East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)
East of the Sun (and West of the Moon) is a 1934 Brooks Bowman song that has become the jazz standard .
History of origin
Bowman wrote this pop song while at Princeton University studied, where he attended the production of the play Stags at Bay participated, in 1934 by the vocal ensemble Princeton Triangle Club at the student stage the University of Princeton (New Jersey) was premiered. In addition to this song, the play, which was also played twice in New York City to a sold-out hall, contained other Bowman songs such as Will Love Find a Way? and Love and a Dime.
Special features of the song
According to Dietrich Schulz-Köhn, the text of East of the Sun can be seen as an “expression of romantic escapism ”: The couple in love build a dream house of love that is close to the sun of day and the moon of night. The dream of this escape from reality seals the confession of a love that will not die, but is maintained by the partners.
The slow-tempo song is in G major and the ABAC song form ; each stanza consists of 36 bars . In bars 7 and 8 the melody “enticing-tenderly” Alec Wilder falls from C to Eb . East of the Sun is considered "one of the most beautiful ballads of recent times."
reception
The first record is said to have been made by Hal Kemp and his orchestra, which East of the Sun is said to have recorded for Brunswick Records on December 1, 1934 ; however, the publication is not verifiable. In 1935/36 he was covered by the Casa Loma Orchestra , Bob Crosby , Chick Bullock , Benny Goodman , Jimmy Dorsey and Adelaide Hall ; The song was also recorded by Larry Clinton , Jack Teagarden , Tex Beneke , Tommy Dorsey (1940 with Frank Sinatra , Hank D'Amico and the Sentimentalists ), Sarah Vaughan , Joe Marsala and Woody Herman in the following years . Although there were later recordings by large formations, such as in 1961 by Francy Boland ; What is noticeable, however, is the tendency to set East of the Sun “to a certain extent the standard for combos:” Sarah Vaughan interpreted the song as early as 1944 with her all-stars, which included Dizzy Gillespie , Georgie Auld and Chuck Wayne . In 1947 Lester Young played the piece at one of his Aladdin sessions ; George Shearing followed in 1949 . In the 1950s, the song finally became a popular jazz standard ; Sarah Vaughan recorded it again on May 19, 1950, this time for Columbia Records (album Sarah Vaughan in Hi-Fi ), accompanied by George Threadwell and his All-Stars, including Miles Davis , Benny Green , Budd Johnson and Tony Scott belonged. For her album Solitude , released on Clef Records , Billie Holiday also recorded the song in April 1952. Singers like Carmen McRae (several times), Ella Fitzgerald , Dinah Shore or Margaret Whiting followed.
Charlie Parker recorded the piece several times, for example in 1949 at the Royal Roast, 1950 with Strings and on September 26, 1952 at his appearance at the legendary Rockland Palace Concert in 1952 for the benefit of the Communist Party of the USA . Other versions are by Stan Getz on his West Coast Jazz album (1955) and by Louis Armstrong , who played it on his 1957 album I've Got the World on a String , as well as by Lee Wiley (1958) and Frank Sinatra (1961) . Also worth mentioning are recordings by Dennis Budimir , Charles Lloyd , Red Norvo , Cal Tjader , Oscar Peterson , Jimmy Smith and Buddy Tate . The composer Henry Mancini took over the first eight bars of the harmonic sequence of the piece for his song Days of Wine and Roses in 1962 . Inge Klaus also wrote a German version of the song under the title “Say good night”.
In 1980 a version of the trio by Jan Garbarek with John Abercrombie and Naná Vasconcelos (Eventyr) was created; in the 1990s the track was recorded by Tony Bennett , Betty Carter (1996) and Diana Krall (1998, for their album When I Look in Your Eyes ). In 2007 Joshua Redman also interpreted the song.
literature
- Bielefeld catalog 1985, 1988, 2001
- Ken Bloom: The American Songbook - The Singers, the Songwriters, and the Songs - 100 Years of American Popular Music - The Stories of the Creators and Performers . Black Dog & Leventhal, New York City 2005, ISBN 1-57912-448-8
- Dietrich Schulz-Köhn: The evergreen story: 40 × jazz . Quadriga, Weinheim, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-88679-188-2
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ History of the Princeton Triangle Club . ( Memento of May 28, 2010 on the Internet Archive ) Princeton University .
- ↑ D. Schulz-Köhn: The Evergreen Story. P. 138.
- ↑ a b D. Schulz-Köhn: The Evergreen Story. P. 137.
- ↑ Song portrait
- ↑ D. Schulz-Köhn: The Evergreen Story , p. 139 ff.