“Pyramid”

Composed by Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol; arranged by Duke Ellington.

Recorded by Duke Ellington and His Orchestra for Brunswick on June 7, 1938 in New York.

Duke Ellington, hand drum, directing: Wallace Jones, Cootie Williams, trumpets; Rex Stewart, cornet; Lawrence Brown, Joseph Nanton, trombones; Juan Tizol, valve trombone; Otto Hardwick and Johnny Hodges, alto saxophones; Barney Bigard, tenor saxophone; Harry Carney, baritone saxophone; Fred Guy, guitar; Billy Taylor, bass; Sonny Greer, drums.

The story: part 1 – Ellington and “Juanito.”

The information about Juan Tizol’s early life and entry into Duke Ellington’s band is presented in the post here at swingandbeyond.com on his composition “Bakiff.” That can be accessed by clicking on the link below at endnote (1).

The fact that Tizol was a well-schooled musician who could copy out the parts of Duke’s scores to create the individual parts for the musicians in the Ellington band made him a particularly valuable member of the Ellington organization. In addition, Tizol’s talent for creating melodies that had an exotic flavor was also something that Duke valued. Through the period from about 1935 to 1942, when Tizol left the Ellington band for the first time, he composed these melodies: “Caravan,” “Bakiff,” “Conga Brava,” “The Flaming Sword,” “Jubilesta,” “Mirage,” “Perdido” and “Pyramid,” among others.

Finally, Ellington liked Juan Tizol as a person. Spanish was Tizol’s first language. He was a native of Puerto Rico, and always spoke heavily accented English, often coming up with unusual pronunciations of English words, much to Duke’s delight. Duke, who stood about 6’1″ towered over Tizol, who was 5’6′. He called him “Juanito.”(1A) He also liked Tizol’s wife, Rosebud. During the time after the Tizols settled in Los Angeles in the early 1940s, and bought a home there, Ellington was always a welcome guest for dinner with Juan and Rosebud in their home. (At right: Ellington’s “Juanito” poses on a Harlem street in the early 1930s.)

All this was in addition to Tizol’s great skill as a valve trombonist. Early-on, Duke understood the tonal difference that distinguishes a valve trombone from a slide trombone. To greatly simplify that, the valve trombone produces a haunting, mourning dove sound, which Ellington quickly incorporated into what by 1932 had become his three-man trombone section. He also gave Tizol many solo opportunities. One of the most memorable of these is how Duke featured Tizol on “Pyramid,” the composition Tizol probably originated, then collaborated with Duke on to bring to completion.

The music:

In this performance, we hear Ellington playing a hand drum, suggesting the sound made by the durbakke in Arabic music, setting the tempo, and immediately in conjunction with Tizol’s cup-muted valve trombone, establishing a mood of hushed exoticism. Soon, Sonny Greer joins the duo, gently tapping the tympany drum he had in his arsenal of equipment with percussion mallets. The soft music created by this trio lasts for an entire chorus.

The second chorus begins with the massive sound of Harry Carney’s baritone saxophone, a pungent contrast, backed by muted brass. Then the trombone trio appears, playing open horns and creating yet another contrasting sound. Bassist Billy Taylor provides some choice notes and rhythms toward the end of this sequence. A climactic blast of sound, produced by the entire ensemble follows, with Cootie Williams on first trumpet playing the ringing top notes.

The finale is a reprise of the first chorus, except trumpeter Wallace Jones, who often played first trumpet parts, joins the trio with a muted horn creating a one-note accompaniment to Tizol, which covers eight bars, without taking a breath.

As so often was the case, Duke Ellington took his music into places that were far off the beaten path insofar as swing era performance conventions were concerned.

Duke later recalled something that occurred soon after this recording was made: “We have our Latin American specialties as well. When Tizol was in the band, he was always suggesting them and helping us along with them. I remember once, when we were playing the Coronado Hotel in St. Louis, that I had a kind of hand-drum. We didn’t call it a tom-tom, a conga, a bongo or anything. I’d had a cylinder made of a kind of plastic board, and taken a tambourine and nailed it on the head after removing the tingle things. I was playing it on “Pyramid” when Gene Krupa came by. He saw it and had his whole band set up like that, so everyone in it had a drum. (Krupa, a master showman, had small drums attached to the music stands of the musicians in his band.) I didn’t have it merely for appearance.”(2)

“Pyramid”

Composed by Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol; arranged by Duke Ellington.

