The Ellington Effect workshops take place once a month, and David picks a different Ellington composition to analyze for each one.  In about two hours, he talks through the piece note by note, line by line, analyzing the piece at both macro and micro levels.

David Berger has studied the music of Duke Ellington for over 50 years, and has transcribed over 500 Ellington and Strayhorn arrangements and compositions.  Because of this, he is able to make connections to Ellington's other pieces, talk about trends and eras in Ellington's writing, and discuss the influences of changing personnel on the music over time.

At the end of each workshop, David answers questions for a half hour or so.  These are always lively and fascinating, as workshop attendees tend to include some highly knowledgable Ellingtonians as well as plenty of intelligent musicians who ask insightful questions.

This is Ellington and his band at their peak—the justifiably critically acclaimed Blanton-Webster band of 1940—doing what they do best—the blues. Ellington chose the unusual key for a jazz band (D major) to make use of Bigard’s lowest note on his clarinet. 

 

The working title, Pastel, gave way to the provocative, Across The Tracks Blues, which suggests the sexy goings-on on the other side of town beyond the railroad tracks.  

 

Over the course of five choruses, each horn section gets a soli passage as well as a soloist (Bigard, Stewart, Brown, and Bigard again to reprise his melody). The ensemble writing and playing, as well as all the solos and accompaniment reek of blues authenticity while pushing the envelope of modern harmony. 

 

This piece is at once primitive and sophisticated, simple and complex, as only Ellington could produce. Not spectacular like Ko-Ko, this is some down home everyday dinner table conversation that oozes personality, vulnerability, and depth.

 

Recorded in Chicago October 28, 1940 for Victor 053579-2

 

Otto Hardwick, Johnny Hodges: alto saxes

Barney Bigard: clarinet

Ben Webster: tenor sax

Harry Carney: baritone sax

Wallace Jones, Cootie Williams: trumpets

Rex Stewart: cornet

Lawrence Brown, Tricky Sam Nanton: trombone

Juan Tizol: valve trombone 

Ivie Anderson: vocal

Fred Guy: guitar

Duke Ellington: piano

Jimmie Blanton: bass

Sonny Greer: drums

 

 

4-bar Intro

5 Choruses of 12-bar Blues in D

2-bar tag

 

Intro

 

As usual, Ellington’s piano intros were not written down. Like many others this one is perfect on the recording and is developed later in the arrangement but received a mere allusion in live performance. 

 

Blanton sets up a boogie woogie bass line implying a simple 3-chord (I, IV7, V7) vamp, which compresses the 12-bar blues progression neatly into two bars. Guy joins by the end of the first bar, but Greer holds off until just before the downbeat of the first chorus—announcing his arrival with a syncopated cymbal crash. He is on brushes throughout the entire chart, which creates an intimate feeling.

 

Duke inverts the normal melody/harmony relationship in his 2-bar opening riff. His left hand single-note melody starts on a b3 blue note, which immediately resolves up a half step to the natural 3rd. The following five pitches alternate leading tone, b3, leading tone, root, root—there’s no question this is a blues. The next two bars makes a slight alteration by repeating the B natural rather than the leading tone. 

 

Syncopations abound: and-of-3, and-of-4, and-of-2, creating forward motion and pushing against the downbeat oriented bass line and guitar quarter notes. 

 

The righthand harmonies reflect both the blues nature of the left hand as well as the melodic voice leading. The constant F natural blue note top voice is only interrupted once, and that is by an E (minor 2nd in contrary motion to the lefthand ascending half step). 

 

The C# to D just below are in parallel 3rds with the left hand. The C# major 7ths in this bar of D major resolve to the 6th on the and-of-3 before moving on to the G7 subdominant in bar 2. To form the A7 dominant chord, Duke retains the top and bottom pitches (F natural and G—the -13 and 7th) while moving the inner voices chromatically to C# and Bb (the 3rd and -9). The controversial half step (-13/5) between the top two voices is unusually pungent. If we are to believe it, it  will need to repeat, which it does in bar 4 and later in the piece, which establishes it as a motif.