Everyone knows Duke Ellington, and even if you believe you don’t, there is an almost 100% chance you’ve at least heard one piece of his in your lifetime. His music was profound and pioneering, and permanently changed the course of our musical history. Duke and his orchestra can not be imitated even if we tried today. He had an extraordinary life, and an even more extraordinary musical career. It all started in Washington D.C. where he was born and raised in a middle class Black community with a family that valued “pride, good manners, and artistic expression,” which wasn’t exactly unusual but wasn’t never before seen, as it reflected the norms of his city’s black middle class community (Smith, 2000). He grew up in this family that supported cultural achievement, particularly through arts and excellence. One of the first pieces he ever wrote was “Soda Fountain Rag,” which is a piece that isn’t necessarily an easy composition to learn or play. It’s complex and combines rag time with fast tempo and difficult rhythms. Something that your average fourteen year old wouldn’t be able to compose. He was an incredible artist, and his musicality only improved as he grew, with his music and writing having been described as “beyond category,” almost indescribable (Schuller, 1992). A specific way Ellington was “beyond category” was as an orchestra leader. He maintained a very permanent jazz orchestra for around fifty years, up until his death in 1974. Considering his role as orchestra leader, I wanted to talk about his specific piece “Take the ‘A’ Train.” Now, if one were to listen to the original recording, they could argue about its nature as a jazz piece especially compared to recordings made in today’s century, but in the 1940’s, this piece, alongside other prominent new jazz musicians and songs of course, was taking the nation by force, and the jazz style as a whole was growing by leaps and bounds.

Before I get into “Take the ‘A’ Train,” exploring Ellington and his orchestra provides much needed context. Oftentimes Ellington made it clear he didn’t view himself as a pianist (even though he was a great one), but rather a “piano player” with his main instrument being his orchestra. His orchestra was an astounding ensemble, a remarkable group of musicians, instrumentalists, and soloists all in their own right. They all had great musical personalities that could shine through the music when needed, but when required would all “subsume their own unique musical personalities for the greater collective orchestral good” to be able to achieve the beautifully blended ensemble for performances and recordings that we know today (Schuller, 1992). In short, they all worked incredibly well together. In this way, and because of the orchestra being a very significant part of Ellington’s career and self expression, the ensemble could almost be considered as co-composers of the many, many pieces Ellington wrote and performed throughout his life. A lot of the pieces that were attributed to Ellington were most of the times composed spontaneously by the band, put together before rehearsals or in between takes of a recording, with each part of the ensemble contributing their share and creative expression within the work (Schuller). They would memorize each of their respective parts, even if they varied slightly from one performance to another, never really performing the exact same part note by note, but of course everyone still respected the overall structure of the pieces. Alongside the band, taking on this role as co-composer as well, remains an individual to note who is just as important as the orchestra, and that is Billy Strayhorn. Strayhorn joined the band in 1939 as an arranger, composer, and occasional pianist (Hansen, 2009). Ellington and Strayhorn worked great together, and what originally started as a partnership grew into a decades long friendship. The reason I bring up Strayhorn is because his contributions to Ellington’s achievements were incredibly significant, and some of the band's most popular tunes were written by Strayhorn, notably “Take the ‘A’ Train,” which was then and is now considered like a theme-song for Ellington’s orchestra.

How exactly the creation of this piece came together was, in a weird way, the resulting combination of a practical problem and the right timing. For historical context, in the late 1940 and early 1941, ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, was involved in a royalty dispute that eventually led to a national radio boycott of songs registered with ASCAP (Hansen, 2009). Unfortunately, Ellington did happen to be a member of this society, which meant that his orchestra could no longer play any of its existing repertoire on radio broadcasts. Of course Ellington still had radio commitments to fulfill, bills to pay so to speak, so he turned to Billy Strayhorn and his son Mercer Ellington. Them not being members of ASCAP meant that they could help turn out new material relatively quickly for Duke and the orchestra, and I think we all know the rest.

