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Uncovering the Origin Story of Juan Tizol’sCaravan: A Predecessor

Hannah Krall

To cite this article: Hannah Krall (2021) Uncovering the Origin Story of Juan Tizol’s Caravan: APredecessor, Jazz Perspectives, 13:3, 261-277, DOI: 10.1080/17494060.2022.2104912

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17494060.2022.2104912

Published online: 27 Jul 2022.

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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Uncovering the Origin Story of Juan Tizol’s Caravan:A PredecessorHannah Krall

Music, Duke University, Durham, NC USA

ABSTRACTCaravan is a popular jazz standard that is recorded frequently. The first recording ofCaravan by Barney Bigard and his Jazzopators from December 19, 1936, credits JuanTizol as the sole composer. However later recordings give credit to both DukeEllington and Tizol as the composers and his manager, Irving Mills, as the lyricist.Because Ellington and Mills commonly used the band members’ ideas andcompositions, it is perhaps easy to assume that the conception of Caravan follows asimilar narrative. Despite Tizol’s insistence on compositional independence,trumpeter Rex Stewart contends that Caravan’s melody “evolved from another tune,Alabamy Home,” which is credited to Ellington. And indeed Alabamy Home andCaravan are quite similar in melody, harmony, and exotic affect. Inconsistentinformation in Stewart’s account and the fact that the first recording of Caravan wasmade three months before the Gotham Stompers had recorded Alabamy Homeinitially complicate Stewart’s assertion. However, a trombone part from the Ellingtonarchive at the Smithsonian Institution for Alabamy Home, dated between 1926 and1928, indicates that Alabamy Home was written first. I suggest that Tizol refined theexoticism of Alabamy Home, originally devised for the Cotton Club, to create Caravan,the most famous of his self-proclaimed “Spanish melodies.” I trace the back-and-forthmusical exchange between Caravan and Alabamy Home through four manuscriptsand five recordings dated between 1926 and 1937. By doing so, I explore the irregularcase of these two pieces connected by their shared melody, harmony, and affect, butwith differing levels of success in the Duke Ellington songbook.

KEYWORDS Duke Ellington; Juan Tizol; Caravan; exoticism; authorship; Alabamy Home

Patricia Willard: So you told us about “Perdido” being written on the train. Wherewas “Caravan” written? Where were you when you wrote that?

Rose Tizol (Juan’s wife): In Los Angeles. We were living over at the Laveda, and youtold me they were going to play it on the air that night and for me to listen to it.

Juan Tizol: Yeah, but I think I wrote it after that, Rose.

RT: No, you wrote it here in Los Angeles.

JT: I don’t remember where I wrote it— whether it was in Los Angeles or New York,when I was with Duke, or what. I know I wrote the tune, and me and Duke used toplay it to Irving Mills, to everybody… 1

© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

CONTACT Hannah Krall Hannah.krall@duke.edu1Juan Tizol and Rose Tizol, Interview by Patricia Willard, November 1978, transcript, The Jazz Oral History Project,Rutgers University, Newark, NJ.

JAZZ PERSPECTIVES2021, VOL. 13, NO. 3, 261–277https://doi.org/10.1080/17494060.2022.2104912

Burton W. Peretti observes how interviews that come from jazz oral historyprojects balance both revelations and obscurities in the lives of their subjects,which can lead to even more questions or frustrations for those poring overinterviews for answers to a historical or sociological issue.2 Juan Tizol’s oralhistory from 1978, housed at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University,is no exception. In a rare moment, Patricia Willard, considered by Peretti “themost capable interviewer, maintaining a serious, probing, and yet modestprofile,” allows Tizol’s wife to answer for her husband, quickly and insistently.3

Put on-the-spot, Tizol seems to sputter an answer to Willard’s question aboutthe date of Caravan’s conception that covers a compositional period of over adecade— before his first performance with Ellington in 1929 to the first record-ing in 1936. Caravan’s popularity cannot be understated. There are over 350adaptations of the tune recorded by other musicians in addition to the manyrecordings and performances by the Duke Ellington Orchestra.4 As seen inhis recollections above to Willard, Tizol seems to not remember the specificsof writing Caravan, but the memories of his bandmate, Rex Stewart, and manu-scripts from the Duke Ellington Collection at the Smithsonian Institutionsuggest a new perspective.

The tune was first recorded on December 19, 1936 by a small recordinggroup — Barney Bigard and his Jazzopators — created from the larger DukeEllington Orchestra. The disc itself credits Tizol as the sole composer. Laterrecordings give credit to both Ellington and his manager, Irving Mills, inaddition to Tizol.5 This scenario would presumably appear to showcase a

2Burton W. Peretti, “Oral Histories of Jazz Musicians: The NEA Transcripts as Texts in Context,” in Jazz Among theDiscourses, ed. Krin Gabbard (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 117.

3Ibid., 120.4Ted Gioia, The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire (New York: Oxford University Press), 58.5The role of collaborators in Ellington’s compositional process is a topic that is still negotiated in scholarship dueto previously held beliefs that Ellington was a compositional genius. Band members often received creditthrough their contributions during the performance of an almost-finished product or through the distinctive-ness of their sounds and personalities for Ellington’s own compositional process. Recent work by Brotherssuggests a re-evaluation of the view that the band members acted as passive influences to support a viewthat they were active participants and collaborators. The band members reported supplying finished oralmost-finished compositions in return for payment.

