Mood Indigo
Encyclopedia
"Mood Indigo" is a jazz
composition and song
, with music by Duke Ellington
and Barney Bigard
with lyrics by Irving Mills
.
claimed to have written the lyrics:
from his clarinet
teacher Lorenzo Tio
, who called it a "Mexican Blues". Ellington's distinctive arrangement was first recorded by his band for Brunswick Records
(Cat No. 01068) on 17 October 1930. It was recorded twice more in 1930. These recordings featured Arthur Whetsol
(trumpet), Joe Nanton (trombone), Barney Bigard (clarinet), Duke Ellington
(piano), Fred Guy
(banjo), Wellman Braud
(bass), Sonny Greer
(drums). An unusual thing about this piece was the way that the Duke blended the muted trumpet, muted trombone and clarinet, to give a unified sound.
.
s of the clarinet and trombone (which was tightly muted as well). The "mike-tone" gives the audio-illusion of the presence of a fourth "voice," or instrument.
Ellington was to re-employ this effect in "(In My) Solitude
" (1932), "Dusk" (1940) and many other pieces throughout his career. The Ellington band performed and recorded the song continuously throughout its 50 years under Duke, both in its original form and as a vehicle for individual soloists. It remains a staple of the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
to Paul Robeson
, Ella Fitzgerald
, Dinah Washington
, Nina Simone
, Joe Sample
, Nat "King" Cole, Frank Sinatra
, Louie Armstrong, Earl Grant
, Joe Jackson
, Yukihiro Takahashi
, The Georgetown Chimes
, and Kelly Hogan
.
Paul Robeson, bass with orchestra recorded it in London on October 18, 1937. It was released by EMI
on the His Master's Voice label as catalogue number B 8664.
(1961), The Untouchables (1987) and The Legend of Bagger Vance
(2000). It is also the closing music for the film The Cotton Club
(1984).
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
composition and song
Song
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...
, with music by Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
and Barney Bigard
Barney Bigard
Albany Leon Bigard, aka Barney Bigard, was an American jazz clarinetist and tenor saxophonist, though primarily known for the clarinet....
with lyrics by Irving Mills
Irving Mills
Irving Mills was a jazz music publisher, also known by the name of "Joe Primrose."Mills was born to Jewish parents in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. He founded Mills Music with his brother Jack in 1919...
.
Disputed authorship
In a 1987 interview, Mitchell ParishMitchell Parish
Mitchell Parish was an American lyricist.-Early life:Parish was born Michael Hyman Pashelinsky to a Jewish family in Lithuania. His family emigrated to the United States, arriving on February 3, 1901 on the SS Dresden when he was less than a year old...
claimed to have written the lyrics:
Prior to the rock era, which brought high-powered entertainment lawyers into the music industry, business was often conducted casually, sometimes on a handshake. Mr. Parish is somewhat rueful, though no longer bitter, over the fact that although he wrote the lyrics for Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo," which was published in 1931, Irving Mills (Jack Mills's brother and publishing partner) took official credit.
Sound
The main theme was provided by Bigard, who learned it in New Orleans, LouisianaNew Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of 1,235,650 as of 2009, the 46th largest in the USA. The New Orleans – Metairie – Bogalusa combined statistical area has a population...
from his clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
teacher Lorenzo Tio
Lorenzo Tio
Lorenzo Tio Jr. was a master clarinetist from New Orleans, as were his father Lorenzo Tio Sr. and uncle Louis "Papa" Tio...
, who called it a "Mexican Blues". Ellington's distinctive arrangement was first recorded by his band for Brunswick Records
Brunswick Records
Brunswick Records is a United States based record label. The label is currently distributed by E1 Entertainment.-From 1916:Records under the "Brunswick" label were first produced by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company...
(Cat No. 01068) on 17 October 1930. It was recorded twice more in 1930. These recordings featured Arthur Whetsol
Arthur Whetsol
Arthur Whetsel was an early "sweet" trumpeter for Duke Ellington's Washingtonians.Leaving the band in 1923 to study medicine, he returned in 1928 to perform on a number of Ellington's most recognizable pieces during Ellington's stint at the Cotton Club, including "Black Beauty", "Black and Tan",...
(trumpet), Joe Nanton (trombone), Barney Bigard (clarinet), Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
(piano), Fred Guy
Fred Guy
Fred Guy was an American jazz banjo player and guitarist.Guy was raised in New York City. He played guitar and banjo with Joseph C. Smith's Orchestra, and in 1925 he joined Duke Ellington's Washingtonians, replacing Elmer Snowden...
(banjo), Wellman Braud
Wellman Braud
Wellman Braud was a Creole American jazz upright bassist. His family sometimes spelled their last name "Breaux", pronounced "Bro"....
(bass), Sonny Greer
Sonny Greer
Sonny Greer was an American jazz drummer, best known for his work with Duke Ellington.Greer was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and played with Elmer Snowden's band and the Howard Theatre's orchestra in Washington, D.C. before joining Duke Ellington, who he met in 1919...
(drums). An unusual thing about this piece was the way that the Duke blended the muted trumpet, muted trombone and clarinet, to give a unified sound.
