Sophisticated lady

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Sophisticated Lady is a jazz standard created in 1932 by Duke Ellington (melody) and its publishers Irving Mills and Mitchell Parish (text).

Structure of the song and content

The piece was composed as an instrumental title in 1932. Duke Ellington has been the author of the melody since the song was published, while according to the Ellington biographer Stuart Nicholson, the original author was named Ellington, Otto Hardwick , Lawrence Brown and Mills. According to Lawrence Brown, the first bars are from him and the middle section from Hardwick. The piece, which is kept in a major tonality throughout, is in the classic song form AABA. In the A section there is first an upward arpeggiation and then a downward chromatic movement, while the melody in the B section jumps from the third to the seventh in both directions. The composition already contains some harmony turns that deviate from the conventional scheme and in this respect anticipate aspects of modern jazz ; Alec Wilder still appeared as "witchcraft"

Only then was a text added by Mitchell Parish. There the sad story of a wealthy, smoking, drinking and not thinking of tomorrow woman is told, who after many years still mourns her love and cries when no one is around. In Ellington's opinion, the text was wonderful, even if it did not match his original idea, as the composition reminded him more of the sophistication of his school teachers. But the text also corresponded to the melody in detail: If smoking, drinking and dancing are mentioned in the text, an apparent waltz can be heard in the melody, for example.

Impact history

The piece was first known in the first version recorded by the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1933: Lawrence Brown (trombone) introduced the melody in the two A sections. Otto Hardwick (alto saxophone) plays the A part again at the end of the song. In this purely instrumental recording, the piece contained solos by Hardwick, Barney Bigard (clarinet), Brown and the bandleader Ellington on piano, who “amazed” with “a new tone introduction” and a “virtuoso variation” of the B section. Ellington's recording hit the charts on May 27, 1933 and stayed there for sixteen weeks (it reached number three on the charts).

Other recordings that made it to the charts were:

Other orchestral versions are by Jimmie Lunceford , Glenn Miller , Boyd Raeburn and Stan Kenton . The piece, which later remained in the repertoire of the Ellington Band (also recorded by him several times, around 1940 in a duo with Jimmy Blanton and in 1956 when his orchestra performed at the Newport Jazz Festival ( Ellington at Newport )). It was used, partly in versions with Ellington, in the following films:

The piece was also used in the following Broadway productions:

In the 1950s, the piece was popularly used "for the modern Schmacht ballad par excellence" and also on the sessions of the Jazz at the Philharmonic tours.

Cover versions

In addition to the orchestral versions already mentioned, the interpretations by Earl Hines (1932), Thelonious Monk , Dexter Gordon , Billie Holiday , Sarah Vaughan and James Carter deserve special mention according to JazzStandards . Versions by Coleman Hawkins , Ben Webster , Ram Ramirez , Gene Ammons , Charles Mingus , Archie Shepp , Ella Fitzgerald , Rosemary Clooney , Betty Carter , Wolfgang Sauer , Al Jarreau or Jimmy Rowles are also known ( Plays Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn , 1981) . Pure saxophone ensembles such as the World Saxophone Quartet or the Cologne Saxophone Mafia have also taken on the composition. In 1995 the fusion band Chicago also recorded the standard; Tito Puente put it in the salsa context. The classic brass quintet Canadian Brass has also recorded an interpretation of the classic.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ See the analysis at jazzstandards.com and Schaal, Jazzstandards, p. 448
  2. ↑ See MG Schachiner: The Origin of Jazz Harmonics (2005)
  3. ↑ cf. Schaal, Jazzstandards , p. 448
  4. ↑ Milton Pravitz: Who Was Duke's Sophisticated Lady? (2005)
  5. ↑ a b Schaal Jazzstandards , p. 449
  6. ^ A film about the singer Adelaide Hall , whose life can be described with the lyrics
  7. ↑ Schaal, Jazzstandards , p. 450