Borrowing from older pieces or manuscripts is also common to the Ellington compositional process, such asin the case of one of Ellington’s early ragtime pieces appearing in Black, Brown and Beige. There are also somecases in later works, such as the suites, of Ellington and Strayhorn borrowing older motives. In these cases,however, Ellington is borrowing from himself. Tizol’s participation in Alabamy Home and Caravan complicatesthe cohesiveness of the common mechanisms of collaboration and borrowing outlined above. It is also mislead-ing to try to describe Caravan as a contrafact due to the similarities in melody and its finding in a previousmanuscript as an obbligato melody. The case’s singularity would suggest that it is exceptional. Comparing itto other moments of borrowing or collaboration in the Ellington orchestra might be misleading without thepresence of other similar cases. If other cases are known, it could certainly change our understanding of Elling-ton’s compositional practices.

Thomas Brothers, Help! The Beatles, Duke Ellington, and the Magic of Collaboration (New York: W.W. Norton &Company, 2018), 51–2.

Travis Jackson, “Tourist Point of View? Musics of the World and Ellington’s Suites,” The Musical Quarterly 96,no. 4 (2013): 527.

Kimberly Hannon Teal, “Highlighting Collaboration in the Music History Classroom through the Duke Elling-ton Orchestra,” Jazz Education in Research and Practice 2, no.1 (2021): 7.

Terry Teachout, Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington (New York: Gotham Books, 2013), 110–6.Mark Tucker, “The Genesis of Black, Brown and Beige,” Black Music Research Journal 13, no. 2 (1993): 146.

262 H. KRALL

commonplace mechanism within the orchestra where the band member, whowas the originator of the composition, sold his work to Ellington and Millsfor $25.6 Tizol and his wife mention that this practice cost them the royaltiesthat they would have earned from the composition for decades.7 When onlyconsidering this perspective, the case seems closed in favor of Tizol. Theclaim of sole authorship could be even further supported by Tizol’s claims tohave possibly written the tune before his employment with Ellington and thefact that the first record presents Tizol as the only composer. However,Stewart, in his autobiography, recounts a narrative about the creation ofCaravan that differs from both Tizol’s hazy, yet adamant account and the tra-ditional collaboration story of many Ellingtonian hits:

That remindsme of the strange quirks of fate involved in writing a hit song. I am think-ing of the tune Caravan, which was a throwaway melody that accidentally was born atthe end of a record date. The scene, as I remember, was at the studio during the closingmoments of a Barney Bigard session. They had put three numbers in the can andneeded one more to complete the schedule of four tunes. In the frantic consultationit was decided to forego the blues and play some kind of melody… This time,however, Juan Tizol was johnny-on-the-spot with a melody which evolved fromanother tune, Alabamy Home. I can’t forget this occasion because Sonny Greer madeone of his rare vocal appearances singing it. Caravan was the obbligato strain.8

Stewart introduces a little-known Ellington piece, Alabamy Home, into Cara-van’s origin story. Admittedly, Stewart did get a few details wrong; he wasnot a member of the session nor was Caravan the session’s fourth number.In addition, Ivie Anderson is the singer on the full-band versions of AlabamyHome recorded in 1937 and 1938, although that fact does not rule out the possi-bility that Greer ever sung Alabamy Home. Despite these small errors, I willshow that there is evidence to suggest that the piece mentioned by Stewart,Alabamy Home, is a clear predecessor of Caravan. The relationship betweenAlabamy Home and Caravan has not been significantly explored by scholars,although Steven Lasker suggested a possible relationship in his liner notes forrecordings of the large orchestra between 1932 and 1940.9 The connectionsfound in manuscripts, recordings, and musical affects between the two piecesare unlike the many other examples of collaboration found in the Ellingtonsongbook. Given this evidence, the relatively unrecognized relationshipbetween these two pieces is worth closer examination.

6James Lincoln Collier, Duke Ellington (New York: Oxford University Press), 67–8.Although the argument could be made that Mills contributed lyrics for the sheet music publication of

Caravan, if he indeed wrote them, and therefore warranted credit, that argument in light of Caravan’ssuccess without the lyrics and Tizol’s lack of fair payment suggest that Mills inequitably benefited fromTizol’s work. In the words of Collier, Mills frequently “cheated” Ellington by putting his name on songs.

7Juan Tizol and Rose Tizol, Interview by Patricia Willard, November 1978, transcript, The Jazz Oral History Project,Rutgers University, Newark, NJ.

8Rex Stewart, Boy Meets Horn (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1991), 189.9Steven Lasker, Liner Notes for The Complete 1932–1940 Brunswick, Columbia and Master Recordings of DukeEllington and His Famous Orchestra Sony Music, 2010, 11 compact discs.

