A piece of jazz music – its structure, form, instrumentation and method of performance

Duke Ellington’s East St Louis Toodle-oo is one of the most important works of Ellington’s early period and was considered his signature tune from 1926 to 1941 (Rattenbury, Duke Ellington, 105). East St Louis Toodle-oo is a key representative for the so-called ‘Ellington Effect’ (Billy Strayhorn, Down Beat, July 1952). His unique and at the time, contextually radical treatment of orchestral and essentially socio-orchestral color is said to have been largely responsible for “restoring, within the confines of a single band, the social character of New Orleans music” (Finkelstein, Jazz, p.191.), a sound and style which is perhaps more widely identifiable by its alternative name of ‘Dixieland’ jazz. This paper will analyse the music and background of the East St Louis Toodle-oo, its context within Duke Ellington’s early years, and its implications in his continuing compositional career.
Bubber Miley possessed a gift for uncluttered melodic invention, nowhere more apparent than in the main theme of East St. Louis Toodle-oo, a tune of simple, arpeggio construction with a pronounced folksiness. Ellington’s scoring, for three low-register saxophones and tuba, provides a rolling, somber, almost funereal accompaniment to Miley’s simple yet subtle invention. (Rattenbury, Duke Ellington, p.18.)
Ellington’s original recorded track of the East St Louis Toodle-oo is structured in a generic ternary form, a variation of ABACA alternating been the dark harmonies of the minor opening and a rollicking dixie rag style with brighter orchestration for the complementary second theme and bridge melodies. The establishment of ambience and harmonic space is made in an 8-bar introduction by the supporting cushion of low winds and tuba. Following this, the orchestra’s frontman trumpeter Bubber Miley enters with the first tune theme which, incidentally, he is purported to have written part or the majority thereof. Miley’s minor exposition occurs over a set of eight bars repeated, 8+8, with the essentially unchanging drone-like figure in the support which was heard at outset. An increasingly dynamic tuba bassline moves the end of this exposition into a tonicization of the flat six of the home key, a phrase-long major key jaunt into ragtime and stride piano which preempts the dixie feel bridge to come. Miley’s 8-bar return to the A theme and minor blues feel brings closure to his extended solo while at the same time, setting up for an immediate return to the rag sequence. While strikingly reminiscent of the B theme (Abmaj7), this is in fact a new structural section, C, which serves as foundation for a long trombone feature by Ellington’s lead player ‘Tricky Sam’ Nanton. In the return to the head, solo clarinet takes centre stage, improvising freely over the repeated 8+8 minor theme sequence. At the recurrence of the bridge rag which follows for the last time, all soloists come together in somewhat of a grand finale. The voicings are close in accordance with chordal piano compositional mentality, and suggest the sound of a mariachi band. This is further extended into a repeated version of the 8+8+2 heard previously. The chart closes with a return to the minor, winding down in the spirit of the opening introduction. Figure 1 constitutes a table I have constructed detailing the thematic analysis thus far explained.
Interestingly, several alternative sources cite the East St Louis Toodle-oo as a prime example of Ellington’s unusual phrase lengths, but these are not reflected in the original recording I have selected for analysis. Phrase lengths of the strains according to written charts (Esposito, Rediscovered Ellington, pp.117-119) tend to appear as follows:
In observing Ellington’s harmonic treatment, it is of particular note that he was a completely self-taught musician who not only rejected the opportunity for academic furthering of his knowledge, but who actively sought a means in his writing to rebel against the system.
Formal training, to him, implied adhering to the rules and a lack of creativity. He didn’t like the rules in anything. To discard a rule was a source of inspiration to him because he immediately saw the way to make it work in reverse. (Ellington and Dance, Duke Ellington in Person, pp 158-159)
Ellington’s harmonies are simple and triadic, unashamedly akin to the block chords of the pianist’s hand from which they were borne. His vertical treatment of orchestration invited a barrage of unorthodox consecutive intervals and constantly occurring parallels in a compositional environment which valued ‘correctness’ in voice-leading and compositional line. He did not seek acceptance in the eyes of Eurocentric academic culture and was content to coexist with that community without causing a scene. It is ironic then to consider he has been hailed by numerous classical music giants including Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky as the truest American composer, equally from a classical standpoint as from one of an exclusively jazz artist. It is said he personally objected to the word ‘jazz’ due to its unsavoury sociological implications (Ellington and Dance, Duke Ellington in Person, pp. 158-159). I’m inclined to think this small insight into his own socio-ideology, a quiet demand for artistic respect, was to have direct correlation with his place as somewhat of a crossover musical personality in the untapped grey area between classical and jazz composition.
Ellington is a new type of composer in that he has written, not merely for specific forces or a specific function, but for a particular group of human beings, each with his own distinctive characteristics. (Mellers, Music in a New Found Land, p.318)
Ellington’s separation from academic thought and practice allowed him much freedom for compositional experimentation. He is particularly heralded for his increasingly ‘human’ approach to certain players’ instrumental colours, going beyond toleration of “oddity and individuality” to “[turn] idiosyncrasies to his advantage” (Lees, “Ellington Remembered”, pp.28-34). Musicians were hired for their personality and their unmatchability as instrumentalists.
Each member of his band is to him a distinctive tone color and set of emotions, which he mixes with others equally distinctive to produce a third thing, which I like to call ‘The Ellington Effect’. (Billy Strayhorn in Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya, p.215)
The rough and ready tone quality of key players trumpeter Bubber Miley and trombonist “Tricky Sam” Nanton, for example, were integral to Ellington’s compositions, which were penned to accentuate these players’ particular strengths. Miley and Nanton’s style resulted in the coining of the band’s famous ‘jungle’ effects:
Ellington’s jungle style was stamped on his music largely by two men: Bubber Miley, who played his trumpet with a plunger mute in a manner often savage and always inspired by the blues, and the trombonist Ticky Sam Nanton, whose playing evoked the sound of the human voice but was no less violent than Miley’s. The sound effects produced by the two were by turns guttural, raucous and animalistic. (Rattenbury, Duke Ellington, 104)
New timbral blends were also explored by Ellington, as would be heard in the simultaneous improvisations of Dixieland jazz. In the East St Louis Toodle-oo, standard Dixie instrumentation of trumpet, trombone and clarinet with piano and tuba rhythm section applies, although there is notably no platform for a three-way improvisation. When the three solo players do come together in the final repeated ‘C’ section, they follow a uniform triadic part structure, emphasizing Ellington’s distinct new instrumental blend over the free melodic invention typical of standard Dixie style.
Ellington thus broke important new ground in the 1920s with charts such as the East St Louis Toodle-oo. He reinvented the understanding of jazz as a stylistic melodic phenomenon to newly incorporate an appreciation of the deeper tone qualities such as unusual instrumental colours and effects and mixed timbral experimentation. It is unclear whether or not Ellington was aware that these very same tone colour experiments were being simultaneously explored in the classical musical world by people like Arnold Schoenberg, Maurice Ravel and Olivier Messiaen or whether this can be put down instead to the inexplicable serendipity of cultural and artistic evolution.