Recorded by Johnny Hodges and His Orchestra for Vocalion on June 22, 1938 in New York.

Duke Ellington, piano, directing: Cootie Williams, trumpet; Lawrence Brown, trombone; Johnny Hodges, soprano saxophone; Harry Carney, baritone saxophone; Billy Taylor, bass; Sonny Greer, drums.

The story: part 2 – Another part of Dukedom.

Often in the late 1930s, Duke Ellington would use the various small groups drawn from his big band to record new compositions from within the world of Ellington, meaning composed by Duke himself, his sidemen including Juan Tizol, Cootie Williams, Johnny Hodges, Barney Bigard, or anyone else who may have been working for one of the musical enterprises then being operated by Duke’s personal manager and business guru, Irving Mills. Ellington and Mills’s purpose was to use the resulting recordings as trial-balloons in the commercial marketplace. If one of those recordings sold well, then in many instances Duke would expand the music to fit the instrumentation of the full Ellington band, and record it again. In the case of Duke’s and Juan Tizol’s “Pyramid,” that process worked in reverse for some reason. The first recording of “Pyramid” was made by the Ellington big band, and then a couple of weeks later, by a small group under the titular leadership of Johnny Hodges. As you will hear, the two recordings are quite different.

The music:

Although Johnny Hodges was identified as the leader of the small band on this recording, Duke Ellington was largely responsible for creating the musical framework that supported Hodges’s soprano saxophone. All of the musicians who formed Hodges’s backup band were Ellington sidemen, and they were very accustomed to Duke’s work methods and the musical moods he was constantly trying to create. Ellington himself casts the gauzey, peregrine mood from the piano in the introduction. Hodges then steps forward to sing the melody on his soprano saxophone. Listen to the pastel background Ellington fashioned for him to play against by deftly mixing the sounds of only three instruments. Cootie Williams does his own bit of Bel Canto singing on his open trumpet on the tune’s bridge (B) and then for eight more bars on the third theme (C).

The next chorus has the background instruments brought into the foreground, with Hodges playing choice, soulful notes here and there against them.

The final chorus has Hodges reprising the main melody for eight bars and then Duke reappearing for more atmospheric piano as the performance draws to a close.

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“Pyramid”

Composed by Juan Tizol and Duke Ellington; arranged by Elton Hill.

Recorded by Artie Shaw and His Orchestra on August 1, 1939 in Hollywood from an NBC Melody and Madness radio show.

Artie Shaw, clarinet, directing: John Best, first trumpet; Chuck Peterson and Bernie Privin, trumpets; George Arus, first trombone; Harry Rodgers and Les Jenkins, trombones; Les Robinson, first alto saxophone; Hank Freeman, alto saxophone; Tony Pastor and Georgie Auld, tenor saxophones; Bob Kitsis, piano; Al Avola, guitar; Sid Weiss, bass; Buddy Rich, drums.

The story: Part 3 – Integration of musics.

I have mentioned before that the world of swing was one that was largely racially segregated. That was something the the musicians of that time were forced to deal with constantly. Benny Goodman’s pioneering use of black musicians in his musical presentations to his mostly white audiences was a bold move on his part. And his ongoing success in doing that, musically and socially, inspired other bandleaders to also present black musicians, and provoked many Americans to question the mores of Jim Crow. But despite Benny’s efforts seeking racial integration and equality, and those of other bandleaders both white and black, America remained a disturbingly segregated and unequal place overall.