JAZZ PERSPECTIVES 263

Using previously unknown archival evidence,10 my argument is that Tizolrefined the exoticism of Alabamy Home, originally devised for the KentuckyClub and then the Cotton Club in the 1920s, to create Caravan. The estab-lishment of Caravan as a successful piece in the Ellington songbookbelonged to a complicated creative process in which arrangements ofCaravan and Alabamy Home informed and changed one another. Thisback-and-forth musical exchange can be traced through four manuscriptsand five recordings dated between 1926 and 1937, which I have detailedin Table 1.

Alabamy Home’s, and later, Caravan’s harmonic and melodic language aresimilar to one another. For example, the A and B sections feature the samebasic chord progression while highlighting melodies with emphasis on semi-tones. In Figure 1, I show the melody and harmony of both the A and B sectionsof Caravan and Alabamy Home, respectively.11

Harmonically, Alabamy Home arrives at F minor earlier than Caravan inmeasures 3 and 4 of the A section. Both A section melodies rely on the chro-matic scale to elicit a mysterious character. While Tizol develops his melodyin the A section of Caravan by descending to a Bb, Ellington’s AlabamyHome repeats the same phrase twice. Ellington continues the chromaticphrase used in the A section into the bridge, which has the same harmonicmotion by fourths featured in both pieces. The melodic contour and counter-point of both bridges are similar. For example, measures 9–12 and measures13–14 feature the same note choices in its chordal context. The melodic andharmonic similarities between these two pieces strongly suggest some sort ofrelationship, but the manuscripts allow for the determination of which onecame first.

Alabamy Home and Ellington’s Exoticism in the 1920s

The Duke Ellington Collection at the Smithsonian Institution houses whatappears to be the earliest surviving manuscript of an arrangement ofAlabamy Home (Figure 2).

10All of the manuscripts mentioned are in the Duke Ellington Collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Series #1,Box 11, Folders 16–17.

11Melodies and harmonies come from the first recordings from 1936 and 1937, except for Caravan’s bridge,which is used in Ellington’s big band recording from 1937. The bridge which is included in Figure 1, com-posed by Ellington as indicated by Tizol in an interview housed at the Institute of Jazz Studies, is used as aninstrumental section in the first full band recording of Caravan in 1937 in order to transition back to the lastchorus of the melody played by Harry Carney after solos over the A section by Barney Bigard and CootieWilliams. While Alabamy Home uses an AB form and has a harmonic rhythm twice as fast, Caravan uses anAAB form. Therefore, I reduced the harmonic rhythm of Caravan by half for a more accurate comparison.Later arrangements of Alabamy Home and Caravan are in F minor; it is not clear why the copyrighted pianoedition of Alabamy Home published by Mills Music in 1937 is in E minor. The first arrangement housed atthe Smithsonian Institution is in Bb minor, but the second arrangement is in F minor, which remains con-sistent with future arrangements of both Alabamy Home and Caravan. The piano sheet music editions, asexplained by Mills, were transcribed by hired help from the recordings and later arranged for the piano andvoice.

264 H. KRALL

Table 1. Timeline of the Exchanges Between Alabamy Home and Caravan.Date Event

November 1924 The Washingtonians’ Recording Sessions of Choo Choo (I Gotta Hurry Home): music byDuke Ellington and lyrics by Dave Ringle and Bob Schaefer (Copyrighted September5, 1924)a

June 21, 1926 Joe Nanton’s First Appearance in a Recording Session with Ellingtonb

November 1926 Record Contract Signing with Millsc

November 1926-August1928

Likely Dating of the First Manuscript of Alabamy Home

August 1928 Jack Mills Inc. changes to Mills Music Inc.d

July 29, 1929 Juan Tizol’s First Appearance in a Recording Session with Ellington under the name,“The Jungle Band”e

After July 1929 Likely Dating of the Second Manuscript of Alabamy HomeNovember 20, 1930 Performance of Alabamy Home broadcasted from the Cotton Clubf

December 19, 1936 First Recordings of Caravan by Barney Bigard and his JazzopatorsMarch 18, 1937 Performance of Caravan: MBS Broadcastg

March 25, 1937 First Recording of Alabamy Home by the Gotham Stompersh

April 18, 1937 Copyright date of Caravani

May 14, 1937 First Recording of Caravan as a Full Orchestraj

June 8, 1937 First Recording of Alabamy Home as a Full Orchestrak

June 29, 1937 Copyright date of Alabamy HomeaMark Tucker, Ellington: The Early Years (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 226.bW.E. Timner, Ellingtonia: The Recorded Music of Duke Ellington and his Sidemen (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press,2007), 2.

cTucker, Duke Ellington, 250.dA.H. Lawrence, Duke Ellington and his World (New York: Routledge, 2001), 125.eTimner, Ellingtonia, 9.fResearch done by Ken Steiner at the Library of Congress, in the NBC log books: http://www.depanorama.net/dems/083.htm.

gTimner, Ellingtonia, 26.hSteven Lasker, Liner Notes for Duke Ellington: The Complete 1936–1940 Variety, Vocalion and Okeh Small GroupSessions, Sony Music, 2006, 7 compact discs.

iIbid.jTimner, Ellingtonia, 27.kIbid., 28.

Figure 1. Comparison of the Melodies and Harmonies of the A and B sections of Caravan andAlabamy Home.

