Ethan Iverson’s Superb “Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, and One Night in New York City”

Duke Ellington (Photo by Marty Lederhandler)

A cool piece of jazz criticism appeared yesterday at newyorker.com – Ethan Iverson’s “Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, and One Night in New York City” (“Culture Desk,” August 17, 2017). It’s a comparative analysis of “Ellington and Evans both playing an Ellington standard, ‘In a Sentimental Mood,’ on the same hot Thursday night in New York City—August 17, 1967.” It begins by helpfully providing links to the two performances:

Here is Ellington’s version, at the Rainbow Grill, with the tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves, along with John Lamb on bass and Steve Little on drums. And here is Evans’s version, at the Village Vanguard, with Eddie Gomez on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums.

Then it focuses on Ellington’s version, describing it as a blend of two interpretations of the song – “old style” (“The first chorus is piano in D minor/F major, the ‘old style,’ fairly close to the first 1935 recording”) and “new style” (“After the ‘old-style’ chorus, Duke modulates to Bb minor/Db major for Gonsalves’s entrance, the same key used for the ‘new style’ version of ‘In a Sentimental Mood’ tracked with John Coltrane, in 1962”).

Of Ellington’s performance, Iverson writes,

Playing with Coltrane, Ellington’s “new-style” arrangement had a mournful raindrop piano part that was dramatic and distinctive. At the Rainbow Grill, Ellington doesn’t play many of the raindrops but goes all out in rhapsodic style: heavy block chords, cascades, even a long left-hand trill underneath pointillistic right-hand stabs. It would be hard to find ballad accompaniment this busy anywhere else.

That “heavy block chords, cascades, even a long left-hand trill underneath pointillistic right-hand stabs” is excellent.

Iverson then turns to Bill Evans’s version. He writes,

Bill Evans recorded “In a Sentimental Mood” a few times over the years, usually as a ballad, but at the Vanguard that night it was a medium swinger. There are three different takes from three different sets on August 17th and 18th, but the piano part is consistent. Gomez and Jones make all the rhythmic hits and substitute changes with the pianist, but they are also free to offer tasteful commentary. Over all, this is a much more modern and interactive approach to the rhythm section than Lamb and Little with Ellington at the Rainbow Grill. Unlike Ellington’s unwinding scroll, conventional small-band jazz practice dictated an identical “melody in” and “melody out.”

I like that bit about “Ellington’s unwinding scroll.” Remember Adam Gopnik’s opinion that Ellington played “no better than O.K. piano” (“Two Bands,” December 23 & 30, 2013)? (I criticized it here.) Well, Iverson provides a welcome corrective. He describes Ellington’s playing as “mysterious” and “detailed.” He says, “Each of Ellington’s chords is its own universe.” Referring to Ellington’s playing on John Coltrane’s 1962 version of “In a Sentimental Mood,” Iverson says,

Coltrane then leaves the star solo turn to Ellington, who offers one of the most perfect piano improvisations in the whole Duke canon: mysterious, searching, surreal. That surreal piano chorus is in stark contrast to Evans’s professional and clean chorus with Gomez and Philly Joe, where each note of attractive melodic improvisation in the right hand fits perfectly with the added-note harmony (and implied chord scale) beneath.

Iverson favors Ellington over Evans. He says,

Ellington could connect all the dots—the social, the modernist, the intellectual, the populist, the personally poetic—for a vision of American music truly epic in scope. As great as Evans was, he didn’t have that kind of command.

Iverson’s exquisite piece led me in several different directions. It led me to Whitney Balliett to see if the Master covered either of these gigs. Sure enough, he attended Ellington’s stand at the Rainbow Grill (see his “Small Band,” Ecstasy at the Onion, 1971, in which he describes Ellington’s playing as “first-rate,” and says of Johnny Hodge’s rendition of “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” he “left fat, dying notes all over the bandstand”). It led me to Gopnik’s appallingly wrong-headed piece, aforesaid. And, of course, it led me to the music. I’m listening to Ellington’s 1967 version of “In a Sentimental Mood,” as I write this, savoring those “heavy block chords, cascades, even a long left-hand trill underneath pointillistic right-hand stabs.”