Caravan's history and Mingus settling a score while recording a cover with Ellington

Caravan remains one of the defining jazz standards and has a remarkable history

First recorded in 1936 and becoming one of the best-known songs by Duke Ellington’s band, it originated with the trombonist Juan Tizol.

Among his contributions to the band was a role copying parts from scores, as well as composing.

Tizol often played a valve trombone and, as a Puerto Rican, brought some of that Latin American influence which can be heard in 20th Century jazz.

Mercer Ellington said the melody to ‘Caravan’ was suggested to Tizol through a technique called “inverting” that re-interpreted scores by reading the sheet music upside-down.

It remains one of the most-covered songs in history with over 500 versions published.

My favourite is possibly one of the most controversial.

  

The bassist Charles Mingus was also a member of the Ellington band and unleashed a version of the song during the fiery recordings for the “Money Jungle” album.

Mingus plays a rhythm part high up the neck that seems to force Ellington into the position of playing the melody in lower octaves.

It’s wild how the conventions of the standard ‘Caravan’ are thrown by Mingus taking the lead.

When I first heard it my mind was blown.

Then recently I read Mingus’ autobiography and gained a new appreciation for his bold playing.

It turns out that Mingus left Ellington’s band after Tizol lunged at him with a knife for the bassist’s playing of ‘Caravan’:

“…this is the band you don’t quit, but this time you’re asked to leave because of an incident with a trombone player and arranger named Juan Tizol. Tizol wants you to play a solo he’s written where bowing is required. You raise the solo an octave, where the bass isn’t too muddy. He doesn’t like that and he comes to the room under the stage where you’re practising at intermission and comments that you’re like the rest of the n****** in the band, you can’t read. You ask Juan how he’s different from the other n****** and he states that one of the ways he’s different is that HE IS WHITE. So you run his ass upstairs. You leave the rehearsal room, proceed toward the stage with your bass and take your place and at the moment Duke Ellington brings down the baton for ‘A-Train’ and the curtain of the Apollo Theatre goes up, a yelling, whooping Tizol rushes out and lunges at you with a bolo knife.”

The following passage where Mingus describes how Ellington asks for his resignation has been seen as documenting his considerable charm.

 

Top 10: Money Jungle

Recently I was tagged on Facebook for one of those things where you post favourite albums

This album brings together a couple of my favourite jazz musicians and captures in their music a fierce inter-generational argument.

Let me set the scene by explaining a bit about the personalities involved.

In 1917 when 'Duke' Ellington was eighteen, he'd wanted to become a painter.

In the decades that followed, Ellington remained a painter although it was in the guise of a prolific jazz composer.

In my mind he is one of the greatest musicians of the 20th Century.

In conducting his orchestra Ellington arranged music as though it were colour on a canvas, with deft movements of his hand (the piano his brush) he would sketch outlines for sonic landscapes and illustrate a path for the other musicians.

Yet Ellington should not be viewed as a maestro in the mould of European composers like Mozart; the Duke's talent was to recognise and arrange melodies that were created through the improvisation of his band.

I’s a model that performers like James Brown and Frank Zappa later used to great effect too, and probably akin to managing racehorses in pairing personalities for performance.

It was with wily leadership skills that Ellington stamped his ideas onto his musicians and, while he developed their talents, this leadership is his claim to authorship of so many jazz standards.

Money Jungle captures a lot of this stamping and more.

Ellington was 63 and, like Hollywood actors who’d fallen out of favour with movie studios or audiences, he was in the wilderness between bookings.

It would be a few years before he was celebrated again near the end of his life and there’s a painful story in Zappa’s book that Ellington would be reduced to visiting his manager and begging for money to survive.

For this album Ellington was paired with a couple of jazz giants from the next generation, 40-year old bassist Charles Mingus and 38-year old drummer Max Roach.

Mingus was so forceful that, despite being a bassist, he became a bandleader.

He had a reputation for being hot-headed and there are accounts from his students of leaving lessons with bruises from being punched.

There are also various stories as to why the recording sessions that became Money Jungle ended abruptly.

It was unusual for Ellington to record a piano-based album and it was Mingus who was signed to the record label, so the power dynamic was clearly tilted against the elder maestro.

And I’m amused to read just now that:

“according to Roach, he and Mingus were given "a lead sheet that just gave the basic melody and harmony", plus a visual image described by the pianist: one example was, "crawling around on the streets are serpents who have their heads up; these are agents and people who have exploited artists. Play that along with the music".”

I’d guess it’s the kind of approach that mightn’t have amused Mingus.

The album contains versions of a couple of Ellington standards.

‘Caravan’ was written by Ellington’s longtime band member Juan Tizol, who Mingus reportedly had fought with during his brief stint in the Duke’s band.