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Notable features include the presence of Joe “Tricky Sam”Nanton’s name onthe front of the manuscript paper and the Jack Mills Inc. logo on the back. Themanuscript therefore clearly dates to between November 1926 to August 1928because Irving Mills signed his first contract with Ellington in November 1926and Jack Mills Inc. changed to Mills Music Inc. in August 1928. One couldperhaps imagine that some blank manuscript paper simply laid unused forxxx of years, but the whole tone scale found in measure 32 would suggest itwas at least written, if not performed, in the 1920s. This is due to the popularityfor dance band arrangements from the 1920s to use this scale.12 For example,Ellington used the whole tone scale in arrangements recorded in 1926 and1927, such as in Parlor Social Stomp (1926), L’il Farina (1926), and NewOrleans Low-Down (1927). Additionally, Steven Lasker proposes that DaveRingle’s position as the co-author of Alabamy Home, most likely as the lyricist,implies a composition date in the 1920s. The duo’s other known collaboration,Choo Choo (Gotta Hurry Home), was written in 1924; their last collaboration,according to Lasker, occurred in 1926 while they were working together atthe Kentucky Club.13 This early manuscript supports Lasker’s proposal thatEllington and Ringle wrote Alabamy Home in the 1920s and the 1926 collabor-ation date works well with the proposed dates for the manuscript. The

Figure 2. First Manuscript of Alabamy Home, Trombone Part, Duke Ellington Collection of theSmithsonian Institution in Series #1, Box 11, Folders 16–17

12Scott DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997),107.

13Steven Lasker, Liner Notes for The Complete 1932–1940.

266 H. KRALL

manuscript is in Ellington’s hand, although it is unclear who wrote the intricatetitle on the top of the page.

The only surviving part of the arrangement is the trombone part; it indicatesthe key as Bb minor. In Figure 3, I have paired the melody of the A section ofAlabamy Home (transposed to Bb minor), as derived from the 1937 recording,with the trombone part from this early manuscript. The two fit together fairlywell with only a few moments of dissonance that are regulated through contrarymotion and alternation with consonant intervals. In the last four measures, themelody and trombone part are in octaves. This somewhat successful pairingsuggests that the melody of Alabamy Home in 1926 had some similarities tothe melody recorded in 1937.

The B section of the 1926 trombone part is shortened relative to the 1937recording; this suggests an expansion of the bridge at a later date (Figure 4).Without additional parts, it is difficult to surmise accurately what theharmony would be, but the use of an interval of a fourth between startingpitches every two measures suggests that the harmony could be similar tolater versions, which move through fourths.

The rest of the arrangement is perpetually chromatic, winding through thevarious registers of the trombone.

We may imagine where Alabamy Home might have been performed in the1920s. Mills signed Ellington in November of 1926 while Ellington was still per-forming at the Kentucky Club, formerly the Hollywood Club, in New YorkCity. The club was renovated in September of that year in order to feature“black bottom” dancers while serving both “American and OrientalCuisine.”14 Ellington’s recordings during the last few months of 1926 afterthe Kentucky Club’s renovation, such as Birmingham Breakdown, Immigration

Figure 3. A pairing of the melody of Alabamy Home (A) as recorded in 1937 with the trombonepart (B) of the first manuscript (Figure 2).

14Tucker, Ellington: The Early Years, 194.

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Blues, The Creeper, and most notably East St. Louis Toodle-Oo, may reflect thistransition. These pieces, and as I suggest Alabamy Home, showcase Ellington’sexploration of the fresh potential of expressive markers in the areas of timbre,harmony, and chromaticism that matched the ambience of the renovated Ken-tucky Club and the expectations of the clientele in this new exoticenvironment.15

Even Ellington cites his position at the newly renovated Kentucky Club as theplace where his music “acquired new colors and characteristics,” which sub-sequently led to his employment at the Cotton Club.16 With the name changefrom the Hollywood Club to the Kentucky Club, the managers implementeddecorations reminiscent of the Deep South replacing the glamorous décor thatresembled the clubs of Hollywood.17 It was Ellington’s work at the KentuckyClub that persuaded JimmyMcHugh, a member of the Cotton Club’s entertain-ment team, to convince management to hire Ellington after King Oliver turneddown their offer.18We canmore readily see the possible interchangeability of therepertoire and ambiances of these two clubs in Duke Ellington’s ability toperform Alabamy Home, a piece first performed in the Kentucky Club, as apart of a radio broadcast from the Cotton Club on November 20, 1930. Unfortu-nately, a recording of that broadcast does not survive.19

Dave Ringle’s lyrics, which conjure the escapism white audiences sought atvenues like the Cotton Club, places Alabamy Home in the plantation aesthetic.According to the published sheet music in 1937, the lyrics for the chorus are:

Figure 4. B Section of the First Manuscript (Figure 2).

15Richard Middleton, “Musical Belongings: Western Music and Its Lower-Other,” in Musical Belongings: SelectedEssays, ed. Richard Middleton (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2009), 129–30.

