"In a sentimental mood"

Lango-Django · August 2016

In January, 2013, I went to Paris for a few weeks, mostly to see the Django exhibition at the Citee de la Musique.

When I arrived, the exhibit was so crowded that I had to wait 20 or 30 minutes to get in. Therefore I headed for the gift shop at the back end of the exhibit.

And as I walked in the entrance, it was love at first glance... well, not exactly first glance but first hearing of a CD of a masterful gypsy guitarist playing a great old Ellington tune, "In a sentimental mood".

I had to have that CD!

So I asked the guy at the counter about it: Stochelo Rosenberg from the CD "Djangologists". The gift shop's last copy!

Naturally, I had to buy that CD, so what if it was slightly used.

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For the next year or so, I spent listening to that recording and marvelling at it. No offence to The Master, but I think even he would agree that Stochelo's version is superior to his... controversial words, I know, and they are not chosen lightly!

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I play Sunday nights in a trio of clarinet/sax, bass and guitar, and convinced our reluctant leader, Dr. Jazz, that we should try this number, which he considers to be "lounge music"...

Our version is attached; it's a little bit faster than the louche tempo I would have chosen, but what the hey. (Plus, my solo didn't turn out to be quite at Stochelo's level, go figure...)

But anyway, I hope you like the changes I put together for our chart, which are a kind of combination of Stochelo's changes and the original Ellington changes, featuring a descending bass line from B down to E as follows:

Bm7b5 7677xx
Bbm6 6x56xx
Am7 5x55xx
D7b5 4x45xx
Gm 3x33xx
GmM7 2x33xx
Gm7 1x33xx
A7 002020

I've also attached a photo of our lead sheet. Real guitar-y stuff, and we have a lot of fun playing these changes when jamming with my local guitar buddies, neither of whom is a GJ player.

Will

Jazzaferri · August 2016

Not sure how you measure artistic quality. Personally love em both. I bought Djangologists as a download when it first came out. still my most listened to GJ CD.

Buco · August 2016

Yeah that was nice. Your Dr Jazz is a hell of a wind player.

I was taken aback with lounge music classification though.
I just don't get it when people consider something as lounge music, never did. You could make pretty much any peace of music into it with the right arrangement and production quality. And other way around too.
To me a composition can be crap or great in various degrees. Making a great melody lesser because it sounds like lounge music is something I can understand intellectually but musically it makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Lango-Django · August 2016

Yeah, Buco, Brian is an amazing player, and very inspirational to me personally ever since I first heard him play in 1972.

Much like Django himself, Brian has internalized his arps and scales to the point where everything just kind of 'happens' subconsciously, and if you asked him to explain a particularly amazing musical passage in words, he either wouldn't or couldn't do it.

Plus he can play in pretty much any tempo and any key, unlike most of the horn guys I've worked with over the past years. I'd love to see him play with a similarly gifted improviser by the name of Tcha Limburger.

But he has this thing about "lounge music"... his musical idols are either the 1920's pioneers of jazz, or the virtuosos of the bebop era... to him, that stuff is the real deal and everything else is basically lounge music.

It kinda reminds me of the clever comedian who observed that people who drive slower than you do are "morons" and people who drive faster than you do are "idiots".

Russell Letson · August 2016

Oddly enough, the first player your trad-or-bop sax player's tone reminded me of was Coleman Hawkins. For a guy who calls that style "lounge music," he certainly seems to be able to play it fine.

Lango-Django · August 2016

Russell, you are a man of discernment! Quite accurate!

I've been trying to sell Brian on the idea of paying homage to Johnny Hodges, who actually was the first to play "In a Sentimental Mood", but he hasn't bit. Yet, anyway.

Interestingly enough, speaking of Coleman Hawkins, I learned something from Brian the other day about him. Hawkins was one of the original sax virtuosos of the early twenties and started his career working in a medicine show band accompanying Ma Rainey. We tend to think of him as a later figure, but apparently he'd been there all along!

According to Brian, Hawkins was in the recording studio in the late thirties and there was some time left over so somebody suggested that he play a three minute version of his favourite jam session piece, "Body and Soul"...

According to Brian, Hawkins was reluctant to do so on the basis that nobody would be interested in listening to that kind of thing... but much to everyone's surprise, the recording became a hit.