There are some wild versions of ‘Caravan’ that have been recorded since and it’s usually a song performed with a jazz orchestra but on Money Jungle you can hear Mingus playing a number of parts and making his mark with his remarkable bass playing.

Money Jungle isn’t the greatest album but it’s one that provides insights into how turbulent music can be when you mix strong personalities and musicians with different styles.

Finger snapping with Duke Ellington

Mood Indigo

'Mood Indigo' is my second favourite Duke Ellington track (after 'Blue Pepper'), so I hope it features prominently in Michel Gondry's new film -- which looks fantastic (in all senses of the term).

Here's my favourite version of the tune, featuring Ellington with Charles Mingus and Max Roach, from the album "Money Jungle":

March into the archives : Duke Ellington

The following summary of Duke Ellington's career was published in BMA Magazine on 17 February 2000, ahead of Wynton Marsalis leading the Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra in a performance of Ellington's songs.

In 1917 when 'Duke' Ellington was eighteen, he'd wanted to become a painter. In the decades that followed, Ellington remained a painter although it was in the guise of a jazz composer.

In conducting his orchestra Ellington arranged music as though it were colour on a canvas, with deft movements of his hand (the piano his brush) he would sketch sonic landscapes and illustrate a path for the other musicians.

Yet Ellington should not be viewed as a maestro in the mold of European composers like Mozart; the Duke's talent was to recognise and arrange melodies that were created through the improvisation of his band. Most Ellington pieces were collective arrangements and as much the music of each individual member but Duke headed the collective.

It was through a dynamic willpower that Ellington stamped his ideas onto his musicians and, while he developed their talents, this leadership is his claim to authorship.

Duke Ellington has earned his stature in the history of jazz for many reasons and it has been claimed that he founded a number of innovations. These included the tune 'Caravan' written by his Puerto Rican-born trombonist Juan Tizol in 1937, which paved the sub-genre of latin jazz; and, perhaps more importantly, the history of jazz bass stretches through Ellington's work form the first recording with an amplified bass, 'Hot and bothered' in 1928, through to the influential playing of Jimmy Blanton in the 1940s, who helped make the instrument what it is today.

Above all, Ellington's career had longevity. From his start with a five-piece combo, who (according to popular myth) were so poor they had to split a hotdog between them to keep from starving, the Duke headed the most significant big band in an era when big bands were like pop groups are today.

His final landmark was the '70th birthday concert' which was chosen in 1969 as 'Jazz record of the year' all over the world. On 25 May 1974 Ellington died of pneumonia in a New York hospital, only a few weeks after musicians including Leonard Bernstein and Miles Davis had paid homage to him on his 75th birthday.

The importance of his music cannot be overstated.

Metropolis

A free screening of the film Metropolis will be held in Chelmsford Place on Saturday 2 April as part of the Leeton Art Deco Festival. "If you haven't seen this classic, then this is a great opportunity to see a film that is the 1920s equivalent of Avatar," said organiser Jason Richardson.

Released in 1927, Metropolis has had an influence on science fiction films like Star Wars and Bladerunner. In 2001 the film was included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register and in 2010 Empire Magazine ranked it at number 12 in a list of The 100 Best Films of World Cinema.

The film bankrupted the UFA studio with a budget of over five million Reichsmark, estimated to be worth over $200,000,000 today. "Metropolis was possibly the first cult film," explains Mr Richardson, "as it had an underwhelming response at the box office on its release and took many years to find an audience but is now screened widely

"Metropolis and Avatar share in common is their criticism of contemporary politics. Where Avatar can be viewed as a comment on the US-led invasion of Iraq, Metropolis can be seen as criticising on the rise of the Nazi party in Weimar Germany, as well as promoting unionism and the achievements in establishing modern working conditions.

"It's a Romeo and Juliet-type story that's complicated when the Juliet-character, a community leader, is replaced with a robot manipulated by the Romeo-character's capitalist father," said Mr Richardson.

The silent movies were never silent, cinemas of the 1920s and '30s would have an organist or maybe even a full orchestra to accompany screenings. For the Leeton Art Deco Festival screening, Metropolis will feature a soundtrack drawing on the work of Duke Ellington.

Duke Ellington is one of the foremost figures in American jazz music, with a career that began in 1923 and ended with his death in 1974. "He is arguably the greatest composer of the twentieth century and the Art Deco period was known for big bands, like the orchestra Ellington led," said Mr Richardson.

It's sure to be a great night. "Bring chairs or a blanket to sit on, pack a meal or fill your Thermos and see a film that continues to resonate with audiences nearly 75 years after its release."

Metropolis is rated PG and will start around 7.30pm on Saturday 2 April, projected onto the main water tower in Chelmsford Place as part of the Leeton Art Deco Festival.