Richard Middleton recognized this as well, writing that “Ellington was easily capable of meeting thedemand for fashionable Orientalism… and of transferring this exoticizing aesthetic to the strand in his ownmusic known as his jungle style.”

16Edward Kennedy Ellington, Music Is My Mistress (London: W.H. Allen, 1974), 91.17Tucker, Ellington, 110.18Lisa Barg, “National Voices/Modernist Histories: Race, Performance and Remembrance in American Music, 1927–1943” (PhD diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 2001), 122.

Jim Haskins, The Cotton Club (New York: Random House, 1977), 44.Tucker, Ellington, 110.Both Mark Tucker and Lisa Barg recognize the similarities of the décor and the performances between the

Kentucky Club and the Cotton Club, citing that other clubs in New York City, such as the Plantation Café, theClub Alabam, and the Everglades, had plantation décors featuring performances in an imaginary Africa as well.

19Research done by Ken Steiner at the Library of Congress, in the NBC log books: http://www.depanorama.net/dems/083.htm.

268 H. KRALL

I’m goin’ down aroun’ my Alabamy Home

I’m gonna see the bee that makes the honeycomb

The brindle cow will wag her tail

As I fill up the pail

I’ll chase the flies and I surmise she’ll moo, “Thanks to you”

I’ll feed the chicks and mix some barley with their corn

They love it so, I know they’ll cluck for luck each morn

Then I will lie amid the hay

And call it all a day

Way down aroun’ my Alabamy Home

The speaker, as we know from Stewart’s memory of its early performancescould be either male or female, lauds plantation life in Alabama through hisor her workday. Alabamy Home, while congruent with Ellington’s repertoireof the 1920s, is an abnormality among his repertoire of the 1930s. Asobserved by Kimberly Hannon Teal, Ellington tried to abandon the linkbetween his new music and the Cotton Club during the 1930s with anexception to his continued use of “jungle” sonic indicators and his perform-ances of hits from the Cotton Club, such as Black and Tan Fantasy.20 Withthat in mind, the lyrics and music of Alabamy Home are better suitedwith his repertoire from the 1920s rather than his new material from the1930s.

The Cotton Club went well beyond the traditional plantation aesthetic ofAlabamy Home: it presented a more generalized and flexible exoticism toits audiences that embraced multiple geographies. Although the revues predo-minantly relied on the visual and aural depictions of the Deep South andAfrica, they also included Spanish or Latin American acts. As pointed outby Lisa Barg, Virgil Thomson recognized the South’s ability to join otherexotic locales, like Spain, despite its location in the United States.21 In thefirst review of a Cotton Club performance with Ellington’s band, AbelGreen highlighted ballroom dancers Henri and La Perl whose “Spanishstuff is made doubly interesting by the subconscious native syncopation.”22

Spanish ballroom dances helped support a more unspecified exoticism atthe Cotton Club and Ellington also spoke in an interview from 1931 of

20Kimberly Hannon Teal, “Beyond the Cotton Club: The Persistence of Duke Ellington’s Jungle Style,” Jazz Perspec-tives 6, nos. 1 and 2 (2012): 138.

21Barg, “National Voices,” 97.22Abel Green, “First Cotton Club Review (1927),” in The Duke Ellington Reader, ed. Mark Tucker (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1993), 32.

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Spanish music as an “African” influence on his music.23 This suggests that theincorporation of various “Others” was already a part of the environment atthe Cotton Club.

As is often the case, displays of exoticism are bound up with other kinds ofracist practices. The Cotton Club adopted a “whites only” policy at the doorwhile only hiring Black performers.24 About a year into his employment withthe Cotton Club, Ellington convinced the managers to relax this policy, but itultimately did very little to change the make-up of his live audience.25 Onstage, Black performers, including the chorus of light-skinned womendressed in feather costumes, were expected to perform in front of a backdropof a plantation to the “jungle” music provided by Ellington and his band.They performed the stereotypes of both Africa and the South expected fromtheir all-white audience.26 While there is no doubt that the performances fedthe primitivism anticipated by this audience, the performers’ individualrelationships with that theme are still debated.27

The tendency towards nonspecific displays of exoticism was not exclusive toNew York clubs from the 1920s, but rather it was an integral component ofmany, if not all, presentations of exoticism. Edward Said stressed that the ver-isimilitude of such generalizations cannot be the focus of our analyses, because“we need not look for correspondence between the language used to depict theOrient and the Orient itself, not so much because the language is inaccurate butbecause it is not even trying to be accurate.”28 This is true for musical languageas well, which can be seen in the work of musicologists such as Derek B. Scottand Richard Middleton, who have transferred Said’s observation about verballanguage to musical language. This transfer means that “an interchangeabilityof exotic signifiers” in music to represent various locales has “proved to be com-monplace rather than astonishing.”29 These “exotic signifiers” can be a part of auniform musical language to represent all “Others.”30

23Archie Bell, “The Ellington Orchestra in Cleveland (1931),” in The Duke Ellington Reader, ed. Mark Tucker(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 53.

24Haskins, The Cotton Club, 37.25Ibid., 57.

Haskins cites Ellington’s disappointment that his and the performers’ friends and families could not seethem perform as the reason for this relaxation.

