Black and Tan Fantasy

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Black and Tan Fantasy is a jazz - composition of Duke Ellington and Bubber Miley from the year 1927th

background

On April 7, 1927, the Duke Ellington Orchestra first played the piece that brought the band's first fame more than any other. It reached # 5 on the Billboard Top 30 in May 1928 . “It was repeatedly singled out by music critics and intellectuals of the time as an example of what jazz can be. For many it was proof that jazz was an art, ”notes Ellington's biographer James L. Collier. Hans Ruland considers “ Mood Indigo ” and “ Creole Rhapsody ” to be Ellington's most important early composition.

The piece begins with a simple, yet touching theme in a B flat minor blues scheme , presumably worked out by Bubber Miley. According to Collier, it is a variation on the New Orleans funeral marches or placements that Miley may have known from Sidney Bechet , King Oliver, or others. According to Roger Pryor Dodge, Miley has his main subject on a gospel song by Stephen Adams that he heard his sister sing. On the 1927 recording, Miley and Tricky Sam Nanton played it stuffed, accompanied by tuba, banjo and sustained clarinet notes. This twelve-measure theme is followed by a more complex one, played by alto saxophonist Otto Hardwick . The classical recordings are followed by three choruses with solos by Miley (2 ×) and Nanton, then an arranged ensemble passage and a twelve-bar solo by Ellington on the piano, before the theme with allusions to Chopin's "Funeral March" (from his second piano sonata ) is recapitulated. There are no drums and the rhythm section holds back as much as possible. For Ellington, the involvement of Arthur Whetsol in the recapitulation of the topic was particularly important, as he could at this point produce "big, thick tears" in the audience.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Black and Tan was a name for nightclubs and pubs with musical or other entertainment programs in the USA, primarily for blacks, but which were also frequented by (affluent) white audiences, which was by no means common at the time. An example was the Exclusive Club in Harlem, where Ellington made his New York debut.

For Maximilian Hendler , the composition takes up the African Craze , "an uncritical transfiguration of the conditions in Africa before the invasion of the whites." "The growl effects of the wind instruments achieved by mutes and other tricks of sound manipulation create the acoustic backdrop of the strange and uncanny" which was supported by the dance performances. For Hendler, this piece is a musical “ingratiation to the obsessions of white society that are seldom found so blatantly in the jazz milieu. Ellington and his musicians may have helped each other financially over difficult years - the haut goût is still penetrating. "

effect

The band played the piece two more times in 1927 - for the Victor record label on October 26th and for Columbia on November 3rd. It became one of the band's most popular numbers in their immediately following Cotton Club era. Irving Mills even reports that he hired Ellington for the Cotton Club after hearing him play the piece.

The composition eventually also became the basis for a short film (19 minutes), which was produced in 1929 under the title Black and Tan Fantasy by the director Dudley Murphy and its melodramatic framework mainly Duke Ellington and his orchestra as well as the atmosphere of the Cotton Club and his Should put dancers in scene. It premiered on December 8, 1929. In the film, the Duke Ellington Orchestra (with Arthur Whetsol , Barney Bigard , Wellman Braud , Tricky Sam Nanton, but without Bubber Miley) plays the titles Black and Tan Fantasy , Black Beauty , The Duke Steps Out and Cotton Club Stomp . In the film, the colored (but rather fair-skinned) actress Fredi Washington plays the lead role of a dancer who appears out of love for Ellington despite heart disease and collapses on stage - the last thing she hears is the Black and Tan Fantasy , played by Duke Ellington and the trumpeter Arthur Whetsol, who are also accompanied by a gospel choir (Hall Johnson Choir).

Further recordings of the compositions by the Ellington Orchestra were made in 1932 and especially in 1938, where the piece was recorded in a greatly expanded arrangement as The New Black and Tan Fantasy (for Brunswick). Ellington played the composition repeatedly in his concerts, including in 1943 at the Carnegie Hall Concert and in 1956 at the Newport Jazz Festival ( Ellington at Newport ). Jimmy Lunceford interpreted the piece with his orchestra; Thelonious Monk recorded it in a trio in 1955.

Secondary literature

  • James Lincoln Collier : Duke Ellington. Genius of jazz . Revised edition. Ullstein, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-548-35839-X ( Ullstein 35839).
  • Bernd Hoffmann : And the duke cried. Afro-American music in film. On the work of the director Dudley Murphy from 1929. In: jazzforschung / jazz research 39 (2007), pp. 119–152.
  • Günter H. Lenz: The cultural dynamics of Afro-American music. Duke Ellington's concept of culture and its meaning in African American literature and criticism. In: Wolfram Knauer (Ed.): Duke Ellington and the consequences. Wolke-Verlag, Hofheim 2000, pp. 157–205
  • Hans Ruland : Duke Ellington. His life, his music, his records . Oreos, Gauting-Buchendorf 1983, ISBN 3-923657-03-X ( Collection Jazz 2).
  • Gunther Schuller: Early Jazz. Its Roots and Musical Development. New York, etc .: Oxford University Press 1986; ISBN 0-19-504043-0

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to Ellington, he wrote the piece in the taxi on the way through Central Park in New York to the recording studio. Collier takes a critical look at the importance of Ellington as the “composer” of many of the works he and his orchestra played and comes to the conclusion (like Gunther Schuller before ) that “Black and Tan Fantasy” as well as the “ East St. Louis Toodle ”, which was created almost simultaneously -Oo “is primarily based on Bubber Miley's musical ideas; see. Collier, p. 436. He writes that of all the early songs on which Ellington's fame as a songwriter was based - and his ASCAP royalties as well - only the title " Solitude " was his work.
  2. ↑ See Gerhard Klußmeier : Jazz in the Charts. Another view on jazz history. Liner notes (7/100) and accompanying book for the 100 CD edition. Membrane International GmbH. ISBN 978-3-86735-062-4
  3. ↑ Collier, p. 168 f.
  4. ↑ cf. Ruland, p. 66
  5. ↑ quoted in Schuller Early Jazz , p. 330
  6. ↑ Schuller, p. 330
  7. ↑ Collins, p. 170. In his further analysis, however, Collier thinks that the Chopin resemblance is rather coincidental and that the Ellington musicians did not know Chopin's funeral march; the influence is due more to King Oliver's version of "Dead Man Blues" by Jelly Roll Morton . Morton eventually accused Ellington of stealing it from him and threatened to sue. They remained enemies until Morton's death in 1941.
  8. ↑ Ellington: When he (Arthur Whetsol was meant) played the funeral music in Black and Tan Fantasy, I used to see great big ole tears running down people's faces , zit. n. N. Shapiro / N. Hentoff (Ed.) Hear me talkin to ya , Penguin 1955, p. 235
  9. ↑ James Lincoln Collier Jazz- the American theme song , Oxford University Press 1993, pp. 15-16
  10. ^ A b Maximilian Hendler: Cubana Be Cubana Bop. Jazz and Latin American Music Graz 2005. p. 108
  11. ↑ Victor recording of Black and Tan Fantasy (archived)
  12. ↑ Shapiro / Hentoff, Hear me talkin to ya , Penguin, 1955, p. 230
  13. ↑ On February 13, 2001, the film Black and Tan Fantasy was re-released on the label "Kino International" in the DVD collection The Best of Jazz and Blues (Hollywood Rhythm Volume 1) .
  14. ↑ Kiel Contributions for Film Music Research, Vol. 4 (2010), pp. 52-79

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