That Jazz - Monkey Max Music and File Download

102
Part II: Jazz Greats and Great Jazz: An Evolutionary Riff
Figure 6-1:
Duke
Ellington is
one of the
most
influential
jazz
musicians in
history.
©William P. Gottlieb, www.jazzphotos.com
Like other inventors of sophisticated big band music, Ellington had formal
training. He moved to New York in 1922 and two years later took over Elmer
Snowden’s band, a six-piece unit, which was typical of the time. Inspired by
James P. Johnson’s classically influenced ragtime compositions, Ellington
began to write music of his own.
By 1926, Ellington’s group had grown to 12 pieces, but the stiff music couldn’t
compare with Louis Armstrong’s or Jelly Roll Morton’s (see Chapter 5 for more
about them). Trumpeter Bubber Miley pushed Ellington toward a looser, swinging
sound, and by the late 1920s, Ellington’s arrangements featured swelling
horns by soloists Miley, alto saxman Johnny Hodges, clarinetist Barney Bigard,
and trombonist Tricky Sam Nanton.
Ellington created waves of tension by setting sections against each other,
then making them “play nice” together. Blaring trumpets cut across silky
smooth saxes; melodies batted back and forth; tempos changed for dramatic
emphasis and the music swung with syncopated rhythms. Ellington sometimes
composed at a piano with his band around him, and he wrote their
improvised melodies into his scores.