26Teal, “Beyond the Cotton Club,” 123.27Ibid., 125–6.28Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979), 12–13.29Derek B. Scott, “Orientalism and Musical Style,” in Musical Style and Social Meaning: Selected Essays, ed. DerekB. Scott (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2010), 140.

Middleton, “Musical Belongings,” 120.According to Middleton, the exchange of exotic signifiers could occur between any group considered

“other” or “lower,” such as “peasants, primitives, exotics, women,” and “bohemians.”30Matthew Head, “Musicology on Safari: Orientalism and the Spectre of Postcolonial Theory,” Music Analysis 22,no. 1–2 (2003): 223.

Jonathan D. Bellman, “Musical Voyages and Their Baggage: Orientalism in Music and Critical Musicology,”Musical Quarterly 94 (2011): 431.

Focusing on the common aural signifiers of musical exoticism, however, has received criticism in musico-logical scholarship from Matthew Head. While recognizing the key role that generalization plays in Said’s orig-inal work, Head names the taxonomical practice of documenting these common signifiers as a part of “the safari

270 H. KRALL

Both Alabamy Home and Caravan rely on similar exotic musical signifiers,which were developed through Ellington’s jungle sound. The sonic indicatorsof Ellington’s jungle style are defined by Teal as “screeching woodwinds orvocal-sounding plunger muted brass,… heavy often low-pitched percussion,and a strong emphasis on blues-derived language” with generalized exoticismssuch as “drones, open fifths, pentatonic or nonwestern scales, folk-like melodicsimplicity, extreme registers, dissonance, ostinatos, and general tendencytowards minor keys.”31 Some of these signifiers can be heard in recordings ofCaravan and Alabamy Home. For example, the full-band arrangement ofAlabamy Home from 1937 opens with a gong played by Greer. Nanton takesthe melody, which is a descending chromatic scale starting on the fifth scaledegree, using a plunger and growling sound effects with woodwind back-grounds and interjections from Cootie Williams. Throughout the bridge,Harry Carney accents the bass, while Bigard soars on top of the rest of theorchestra. After Anderson’s vocal feature, Williams plays a muted solo overthe band’s shout chorus to close.

Similarly, the 1937 full-band arrangement of Caravan opens with Tizolplaying the melody cantabile with growling interjections by Williams. AsTizol plays the bridge, the woodwinds hold longer notes with eerie chord voi-cings in the upper register of their instruments. During the solo section, Wil-liams offers a solo filled with plunger and growling effects in the “junglestyle.” After his solo, the woodwinds play Ellington’s composed bridge in thesame ghostly style as their background figures during the first bridge, still intheir higher register. The first full-band arrangement of Caravan also featuresGreer’s use of the gong and tom-toms with mallets, which is a specific percus-sive sonic indicator of and reference to the orchestra’s depiction of Africa.32

The early renditions of Alabamy Home and Caravan therefore fulfill some ofthe criteria set by Teal for Ellington’s jungle style, such as key, instrumentation,sound effects, percussion, register, and melodic style. These elements of Elling-ton’s jungle style and other exotic signifiers are also used in arrangements ofTizol’s other compositions, such as Moonlight Fiesta or Porto Rican Chaos(1935), Pyramid (1938), and Conga Brava (1940).

Even without considering Caravan’s origins in the Cotton Club throughAlabamy Home, a generalized exoticism is already present in the language

mentality.” In his words, “any such reductive schema risks perpetuating precisely those historical Europeanstrategies of surveillance that bespeak an anxious vigilance over categories and boundaries when dealingwith alterity.” Jonathan Bellman is critical of Head’s approach because of its tendency to make any scholarlyreference to exoticism an additional act of othering or colonializing on behalf of the scholar. To him, Head’scriticism makes it nearly impossible for scholars to use Said’s ideas without fearing immediate dismissal oftheir argument.

31Teal, “Beyond the Cotton Club,” 130.32Carl Woideck, “Authentic Synthetic Hybrid: Ellington’s Concepts of Africa and Its Music,” in Duke EllingtonStudies, ed. John Howland (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 239.

Woideck tracks the use of tom-toms and gongs throughout Ellington’s entire career as a way to depictAfrica.

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used to describe Tizol’s Caravan. In his book about Latin American music, JohnStorm Roberts calls Caravan “an effective piece of exotica.”33 Ralph P. Lockenotes that Caravan has the “typical features of Middle Eastern arabesque: asinuously winding minor-mode melody over a single unchanging (in thiscase: diminished) chord and ending with a six-note chromatic descent.”34 Inthese descriptions, two distinct geographical locations are evoked: LatinAmerica and the Middle East. The geographical inconsistences in these hear-ings of Caravan further showcase how unconcerned pieces characterized asexotic are at depicting a specific locale. It makes the ability for Tizol toborrow elements of a song like Alabamy Home, imagined in the UnitedStates South, for one of his own “Latin-tinged” songs more understandable.35