Now, the backstory of Strayhorn's original idea for “Take the ‘A’ Train” came from when he first started working with Ellington. Duke invited him to his home in New York, where Strayhorn literally used the directions “take the A train to Sugar Hill in Harlem” to “show ellington that he could write a song about anything” (Hansen, 2009). Funnily enough, Strayhorn originally didn’t quite like the piece that much, and thought that it was too old, sounding too much like earlier big bands, take Fletcher Henderson’s big band influence in the 30’s, not quite matching this new beginning of pop music, but alas, the new tune came quite in handy because of this dispute with ASCAP (Hansen, 2009). What strikes me as unusual, but makes sense because of their friendship to each other, is how Strayhorn sort of turned this piece over to someone else's “composition” and even more interesting is how it morphed into this theme song for Ellington’s band. Now its considered one of the top definitive piece of Ellington’s career.

The title of the song of course refers to NYCs very own subway system. Now, the A train might be prone to breakdowns, dirt, and delays, (if we’re of course talking about a time before it received its recent service boosts and major upgrades) but it has one advantage over all the other lines, “its the quickest way to Harlem and the district of majestic mansions where Harlem’s royalty once reigned, called Sugar Hill” (Gladstone, 2000). During the 1940’s, this physical connection between Harlem and the rest of the city was a symbol of movement, and change. It was particularly meaningful during the early 1940s when Black Americans were still facing widespread segregation and discrimination throughout the country. For listeners in 1941, “Take the ‘A’ Train” created this musical picture of Harlem and the experience of traveling or being in the city. The song captured its energy and its cultural importance, and was able to reach and influence thousands of listeners through radio broadcasts, impacting the country, spreading this image of a cultural hub of music, art, life and success of Black Americans. “Take the ‘A’ Train” was also released during a period of uncertainty, as the United States approached its entry into World War II. It offered an escape, but also hope for the future. Duke was the “quintessence of soul,” and his music described a huge part of the black community, and the spirit and humor of life in America (Current, 1974).

To get into the musicological analysis of the song, “Take the ‘A’ Train” follows a classic 32-bar AABA big band swing structure. It opens with this crisp and energetic, almost train-like piano introduction, which was actually added in later by Duke on the piano, as heard in the original recording (JGC, 2021; Gladstone, 2000). Strayhorn might not have arranged that part, but it is nevertheless a wonderful introduction that in a concise way, depicts the whole nature of the piece in just a couple of measures. The beginning, right after the piano introduction, there’s a long sustained note, which you hear more than once throughout the recording, and it feels just a little too long where you start to wonder it’s purpose, and it then delivers this release, this “angular figure” as Gladstone describes it on NPR’s All Things Considered. It sounds almost like bebop. Take Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie in the 1940s. Strayhorn also contrasts these driving brass parts with smoother reed melodies, juxtaposing these different sounds and registers, while also using call and response between different sections of the orchestra, always in communication across the ensemble.

I actually wanted to talk less about the analysis and more about the story. To many people then and now, Ellington has been described as this figure and musical symbol, what PBS describes as both a “symbol of the traditional modes of jazz music and the finest example of how to transcend those modes.” The energy and nature of his earlier pieces remained with him even in the final years of his life. He was an artist and orchestra leader who was able to tell stories through his music, but he always told these stories in a certain way, in order to offer particular interpretations he wanted the audience to hear and imagine. Its very possible that the reason other bands even today can’t imitate Ellington's sound was due to this style of his compositions, these voicings and story specific interpretations, as well as the very personalized and unique qualities of the musicians with him. Sometimes, the stories and the people came first, but other times the music shaped the stories. It’s this process that “allowed Ellington to create accompanying stories, alter titles at will, and merge separate blocks of music into new compositions (Barg, Van de Leur; 2013).” In short, Ellington had this ability to move freely and expressively between his music and his storytelling. He was at the same time, the sound of the musicality, swing, and city living. Forever capturing a piece of our national soundtrack.

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https://www.npr.org/2009/02/15/100731586/how-ellington-took-the-a-train

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[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydqB3T6NVDI

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