Honeysuckle Rose
Honeysuckle Rose is a composition by Fats Waller with a text by Andy Razaf from 1928. Due to the harmony scheme, this song became the basis for further pieces of modern jazz (so-called bebop head ).
Origin and characteristics of the piece
Honeysuckle Rose is an early swing number with 32 bars in the song form AABA. The melody formation prefers a half-note swing in the A section; the piece is in a major tonality. It was originally intended to be played at a moderate pace. The writing team wrote the song for the Harlem show Load of Coal , which was performed at Connie's Inn nightclub . The piece was created within a short time. Razaf first wrote the text and passed it on to Waller on the phone, who then wrote the melody during the same phone call.
It is a cheeky and frivolous cabaret song about a love that is sweeter than any honey flower (honeysuckles are honeysuckles in English ), but which is full of ambiguities (e.g. "Don't buy sugar, you just have to touch my cup") ).
Impact history
Just a few days after the first performance, Honeysuckle Rose was introduced by Mildred Bailey on the radio on Paul Whiteman's Old Gold Show , performing it at a faster pace. In 1930 McKinney's Cotton Pickers and in 1931 Frankie Trumbauer and his orchestra recorded the song; however, their records did not become hits. Only a recording by the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra in 1933 reached number 18 on the charts. Further recordings confirmed the hit potential of the song:
- Red Norvo and His Orchestra (1935, with Mildred Bailey as singer, # 9)
- Fats Waller (1935, # 17)
- The Dorsey Brothers Orchestra (1935, with vocalists Don Mattison, Skeets Herfurt and Roc Hillman, # 17)
- A-side of an RCA Victor "All Star Group" single (Title A Jam Session At Victor ); with Bunny Berigan , Tommy Dorsey , Fats Waller, Dick McDonough and George Wettling (1937, # 4)
In 1943, Honeysuckle Rose was also starred in the film Thousands Cheer .
The ambiguity of the lyrics was "repeatedly translated into popular comedy - often as a parodic love duet " by entertainers . So have Louis Jordan , Louis Armstrong , Slim Gaillard , Joe Carroll , but also even played Fats Waller with the wit of the song. On the other hand, Ella Fitzgerald " tended to distract from the frivolity of the text with brisk scats ."
The piece became one of the most played jam sessions of the swing era . Benny Carter presented an arrangement for four saxophones in 1937, and Coleman Hawkins was also involved in the recording and recorded the piece over and over again. He also formed the basis for important compositions of bebop , such as Marmaduke or Scrapple from the Apple by Charlie Parker . The title was also played in modern jazz by pianists such as Bud Powell , Thelonious Monk , Oscar Peterson , Abdullah Ibrahim and Uri Caine . Furthermore, Ray Brown and Joe Pass to name. John Carter's Clarinet Summit recorded a special version in the Public Theater in New York in 1981.
literature
- Carlo Bohländer , Karl Heinz Holler, Christian Pfarr: Reclam's Jazz Guide . 4th, revised and supplemented edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-15-010355-X .
- Hans-Jürgen Schaal (Ed.): Jazz standards. The encyclopedia. 3rd, revised edition. Bärenreiter, Kassel u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1414-3 .
Web links
- Reception and musical analysis of the song at JazzStandards.com