While intended to represent Africa, Ellington’s jungle sound is a strong com-ponent of Tizol’s Latin jazz compositions and Ellington’s later works. As recog-nized by Teal, Ellington’s reliance on exoticism remained a key part of his junglesound even without consideration of Tizol’s pieces. Works from the middle of hiscareer, such as Ko-Ko (1940), Black, Brown, and Beige (1943), and A Drum Is AWoman (1956), and works from the end of his career, such as La Plus Belle Afri-caine (1966) and Togo Brava Suite (1971), show this dependence.36 Even in hissuites focused on places, Ellington used the sounds he crafted in the CottonClub to represent the locations he depicted.37 This also suggests that the associ-ation between Ellington’s jungle style and Tizol’s Latin jazz style as exemplified byAlabamyHome and Caravan, does not assert any real commonalities between thegeographical places they recall. Rather, the similarities between their exotic ges-tures are significant because they can be linked to one another through theirrelationship as predecessor and successor. This fact further emphasizes thatmusical exoticism is principally generalized in regard to its language, whichexplains how Tizol was able to take the melody and harmony of a song fromthe Cotton Club and relocate it in his own Latin American style.

A Second Manuscript: Uncovering Stewart’s Cornet Obbligato

From the Duke Ellington Collection at the Smithsonian, a second manuscript ofAlabamy Home gives us more information. This manuscript transposes thetune from the B-flat minor of the arrangement from the 1920s to F minor asused in both the 1936 recording of Caravan and 1937 recording of AlabamyHome (Figure 5).38 This manuscript includes two separate sheets of paper,

33John Storm Roberts, The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the United States (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1999), 93.

34Ralph P. Locke, Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 253.35Roberts, The Latin Tinge, 93.36Teal, “Beyond the Cotton Club,” 137–44.37Jackson, “Tourist Point of View?,” 522.38The other two manuscripts found at the Smithsonian are the unextracted and the extracted arrangement fromthe 1937 and 1938 recordings of Alabamy Home.

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with two cornet parts written on one sheet and two trombone parts on theother. This is all that survives of the second arrangement. The harmonic andmelodic content of the parts confirms that they are from the same arrange-ment.39 The presence of two trombone parts suggests that Ellington composedthis arrangement after Tizol joined the band in July 1929. While there is nophysical evidence on the manuscript itself, Stewart’s account and knowledgeof the obbligato melody suggests that it came before Caravan. Like the firstmanuscript, the second manuscript is in Ellington’s hand.

The second manuscript opens with a cornet obbligato melody, which couldbe the obbligato referred to by Stewart in his autobiography. The obbligato doesnot appear in later arrangements or recordings of Alabamy Home. LikeCaravan, Ellington’s obbligato hinges on the semitone relation between scaledegrees 5 and 6, in this case C and Db, with a descent to F. Cornet 2’s E♮ inmeasure 4 suggests that the harmony under this melody is C7(b9) (Figure 6).

The next eight measures are melodically different but harmonically similar tothe first eight measures, outlining the same harmonic progression with analtered melody. Entering during the B section of the piece, the trombonessuggest a harmony through the cycle of fourths starting with F7 and Bb7,which is also supported by the harmony in the cornets. The trombones restfor the next 8 measures of the second half of the B section while the cornets

Figure 5. The Second Manuscript, Cornet and Trombone Parts, Duke Ellington Collection of theSmithsonian Institution in Series #1, Box 11, Folders 16–17.

39The Smithsonian Institution has the first and the second arrangement paper-clipped together. The key, type ofpaper, and content of these parts allowed me to separate them into two separate arrangements.

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touch upon voicings of an Eb7 chord and an Ab7 chord (Figure 7); they alsonotably continue the chromatic motion which is prevalent throughoutAlabamy Home’s melody.

Both parts provide unclear information after measure 32. Following a seven-measure rest, both parts sustain long dominant and tonic chords before enter-ing a dramatic minor interlude. The ending is rather abrupt and unfinished; thiscould insinuate that the manuscript is not finished, although all of the parts doend in the same place.

The Rise of Caravan: The First Recordings from 1936 and 1937

After the creation of the first two manuscripts and Tizol’s presumable adap-tation of the Alabamy Home obbligato to Caravan, Caravan began to informthe performances and arrangements of its predecessor. Barney Bigard and hisJazzopators, one of the many small groups created from Duke Ellington’slarger orchestra, recorded Caravan near the end of 1936. Members of theband included Bigard, Williams, Tizol, Billy Taylor, Carney, Ellington, and

Figure 6. Obbligato Melody of Cornets in Concert Key.

Figure 7. Last 8 Measures of the B section of the Second Manuscript (Figure 5).

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Greer. During this session, the small group also recorded Clouds in My Heart,Frolic Sam, and Stompy Jones. They recorded two takes of Caravan, which arenearly identical except for the endings. In Take 1, Tizol closes the song byrepeating the two A sections of the Caravan melody, while Take 2 features atutti shout chorus instead. It is obvious why the first take was released overthe second take. The shout section of Take 2 is unsuccessful; Williams startsthe chorus too early and the rest of the band cannot seem to latch onto theriff or recover from Williams’ mistake. The recording slowly trails off as eachband member eventually drops out while Ellington continues to comp. Thisunsuccessful shout chorus is an important part of the intertwined storybetween Alabamy Home and Caravan due to its repetition in the first recordingof Alabamy Home by the Gotham Stompers. The alternation of notes with theinterval of a minor third found in the second manuscript appears as back-ground figures in the first two recordings of both pieces. Furthermore, thisfigure runs throughout many later renditions of the pair.

