Moanin '(jazz standard)

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Moanin ' is a jazz track that Bobby Timmons composed in 1958; In 1959 the song was published by Estella Music Corporation and Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers on their album of the same name. In the same year Jon Hendricks wrote a text. The piece quickly became the jazz standard .

History of origin

Bobby Timmons played the first eight bars of the song with the Jazz Messengers in the breaks between pieces ; Benny Golson (then musical director of the band) asked him to also design a B part , which Timmons did. For a (then unrealized) Columbia album by Donald Byrd and Pepper Adams , John Hammond commissioned Jon Hendricks to write a text that Oliver Shearer should sing; after the piece was not realized, Hendricks took the title in August 1959 with his own group.

Features of the song

Moanin ' is a song in the song form AABA and comprises 32 bars ; the subject is in a blues scale written, "limited f to the sounds, as, b, h, c, there." The play is a call and response structure: "Four single phrases that always two chords respond (Bb and F) ( Jon Hendricks captioned them with 'Yes Lord') in the A section, “ reproduce the alternating song of preacher and congregation in a service. The plagal cadence Bb-F is also typical for the Amen in the gospel church . "The B section, on the other hand, swings " funky " , as if the community wanted to practice the ecstasy that then breaks out in the solos ."

Initial admission and early success

On October 30, 1958, Blakey recorded Moanin ' . It appeared in January 1959 on the Blue Note album Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers , which was renamed after a short time and marketed as Moanin ' after its most popular title . The song was already played in Benny Golson's arrangement by the Jazz Messengers on a European tour at the end of 1958; only a few days later, European musicians also interpreted the title. The piece became "a long-running favorite in the messengers' repertoire."

Other versions

Bob Flanigan and Art Farmer took up the title in the spring of 1959 . Quincy Jones also arranged moanin ' for his big band . Lambert, Hendricks & Ross followed in August with the first vocal version of the title. Shirley Scott , Dorothy Donegan and Johnny Dankworth recorded Moanin ' in 1960 , and the vocal group Les Double Six "with a French Vocalese version based on Quincy Jones' model." Funk-oriented pianists and guitarists such as Wes Montgomery and Ray Bryant saw Moanin' that way something like an obligatory piece that they had to have in their repertoire. "For countless epigones and amateurs, the number still means the ticket to the world of grooving soul jazz ."

Other pieces of the same name

Moanin ' (Harry White, Irving Mills) was created as early as 1931 . a. recorded by the Mills Blue Rhythm Band . In 1959 Charles Mingus also published an identical title.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sheila E. Anderson The Quotable Musician: from Bach to Tupac. Skyhorse Publishing 2003. pp. 75f.
  2. ^ Gary Carner Pepper Adams' Joy Road: An Annotated Discography Rowman & Littlefield, 2012, p. 103
  3. ↑ a b c d e f H.J. Schaal jazz standards. P. 320
  4. ^ Henry Martin, Keith Waters Essential Jazz: The First 100 Years Cengage Learning 2009, p. 174
  5. ↑ Later recordings of the band from Scheveningen , Zurich and Paris appeared , which contain Moanin ' as well as jam sessions by Timmons and Golson with European musicians like Roger Guérin and Pierre Michelot . Also in December 1958, Michel Hausser and Bobby Jaspar recorded the piece in their own version. See Tom Lord : The Jazz Discography (online, October 3, 2013)