ABSTRACT
The organization which Duke Ellington imposed was melodic, formal and harmonic—in that order of importance. One puts the melodic element first because the tune was traditionally the starting-point for jazz improvisation, and Ellington was the first jazz musician since Jelly Roll Morton habitually to write his own tunes. So the old notion of the regular earth-beat against which the melodies pull and prance is in part superseded; the melodic movement of Jimmy Blanton's brass inaugurates—no less than the rhythm section of the Count Basie band—a new phase in jazz, wherein rhythm is an integral part of polyphony. The new version of Mood Indigo was always a beautiful nocturne, one of the most disturbing examples of Ellington's close-moving chromatic harmony that creates an atmosphere curiously dense and tense. The more respect the band shows for the identities of the individuals who comprise it, the better it will be—so long as the cohesive power of the composer-arranger operates effectively.
