Live: February 2023

 

Thursday 16 February 19:30 (GMT)

Jungle Nights in Harlem The Midnight Follies Orchestra 

The Red Lion, Leytonstone E11 3AA

The Midnite Follies Orchestra was originally formed in 1978 by Keith Nichols and Alan Cohen to perform, in an authentic manner, the repertoire of the great bands of the 1920s and 1930s. Inevitably there was a great deal of Duke Ellington in the band book and the orchestra is unrivalled on this side of the Atlantic in the re-creation of the great Ellington masterpieces of the period. 

The late Adelaide Hall ( of Creole Love Call fame ) in 1987 said that to work with the Midnite Follies was like being back with the Ellington Orchestra. 

The Midnite Follies also include in their repertoire Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Fletcher Henderson, Luis Russell and many more of the period.

As so much of this music only exists on recordings, the aim of Alan and Keith was twofold. First to take down the music from the records; no easy task bearing in mind the recording quality of the times and second to find to find musicians of a suitable calibre who are able to play the music from the written note and also play the solos with the correct feeling. 

The all-star line-up of the original Midnite Follies did this beautifully and following the death of Keith Nichols in 2020, the youngest member in the band in the 1980s , Alistair Allan, has reformed the band with Alan Cohens support employing musicians of a world class standard who are all dedicated specialists in the early vintage big band sound.

This is the best chance we have ever had to hear the music of Ellington et al played live.

Tickets available here.

Sunday 19 February 15:00 (EST)

The Ellington Effect Workshop No. 24: The Tattooed Bride (Part Two) David Berger

Details here.

From Such Sweet Thunder website Tattooed Bride Part One...

About the workshops

The Ellington Effect workshops take place once a month, and David picks a different Ellington composition to analyze for each one.  In about two hours, he talks through the piece note by note, line by line, analyzing the piece at both macro and micro levels.

 

David Berger has studied the music of Duke Ellington for over 50 years, and has transcribed over 500 Ellington and Strayhorn arrangements and compositions. Because of this, he is able to make connections to Ellington's other pieces, talk about trends and eras in Ellington's writing, and discuss the influences of changing personnel on the music over time.

 

At the end of each workshop, David answers questions for a half hour or so.  These are always lively and fascinating, as workshop attendees tend to include some highly knowledgable Ellingtonians as well as plenty of intelligent musicians who ask insightful questions.

About The Tattooed Bride (Part One)

Following the premiere of Black, Brown, And Beige at Carnegie Hall January 23, 1943, The Ellington band began yearly performances there with Ellington (sometimes with the help of Strayhorn) composing a new extended work to be premiered. 1948’s composition was The Tattooed Bride, which stayed in the band’s book for six years. 

 

Following the excellent 6-movement Liberian Suite, Ellington shifted gears and combined a 3-part form into a single-movement continuous, integrated tone poem, which presented him with the difficult task of changing tempi without seeming contrived and pretentious. 

 

Paul Whiteman had been exploring symphonic jazz for twenty-five years, most notably with Rhapsody In Blue in 1924, but his emphasis was on “symphonic”—he infused jazz elements into a more European concept. Ellington sought to expand the language of jazz, taking the music out of the dancehall and into the concert hall while not forsaking the dance impulse, swing and blues. 

 

Undaunted by the critical resistance to Black, Brown, And Beige, he would compose at least one tone poem or multi-movement opus every year for the rest of his life. The band continued to play dances, but concerts and night club appearances would gradually make up the bulk of his schedule and provide opportunity to perform his more than thirty extended works.

 

As with Black, Brown, And Beige, he would sometimes perform only sections of these longer works. However, there is little documentation of such treatment of The Tattooed Bride. So much of the power of the piece comes from the motivic development and long build up. 

 

Written in the fall of 1948 as three separate charts connected by segues: Kitchen Stove, Omaha (named for the Nebraska city, where the band was on November 11-12), and Aberdeen (where the band was performing October 8-9). Undoubtedly, Kitchen Stove was composed earlier that week with the intro to Kitchen Stove added after the completion of the rest of the piece. 

 

All three charts share the two central motifs: “W” and “Hey! Ba Ba Re Bop.” Rather than unrelated charts being combined, it’s clear that Ellington’s intention was always to develop Kitchen Stove into a longer work, or at least upon nearing the writing of the end of Kitchen Stove, he realized that there was so much more to say. 

 

An obvious titular reference to Smetana’s comic opera, The Bartered Bride, Ellington tells the story of the wedding night where the groom undresses his bride and is shocked to find numerous “W” tattoos on her derriere. In 1948 tattoos were uncommon outside of on sailors, so it turns out that unknown to the groom, our bride has been around. Though he is shocked at first, he comes to appreciate the chaos and excitement she brings to his life. 

 

During this period in the late 1940’s, bebop was gaining in recognition and popularity. Ellington never became a convert, but he did absorb some of the rhythmic, melodic, harmonic language first integrating it in shorter pieces like Y’Oughta, How You Sound, and Boogie Bop Blues as well as in his longer works like Liberian Suite and The Tattooed Bride. 

 

Like other outside influences, although he greatly admired bebop (He once told his nephew, Michael James, “The bop was a bitch”), Ellington never became a convert but merely added what was useful to him into his already rich palette. 

 

Personnel:

 

Due to the difficulty in performance of The Tattooed Bride, it wasn’t recorded until two years later on December 18-19, 1950 in NYC, by which time Columbia was issuing LPs that could handle the extended length. It was packaged in the Masterpieces by Ellington recording, which included three lengthy Strayhorn arrangements of Ellington standards (Mood Indigo, Sophisticated Lady and Solitude). The album did not sell well, perhaps not enough people owned turntables that could play 33-1/3 rpm discs. Nevertheless, producer George Avakian made Columbia so much money overseeing their popular music division, that they gave him free reign to produce jazz records, which he continued to do throughout the 1950s.  

 

Reeds: Johnny Hodges, Russell Procope, Jimmy Hamilton, Paul Gonsalves, Harry Carney

Trumpets: Cat Anderson, Andy “Fats” Ford, Shorty Baker, Nelson “Cadillac” Williams, Ray Nance

Trombones: Lawrence Brown, Tyree Glenn, Quentin “Butter” Jackson

Piano: Duke Ellington

Bass: Wendell Marshall

Drums: Sonny Greer

 

Five trumpets are listed in the discography, but only four are playing on Tattooed Bride, Anderson, Baker, and two of the others.

 

Form:

Intro: 13 bars—Slow, symphonic—Eb major

Kitchen Stove—Eb major

           Piano melody: 8+8+4—aa+diatonic tag

           Chorus #1: 8+8+8+6—aaba (V/V, bII7…truncated last a, b uses diatonic progression)

           Interlude: Hey! Ba Ba Re Bop: 8+6 (retrograde and diatonic progressions)

           Chorus #2: 10+8+6+10—aaaa (some harmonic augmentation)

           Diatonic Tag: 8

           Transition/Modulation to Bb minor: 8 (F pedal) and faster tempo

           Charge! Pyramid: 8 (F pedal)