Composition
The tune was composed for a radio broadcast in October 1930 and was originally titled "Dreamy Blues." It was "the first tune I ever wrote specially for microphone transmission," Ellington recalled. "The next day wads of mail came in raving about the new tune, so Irving Mills put a lyric to it." Renamed "Mood Indigo," it became a jazz standardJazz standard
Jazz standards are musical compositions which are an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians, in that they are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz musicians, and widely known by listeners. There is no definitive list of jazz standards, and the list of songs deemed to be...
.
Rearrangement
What makes the original recording(s) so interesting is the fact that Ellington has taken the traditional front-line of trumpet, trombone and clarinet, and turned them "upside down." At the time of these first three recordings in 1930, the usual voicing of the horns would be clarinet at the top (highest pitch), trumpet in the middle, and the trombone at the bottom (lowest pitch). In "Mood Indigo," Ellington voices the trombone right at the top of the instrument's register, and the clarinet at the very lowest. This was unheard of at the time, and also created (in the studio) a so-called "mike-tone"—an effect generated by the overtoneOvertone
An overtone is any frequency higher than the fundamental frequency of a sound. The fundamental and the overtones together are called partials. Harmonics are partials whose frequencies are whole number multiples of the fundamental These overlapping terms are variously used when discussing the...
s of the clarinet and trombone (which was tightly muted as well). The "mike-tone" gives the audio-illusion of the presence of a fourth "voice," or instrument.
Ellington was to re-employ this effect in "(In My) Solitude
(In My) Solitude
" Solitude" is a 1934 jazz standard, composed by Duke Ellington, with lyrics by Eddie DeLange and Irving Mills.- Notable recordings :* Paul Robeson, bass with orchestra. Recorded in London on October 18, 1937...
" (1932), "Dusk" (1940) and many other pieces throughout his career. The Ellington band performed and recorded the song continuously throughout its 50 years under Duke, both in its original form and as a vehicle for individual soloists. It remains a staple of the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
Performance
"Mood Indigo" is performed both as an instrumental and as a vocal. It has been recorded by a countless number of artists, ranging from Charles MingusCharles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
to Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
, Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...
, Dinah Washington
Dinah Washington
Dinah Washington, born Ruth Lee Jones , was an American blues, R&B and jazz singer. She has been cited as "the most popular black female recording artist of the '50s", and called "The Queen of the Blues"...
, Nina Simone
Nina Simone
Eunice Kathleen Waymon , better known by her stage name Nina Simone , was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music...
, Joe Sample
Joe Sample
Joseph Leslie "Joe" Sample is an American pianist, keyboard player and composer.He is one of the founding members of the Jazz Crusaders, the band which became simply The Crusaders in 1971, and remained a part of the group until its final album in 1991 .- Biography :Sample began playing the piano...
, Nat "King" Cole, Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, Louie Armstrong, Earl Grant
Earl Grant
Earl Grant was an American easy listening pianist, Hammond organist, and vocalist popular in the 1950s and 1960s.-Career:...
, Joe Jackson
Joe Jackson (musician)
Joe Jackson is an English musician and singer-songwriter now living in Berlin, whose five Grammy Award nominations span from 1979 to 2001...
, Yukihiro Takahashi
Yukihiro Takahashi
Yukihiro Takahashi is a Japanese musician, who is best known as the drummer and lead vocalist of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, and as the former drummer of the Sadistic Mika Band.-Biography:...
, The Georgetown Chimes
The Georgetown Chimes
Founded in 1946, The Georgetown Chimes are Georgetown University's oldest a cappella singing group. They are all male.- History :The Georgetown Chimes are an accident of Yale's and GU's athletic policies from the time of World War II. Yale senior and back-up quarterback Francis E...
, and Kelly Hogan
Kelly Hogan
Kelly Hogan is an American singer-songwriter born in Atlanta, Georgia.In the 1990s, Hogan sang with The Jody Grind , singing on their full-lengths One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Treasure and Lefty's Deceiver . The group disbanded after two of its members were killed in a car crash...
.
Paul Robeson, bass with orchestra recorded it in London on October 18, 1937. It was released by EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
on the His Master's Voice label as catalogue number B 8664.
Film scores
"Mood Indigo" is featured in the films Paris BluesParis Blues
Paris Blues is an American feature film filmed on location in Paris, starring Sidney Poitier as expatriate jazz musician Eddie Cook, and Paul Newman as trombone-playing Ram Bowen. The two men romance two vacationing American tourists, Connie Lampson and Lillian Corning respectively...
(1961), The Untouchables (1987) and The Legend of Bagger Vance
The Legend of Bagger Vance
The Legend of Bagger Vance is a 2000 American film directed by Robert Redford and starring Will Smith, Matt Damon and Charlize Theron. It is based on the 1995 book of the same title by Steven Pressfield and takes place in the U.S. state of Georgia in 1931...
(2000). It is also the closing music for the film The Cotton Club
The Cotton Club (film)
The Cotton Club is a 1984 crime-drama, centered on a famed Harlem jazz club of the 1930s, the Cotton Club.The movie was co-written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, choreographed by Henry LeTang, and starred Richard Gere, Diane Lane, and Gregory Hines...
(1984).