Goodman’s deepening relationship with the music created by black musicians came about of necessity. When he was beginning his ascent to nationwide success as a bandleader in late 1934, he found himself in a situation where he had to deal with the problem that he and his newly-formed band had been chosen to play dance music that would swing on a nationally broadcast, sponsored radio show. This was a golden opportunity for him. The problem was that his band, though it played well, didn’t swing too effectively. No one understood this better than Benny Goodman himself. But as fate would have it, as the result of a series of coincidences at that very moment, Benny began to purchase arrangements written by one of the founding fathers of swing, Fletcher Henderson. Goodman had only to listen to the records Henderson had made of many of these arrangements in the late summer of 1934 to appreciate how they could be swung. He went to work painstakingly (sometimes painfully) rehearsing his band, always seeking a more convincing swing feeling in their performances. His and their quest in this regard took a while.

At the time Artie Shaw made this recording of “Pyramid” during the summer of 1939, he was leading the most popular swing band in the United States. (There are a number of links below which will take you to detailed information about what was going on in Shaw’s world then.)(3) Shaw experienced the same difficulties that Benny Goodman had in training the members of his new band in the methods of swing. But Shaw was doing this through the year 1937, whereas Goodman did it through 1935. Swing had become much more prevalent in bands, both black and white, through the year 1936. By 1937, the swing era was about to move into high-gear. Thus, Shaw and his musicians had many more examples of what swing sounded like to listen to while they were figuring it out themselves.

Unlike Benny Goodman, who through the mid and late 1930s used a series of Afro-American arrangers to provide a solid, swinging core of music for his band’s repertoire, including Fletcher and Horace Henderson, Jimmy Mundy and Edgar Sampson, Shaw preferred to work with white arrangers to provide that core. But that had nothing to do with race. It had to do with him setting a musical style for his various bands, and then adding contrasts to that basic style. He had particularly felicitous musical collaborations doing this with Jerry Gray at first, then a bit later with Lennie Hayton, Ray Conniff, and to a lesser extent with Eddie Sauter and George Siravo. However, Shaw had also always sought out music from talented Afro-American arrangers, including Benny Carter, Teddy McRae, Eddie Durham, William Grant Still, Fred Norman, Jimmy Mundy and Buster Harding. He used their work to add a bit of musical spice to his musical presentations. Shaw always exerted a large amount of control/editing/collaboration with his staff arrangers to achieve the style he sought. He later referred to this as “my thumbprint.” To greatly oversimplify, Artie edited the arrangements submitted to him by black arrangers who were not members of his bands far less than he edited those submitted by his white staff arrangers. This was quite purposeful. He recognized and understood the differences (from his approach) in the approach many black arrangers took to their music, and he wanted those different elements as contrasts to what he and/or his regular arrangers provided. Shaw, like Goodman before him, was primarily motivated to achieve what he considered better music. To do that, he associated himself with musicians, both black and white, who could add something different to his music. (Above left: Ray Conniff and Artie Shaw in 1944. Conniff substantiated Shaw’s claims that he exerted a lot of control over him as an arranger.)

The melding of black and white musical approaches in the world of swing was ongoing and indeed increasing as the 1930s ended. In 1939, Shaw had in his band’s book “special” arrangements by Teddy McRae, Eddie Durham, and the arrangement we hear on “Pyramid” here, first performed by Shaw’s band in the summer of 1939, which was written by another shadowy swing era character, Leroy Elton Hill, known professionally as Elton Hill.

Hill began his career as a trumpeter in 1929 in a territory band (Philadelphia – Washington D.C.) led by Eddie White.(4) By 1938, he was in Lucky Millinder’s band. He sometimes made arrangements for Millinder, and soon became aware that good money could be made by writing arrangements, and then submitting them to white bandleaders, who, like Artie Shaw, were always on the lookout for special arrangements that could swing. This practice became rather widespread in the late 1930s and into the early 1940s. Fred Norman submitted special material to Benny Goodman then. Eddie Durham placed his arrangements with Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw and Jan Savitt. Andy Gibson was writing for Charlie Barnet. And perhaps most indicative of this trend, Tommy Dorsey hired Sy Oliver as his main arranger in 1939. Clearly, musical cross-pollenation was happening in the world of swing then. (Above right: Tommy Dorsey poses in 1940 with his new arranger, Sy Oliver.) 

