In celebration of Pride month 🏳️🌈 all of my posts this month will feature the music of LGBTQ+ artists of the 78 rpm era!
Today we’ll continue with our focus on Billy Strayhorn – with his arrangement of Flamingo, a song written by Romanian-born Ted Grouya, who brought the song to Ellington via Herb Jeffries and Billy Strayhorn, who arranged the song after Ellington heard. him playing it.
The arrangement he came up with is considered a breakthrough revelation. composer John Lewis said that Flamingo “had nothing to do with what had gone on in jazz at all before. It sounded as if Stravinsky were a jazz musician.” and Ellington himself called Flamingo “A turning point in vocal background orchestration, a renaissance in elaborate ornamentation for the accompaniment of singers.”
Compositionally, what Strayhorn has achieved is beyond my capacity to articulate – but Walter van de Leur does a fine job describing its innovations – involving compmlex modulations between keys to create “tonal detachment,” along with the vocalist’s participation in that modulation at one point.
The record was also a hit for the Ellington band and a boon to the career of vocalist Herb Jeffries, who made it his theme song and later named a nightclub in Florida “The Flamingo Club” after the song.
Happy Pride! 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️
Recorded in Chicago, Illinois on December 28, 1940.
Released as Victor 27326.
Credits:
Duke Ellington – piano, director
Billy Strayhorn – arranger
Wardell Jones, Ray Nance – trumpet
Rex Stewart – cornet
Joe Nanton, Lawrence Brown – trombone
Juan Tizol – valve trombone
Barney Bigard – clarinet
Johnny Hodges – clarinet, soprano sax, alto sax
Harry Carney – alto sax, bass sax
Ben Webster – tenor sax
Fred Guy – guitar
Jimmy Blanton – string bass
Sonny Greer – drums
Sources:
Something to Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn, Walter van de Leur, Oxford University Press, 2002
Jazz and Ragtime Records (1897-1942), Brian Rust, 6th Ed.
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