Mood Indigo

• Date: 1931
• Composer: Barney Bigard
• Period: Modern (1910-1949)

Review

Duke Ellington's gift for orchestration was intimately connected to his discerning sense of the gifts and abilities of the individual performers in his ensemble. It is often said that he didn't simply write a line with the trombone in mind, for instance, but with his trombonist in mind. Often, this relationship resulted in collaborative compositions, which include a number of his most famous tunes. Figuring prominently among these is "Mood Indigo," which Ellington co-wrote with clarinetist Barney Bigard. Like many of Ellington's songs, "Mood Indigo" is elegant in its melodic simplicity. The tune mainly consists of long held notes moving in mostly stepwise fashion above a bluesy chord progression. Two elements are immediately striking, however. First, the underlying chord progression fills out, more or less, the overall contours of the expected harmonic trajectory, but takes a rather more dissonant and circuitous path to the expected point of arrival. In addition to the clever subversion of harmonic expectations through bizarre alternate chords, Ellington and Bigard create a unique instrumental sonority through some surprising orchestrational trickery. The melody and main countermelodies are given to the trombone, trumpet, and clarinet, but the instruments fall in the wrong registers. Instead of providing a mellow tone and bass support, the trombone, for example, finds itself in the strained, breathy upper reaches of its range, playing the main melody in a fragile, feathery voice; in the mean time, the clarinet's mercurial tones turn velvety as Bigard, dipping down to his instrument's bottom register, softly fills out the lower countermelody. This juxtaposition of roles and timbres gives the piece (as it appears in the three original recorded versions from 1930) a veiled, languorously drowsy feel -- suggestive not only of the title known today, "Mood Indigo," but of Ellington's original name for the piece, "Dreamy Blues." ~ Jeremy Grimshaw, Rovi

Albums with Complete Performances of the Work

Title	Date
American Songbook Series: Duke Ellington
Barbara Sings the Blues	2008
Blues in the Night	1996
Duke Ellington by Arrangement
Encore
Great Voices of the 20th Century: The Golden Voice of Paul Robeson	2008
Hollywood Bowl Orchestra: Greatest Hits	2001
Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy
Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy
It Don't Mean a Thing	2012
Mood Indigo: The Best of Duke Ellington
Paul Robeson, Vol. 1	1993
Pops Stoppers: Greatest Hits of the Boston Pops Orchestra	1995
Prague Transformations	2004
Shazam!	2002
Songs of Our Nation
The Complete EMI Sessions 1928-1939	2008
The Essential Paul Robeson [ASV/Living Era]	2001
The Golden Age of Light Music: Beyond the Blue Horizon	2007
The Legend of Bagger Vance (Original Soundtrack)	2000
The Paul Robeson Legacy	2002
The Peerless Voice of Paul Robeson: The Man They Couldn't Silence	2007
The Swingin' Bassoon	2007
The World of Music: Seventh Edition
Tribute to Duke Ellington	1995
Tribute to Duke Ellington	1995
Ve Iss Da Mighty Tubadours Ya?
Volume 2	1995
Wellness Classics	2008

Albums with Excerpt Performances of the Work

Title	Date
Music: The Art of Listening (Eighth Edition)

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