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Duke Ellington And John Coltrane (A Research Analysis: Farewell

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Research Analysis #3
A Research Analysis of Duke Ellington’s
“Duke Ellington And John Coltrane”
Cristian Tafolla
American Decades (Hum. 221)
April 17th 2018

Duke Ellington’s album titled, “Duke Ellington and John Coltrane” uses various concepts listed in professor Ted Buehrer’s book titled “How to Listen to and Appreciate Jazz” such as rhythm, melody, harmony and much more to create a smooth unrushed dynamic similar to the cool jazz style popular during 1950-1955 (Tyle). Tom Moon mentions Ellington in his book titled, “1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die” stating, “Ellington wrote to capture moments of life as he knew it--That sense of humanity, the rare ability to lift ordinary scenes into wondrous sonic abstractions..”( Moon …show more content…

Around the time period, big band jazz performances decreased, while small group performances increased due to both the cost to the club being high, and the decreased popularity in jazz in general (Tyle 5). Tyles credits saxophonist John Coltrane in his article, stating “John Coltrane formed a revolutionary quartet, utilizing many aspects of jazz’s rhythms and harmonies into his approach” (Tyle 4). Indeed the group did combine the concept of the classical piano with the jazzy saxophone, and other instruments to create a very intricate, calm and soft blend, oftentimes seen as “extending jazz boundaries”, Tyle states (Tyle …show more content…

This track opens with a more upbeat rhythm with the saxophone and piano while maintaining a thicker texture of sounds later on. Sounds in general are a bit louder and almost improvisational giving the perception of a busy train station as the title suggests. About 3 minutes into the song, the saxophone abruptly stops, while the bass and drums continue very lightly playing maybe hinting toward how quiet the train gets once it leaves a packed station. Overall the structure for this song was different than the others but still shows how these aspects can be adjusted to create vastly different abstract scenes.
While big bands were performing in jazz clubs less often than small bands, it's not very hard to see why after listening to this album. If this quartet can perform this well, why would I want to pay so much extra for a much bigger band. The combination of the piano and saxophone “might have portended a dynamic clash of the musical generations” as stated by Collar, but instead it ended in a “musically generous meeting of like-minded souls”, which I believe was the concept that was brought to life with this album and was meant to set apart this group from others during a time of struggle

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