Choo Choo was Ellington’s first recording as a leader. The New Orleans influence of King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton can be heard in the contrapuntal format. The traditional New Orleans roles are preserved although modified somewhat to fit Ellington’s instrumentation.
The absence of bass (or tuba) places that function in Ellington’s piano left hand—almost entirely in 2. His right hand is left to comp chords—mostly on beats 2 and 4 (in response to the bass notes on 1 and 3. The banjo mostly plays chords on each beat with occasional embellishments to propel the rhythm forward. Gradually, over the next five years, Fred Guy will dispense with the embellishments and simplify his playing to quarter notes.
Sonny Greer stays mainly on the snare drum with press rolls on each beat. At other times he alternates bass drum (in unison with the piano on 1 and 3) with cymbal on 2 and 4. His approach is far simpler and less interactive and rudimentary than his predecessors Baby Dodds and Zutty Singleton. The smoothness he adds to the ensemble will ultimately help to usher in the Swing Era in the next decade. The invention of the hi hat, which is still six years in the future, will complete Sonny’s transformation to swing.
Miley’s trumpet playing is much like King Oliver’s. He plays the melody—the lead. His use of the plunger was inspired by Oliver and will become one of the hallmarks of Ellington’s style. While Miley is a devotee of Oliver, he plays more forcefully and energetically—the influence of Oliver’s protegee and by 1924 the most dynamic force in jazz—Louis Armstrong. Charlie Irvis’s trombone playing is tailgate all the way. There is no clarinet on Choo Choo. Otto Hardwick did double at times on the clarinet, but not here. His main instrument was alto saxophone. We can hear his sweet style throughout the piece even while he provides filigree as the clarinet does in New Orleans music.
The title is an obvious railroad reference—the first of many such pieces throughout Ellington’s career, such as Daybreak Express, Take The “A” Train (Ellington’s theme song 1941-1974, composed by Billy Strayhorn), Happy Go-Lucky Local, Track 360, and Loco Madi.
As Albert Murray so eloquently explains in his seminal book Stompin’ The Blues, trains represent freedom (the Underground Railroad), mobility, employment, and sexual rhythm and imagery. The blues features train metaphors (whistle, rhythm of the wheels, the clanking of the couplings, and so forth). A generation later these metaphors enter jazz as dead metaphors when jazz players imitated the blues guitarists who were imitating the sounds of the trains.
Ellington’s fascination with trains began as a boy and became a central part of his life when he and the band traveled through segregated America in their own Pullman car in the 1930s and ‘40s. The rhythm of the rails was never in better hands.