The Ellington Century by David Schiff Page A

thirty-two-bar harmonic pattern derived from Gershwin's “I Got Rhythm.” Throughout the 1930s jazz players appropriated the harmonic patterns of popular songs, transforming them into variants of the blues (the Moten band turned “Sweet Sue, That's You” into “Toby,” and the Lunceford Band transformed Gershwin's early tune “Do It Again” into “Swinging Uptown”). Ethel Merman put “I Got Rhythm” on the map in the 1930 Gershwin musical Girl Crazy; within a few years rhythm changes were second only to the twelve-bar blues pattern as the basis of jazz improvisation. Five years before “Cotton Tail” Ben Webster had recorded a very swinging rhythm changes chart, “Hotter than ‘ell,” by Horace Henderson with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra. Virtually contemporary with “Cotton Tail” are such famous rhythm changes charts as the Basie band's “Lester Leaps In” and “Lunceford Special.” Pieces based on rhythm changes are, like the blues, a series of isomorphic stanzas, but where a blues stanza (or chorus) contains three four-bar lines, AAB, a “rhythm” stanza has four eight-bar lines: AABA. (The templateof rhythm changes does not use the final extended “Who could ask for anything more?” phrase of the Gershwin song.) In a blues the B serves to complete the thought:
    I've got the choo-choo blues, had ’em all night and day.
    I've got the choo-choo blues, had ’em all night and day.
    'Cause the Panama Limited carried my man away. 10
    In rhythm changes the B,
    Old man trouble,
    I don't mind him.
    You won't find him
    Round my door
    also called the “bridge” or “release,” sets up melodic contrast and harmonic tension resolved by the final A.
    A masterwork of compression, “Cotton Tail” consists of twenty-four (6 × 4) phrases, only three of which state the “head”. No two phrases are exactly the same. Following is a phrase-by-phrase outline. The personnel for the May 1940 recording were:
    Reeds: Otto Hardwick and Johnny Hodges, alto sax; Barney
    Bigard, tenor sax and clarinet; Ben Webster, tenor sax; Harry Carney, baritone sax
    Brass: Cootie Williams, Wallace Jones, Rex Stewart, trumpets; Joe Nanton, Lawrence Brown, Juan Tizol, trombones
    Rhythm: Duke Ellington, piano; Fred Guy, guitar; Jimmy Blanton, bass; Sonny Greer, drums
    Chorus I: “Head” AA'BX
    A: “Head” played in unison by one alto sax, baritone sax, plunger-muted trumpet (Williams), and trombone (Nanton)
    A': “Head” with brass chords added
    B: Reversed call-and-response between the five-sax choir and Williams's growled trumpet solo
    X: A four-bar contrapuntal riff for reeds and brass taking the place of the expected eight-bar A
    Chorus II: “Webster solo part I” AA'BA”
    A: Webster and the rhythm section
    A': Webster continues
    B: Reverse call-and-response between clarinet + brass and Webster
    A”: Webster continues solo, two bars of emphatic brass punctuation at the end
    Chorus III: “Webster solo part II” XA'BA”
    X: Webster and rhythm section. Eight bars outside the harmonic progression, using instead a single diminished seventh chord
    A': Webster continues
    B: Webster continues; six-note brass chords played on downbeats of every other bar
    A”: Webster continues
    Chorus IV: “Brass” AA'BX
    A: A riff-style chordal melody for the brass section
    A': Brass continues
    B: Baritone sax solo
    X: Piano solo
    Chorus V: “Sax section” AA'BA”
    A: Harmonized melody played by five saxes
    A': Sax section continues
    B: Sax section continues; melody here seems to allude to the Gershwin tune
    A”: Sax section continues
    Chorus VI: “Shout” AA'BA
    A: Call-and-response between brass and sax choirs
    A': Call-and-response extended (brass repeats, saxes vary)
    B: Climactic phrase with reeds and brass together
    A: Head
    In the outline