musically takes us from the plodding pulse of work songs to the swing of 1930s Harlem nightclubs. He combines the drama and wail in “The Saddest Tale” with the beauty and contemplation of “Hymn of Sorrow”. This music is not a treatise; it is a rhapsody in the best sense, in the sense that each musical vignette is full of heart and intimate understanding of the joys and pains of black humanity.
◆ ◆
Guillermo Klein, bandleader
I was immediately fascinated by the story of this tune – simple, yet profound and witty. The core of “Searching (Pleading for Love)” rests on the conclusion, which he sets at the very beginning of the piece, as an intro, like a narrator sharing in a prologue what it’s all about. The theme follows a standard model: three ideas and a conclusion. The bridge of the melody modulates twice, and that conclusion motif is everywhere. Right at the peak, he varies it, with a sense of begging. His use of sound and space is simply his own. Even on a trio recording like this you can definitely hear the big band in his playing.
◆ ◆
Seth Colter Walls, Times music critic
I recommend including this 1936 masterpiece in party playlists. As “Exposition Swing” kicks in — as Ellington’s locomotive writing pulls listeners on board — watch guests tip over to your speakers. Then Harry Carney opens his baritone saxophone function with a step-descending figure. When he ends the solo, the orchestra applauds him with a modernist swell constructed of sustained tones, complex and cool. After another minute of deft interplay between soloist and orchestra, Ellington’s stride piano and blues accents trigger the piece’s climax, in which collective cries of the same descending motif are heard during Carney’s opening. It is a perfect meeting place in the microcosm.
Song fragments via Spotify and YouTube.