On March 14, 1937, Duke Ellington and Chick Webb jammed together at aMaster/Variety party meant to advertise upcoming recordings and the label.This event may have led to the idea of a recorded collaboration on March 25,1937 under the name “The Gotham Stompers.” Some of Ellington’s musicians,notably Hodges and Williams, played with Webb before joining his orchestra.Ellington writes about finding Hodges in his autobiography: “His first big job inNew York was with ChickWebb. This did not bring out the real ‘soul’ potential,for Chick came to me and said he thought Johnny would be better in our bandwhere he would have more freedom of expression.”40 Ellington recounts asimilar story about Williams; he recalls that Webb insisted that Williams was“a hell of a player, man, and for you he’ll be a bitch!”41 Webb undoubtedlyrecognized Ellington’s taste for players with untapped potential. According toDance, Hodges and Williams were excited to play with Webb again.42

As a result of the jam session, Dance writes that she arranged for the collec-tive recording session on March 25, 1937: “Having agreed to my proposed per-sonnel, Irving Mills exercised an owner’s privilege and dictated what numbersshould be played.”43 Chick Webb, who played the drums in this session, pro-vided Sandy Williams on trombone, Tommy Fulford on piano, and BernardAddison on guitar. Ellington, who was absent from the session, provided Wil-liams on trumpet, Bigard on clarinet, Hodges on alto saxophone, Carney onbaritone saxophone, Taylor on bass, and Anderson on vocals. Dance alsonotes that the numbers chosen for the session came directly from material pub-lished by Mills Music. She adds, “The whole group makes something special ofDuke’s Caravan – like Alabamy Home, on which Bernard Addison’s guitar

40Ellington, Music Is My Mistress, 118.41Ibid., 121.42Helen Oakley Dance, Liner Notes for The Duke’s Men: Small Groups Volume 1 Cedar 46995, 1991, 2 compact discs.43Ibid.

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provides some grateful embellishment.”44 Because Caravan is not recorded sep-arately in this session, the mention of Caravan in the context of Alabamy Homeis strange without the knowledge that these two songs share melodic and har-monic features. It is possible that Dance mentioned Caravan because it was per-formed at the Master/Variety party, but regardless, Mills chose Alabamy Homefor the session. Addison begins Alabamy Home with an uncharacteristicallyenthusiastic introduction, which leads into the dense, chromatic melodyplayed by the horns. Addison continues to riff on top of the atmospherichorns until the bridge, where he improvises a fast-moving line against the ubi-quitous chromatic melody. After solos, the horns join in for a shout chorusbased on a riff driven by Webb and his rhythm section. This shout chorus isthe same attempted shout chorus in the second take of the first recording ofCaravan in 1936, although they play it successfully. They never return to the“head” or melody, and close by fading out.

The Legacy of Alabamy Home

Ellington may have thought to revive Alabamy Home in its full big band gloryafter seeing the success of Caravan, but it would ultimately be unsuccessful.After 1938, Alabamy Home was not rerecorded again while Caravan was rere-corded over 100 times by Ellington and his orchestra. Despite Caravan’s popu-larity and longevity, archival evidence indicates that Caravan began withAlabamy Home as its melodic, harmonic, and affective predecessor. Despitethe presence of similar melodic material and harmonic progression in Elling-ton’s earlier manuscripts, Tizol formed Caravan through his sweet valve trom-bone sound and had the originality to change a composition— long dead in theEllington songbook — into a hit. Moreover, Ellington arranges Nanton as theopening melodic voice in the full big band recording of Alabamy Home. WithNanton’s gruff tone and use of a plunger, Ellington is referencing a rich pastdating back to the 1920s, to the sound of Bubber Miley and life at the CottonClub, in addition to the recent success of its offspring, Caravan. This connec-tion between the past and present also exemplifies the ways in which Ellington’sjungle sound could be recycled due to the lack of specificity required from prac-tices of musical exoticism.

By building on both the past and the present in his arrangement, as he oftendoes, Ellington is also giving a nod to his collaborative and compositionalprocess while also highlighting the contributions and ideas of the entire bandwho continued to shape the sound and repertoire of their orchestra. WhileEllington remained the one constant throughout the evolution of his orchestra,it is the introductions and subsequent dismissals of musicians which fueledboth the invention and reinvention of musical ideas. In this case and possibly

44Ibid.

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many other cases in the Ellington songbook, creative inspiration is unpredict-able, occurring between various musicians and pieces through cycles of rein-vention and reinterpretation, leading to the entanglement of two pieces withvastly different levels of success.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding

This work was supported by the Music Department of Duke University.

Notes on contributor

Hannah Krall is a doctoral candidate of musicology at Duke University. Her musical inter-ests include improvisation and early jazz. She has a B.A. in Music from Cornell Universityand a M.A. in Musicology from Duke University. Her current research focuses on jazz clar-inet playing in New Orleans and its exportation to cities outside of New Orleans.

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