[Dixielandjazz] Ellington and Strayhorn

[Ken Mathieson]

Hi Bob et al,

I don't thinnk we'll ever know for sure who did exactly what behind the scenes in the Ellington organisation, but my own view is that Strayhorn brought a new way of orchestral thinking to the fold. Prior to his arrival, Duke had composed some marvellously sophisticated songs with highly imaginative harmonies, but some of his orchestrations tended to be a bit cluttered. I'm thinking particularly about the original of Crescendo In Blue from just before Strayhorn's arrival. It's full of complex section lines which frequently clash and, to my ears at least, has always sounded over-arranged and too busy. 

Within a year to 18 months the orchestrational style had changed radically to long unison lines, leaner textures and increased use of dissonance as in Cottontail, which led directly to Strayhorn's original 1941 chart for Take the A Train. It was entirely a Strayhorn composition and arrangement, rescued from the waste paper basket by Mercer Ellington after Strayhorn had discarded it as being "too like Fletcher Henderson." Duke used it as his signature tune for the rest of his life and tinkered with it throughout that 40-year period, but never managed to improve on the original's simplicity and effectiveness. It's a perfect example of a comtrolled climax and resolution achieved in under 3 minutes.

When Strayhorn joined Ellington, his first major assignment was to write most of the charts for the Ellington small group recordings of the 1939 - 1942 period. These were masterpieces of concise writing in a variety of styles and support my conclusion that both Ellington and Strayhorn were outstanding composers whose harmonic thinking was rich and sometimes sumptuous and both were highly gifted orchestrators. Ellington was more flamboyant, had by far the bigger ego and was very much a public persona, but my view is that Strayhorn was the better orchestrator and probably had more to do with the emergence of the new writing style which characterised the emergence and continuing appeal of the so-called Webster-Blanton band.

Cheers,

Ken Mathieson