and Ellington Sounds
hroughout fifty years of leading the most distinguished ensemble in or out of jazz, Ellington continually contrasts the funky and the high falutin'. "Creole Love Call," Ellington's seminal wordless vocal composition, opens with angelic reed waftings underneath a nearly classical-sounding chorus from contralto Kay Davis, which is not only high-toned in both the proper and slang senses of the term but positively ethereal; without missing a beat, Ellington immediately sets this off with the funkiest, bluesiest growling you could possible imagine by trumpeter Ray Nance.
As this indicates, Ellington thought largely in terms of orchestral color, an idea partly related to his talents as a painter
(as a teenager, he turned down an art scholarship to concentrate on music). Like other arrangers, Ellington was infinitely versed
with the techniques being developed both with and around him in the
1920s for bringing a jazz feeling to Tin Pan Alley songs and
making jazz compositons playable for the popular dance orchestra. But with Ellington, such considerations as choruses and tempos
took a backseat to his masterful mood paintings. He went along with the soon-cemented breakdown of brass, reeds (replacing the
strings of classical and earlier pop music orchestras) and rhythm section, but for Ellington this was only a starting point and
hardly the final destination.
In collaboration with his players, Ellington worked out a series of solo voices that arose out of the orchestra and functioned like regular characters on a situation comedy. He conceived his music specifically for the musicians that were to play it, and the players, in turn, created their individual voices through a combination of self-exploration and an understanding of the ways Ellington found for them to play. In the '20s, when Ellington's first notable orchestra was referred to as "The Jungle Band" for the variety of so-called primitive sounds it emitted, Ellington offset the straight, and right-on-the-money tone of trumpeter Arthur Whetsol with the raspy growls of section-mate Bubber Miley and then his successor, Cootie Williams, who rasps eloquently on "Drop Me Off In Harlem" and "Caravan."
Meanwhile, lead alto saxophonist Otto Hardwick, heard fluttering gracefully at the end of his co-composition "Sophisticated Lady," played his lines very precisely and evenly in contrast to the searingly sentimental sound of blues and ballad genius Johnny Hodges, who, as on "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," created juicy, rich tones fairly dripping with vibrato and sexual innuendo, which in turn rubbed off on Hodges's tenor sax counterpart, Ben Webster.
The trombone section of the '30s included the cool-as-a-cucumber exotica specialist Juan Tizol (best known for his extended solo on his own "Caravan") who stood in direct opposition to the anguished rippings and tearings of Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton, with Lawrence Brown (who croons so convincingly on the opening of "Sophisticated Lady"), a master technician who could go in either direction, mediating between the two. Even Ellington's vocalists, largely dismissed by many critics as mere commercial concessions, fit into this pattern, from the dicty glidings of Kay Davis (on "Creole Love Call") and Herb Jeffries to the gutteral glottal glee of super-surrealist Al Hibbler (on "Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me" and "Don't Get Around Much Anymore").
The sections and solo spots also made room for the expressive New Orleans born-and-styled clarinetist Barney Bigard, on the beautiful bridge to "Sophisticated Lady," and his smoother, Benny Goodman-influenced replacement, Jimmy Hamilton.
Occasional interludes, usually angular and always warm and personal, from "the piano player" - Ellington referred to himself -
gave the band one of it's most unique voices.
Ellington was forever playing these and many more sounds against each other, and not exclusively in terms of contrast (such as the sparring session between trumpeter Cootie Williams and dancing baritone saxman Harry Carney in "Drop Me Off In Harlem"). More often, Ellington was interested in complimentary blends of tastes and textures, as in the way the muted trumpet, trombone and clarinet blend together into a tone that sounds at once like all of them and none of them in the ground-breaking opening chorus of "Mood Indigo." Furthermore, Ellington applied the same endless ingenuity to the sections, three brassmen muted very specifically, a combination of xylophone and vibraphone, four reeds playing with one trumpeter, any sort of combination that might work. In assembling these textures, even before he reached considerations of melody, Ellington more resembled a painter and crafter of three dimensional jigsaw puzzles than he did a conventional dance band arranger.