Elton Hill definitely was a part of this. By 1939, he stopped playing trumpet, centered his life in Manhattan, and concentrated on writing arrangements for swing bands. He became associated with Gene Krupa as early as the autumn of 1938, and began writing more and more arrangements for Gene’s band, through 1942. Hill wrote the arrangements for Krupa hits like “Drum Boogie” (1-17-41), “Let Me Off Uptown” (5-8-41) and “That Drummer’s Band” (7-13-42).

The music:

This recording of “Pyramid” by Artie Shaw is something of a rarity for a number of reasons. First, it is the only Elton Hill arrangement that Artie Shaw ever played. Second, it is one of the very few Ellington pieces Shaw ever played. Third, although I acquired this recording some years ago, very recently, my friend and colleague Reinhard Scheer-Hennings, sent me another dub of it, and that provided me with the inspiration to create a post around the Tizol/Ellington tune “Pyramid.” (Thanks Reinhard!)

Elton Hill’s arrangement begins with a soft tom-tom introduction, played by Shaw’s drummer in 1939, Buddy Rich. After a bit more intro, Mr. Shaw enters in the first chorus paraphrasing the main melody on his clarinet for 16 bars. His clarinet sound is supported by melodic saxophones with muted brass asides. The saxophone quartet splits the secondary bridge melody (B) with the muted brass for eight bars. Then Artie returns to play the third melody (C) for another eight, then the band chimes in for the final eight bars of chorus one. (I suggested to my music guru, Dennis Rodin, that the song form here is AABCA – 40 bars. His reply was that it is indeed 40 bars, but configured AABA, with a 16 bar B section. Thanks Dennis!)

The second chorus begins with another bit of drummer Rich’s tom-toms, and then an orchestral swell which catapults trumpeter Bernie Privin into his improvised 16 bar solo. He is followed by pianist Bob Kitsis, who shows his admiration for Teddy Wilson in his playing. The entire band then plays a warm climactic tract, which is followed by yet another appearance by Buddy Rich.

The finale comes via a reprise of the main melody, but this time played by Shaw and probably first trumpeter John Best, in close harmony over Rich’s quiet tom-toms.

Trumpeter Bernie Privin plays a solo with Artie Shaw’s band on the stage of the Strand Theater in Manhattan in September of 1939. Other musicians visible L-R: front: Georgie Auld, Hank Freeman, Les Robinson, Tony Pastor and Artie Shaw (standing); middle: Harry Rodgers, Les Jenkins, George Arus; back: Privin and Harry Geller. Geller had recently replaced John Best, Shaw’s long-time first trumpeter, and split the first trumpet book with Privin.

“Pyramid”

Composed by Juan Tizol and Duke Ellington; arranged by Elton Hill, with additional writing for strings by Lennie Hayton.

Recorded by Artie Shaw and His Orchestra for Victor on December 3, 1940 in Hollywood, California.

Artie Shaw, clarinet, directing: Charles William “Billy” Butterfield, George “Jumbo” Wendt, Jimmy (Jack) Cathcart, trumpets; Truman Eliot “Jack” Jenney and Vernon “Red” Brown, trombones; Les Robinson, first alto saxophone; Neely Plumb, alto saxophone; Clarence “Bus” Bassey and Jerry Jerome, tenor saxophones; John A. “Johnny” Guarnieri, piano; Alton Reynolds “Al” Hendrickson, guitar; Jud De Naut, bass; Nicholas “Nick” Fatool, drums; Truman Boardman, Ted Klages, Bill Brower, Bob Morrow, Alex Beller, Eugene Lamas, violins; Allen Harshman and Keith Collins, violas; Fred Goerner, cello.

The story and the music:

By the time this recording was made toward the end of 1940, Artie Shaw had disbanded the group that made the 1939 recording of “Pyramid” posted above, and was working with a new band that included nine strings. The details of how he formed that new band in mid-1940 can be found in the post here at swingandbeyond.com on Shaw’s recording of “Temptation,” which can be accessed by clicking on the link at endnote (5).

It is important to note that in the summer of 1939, Artie Shaw and his band were so busy that he had little time to pour his customary efforts into tinkering with the new arrangements his band played. I strongly suspect that he accepted Elton Hill’s new arrangement on “Pyramid,” rehearsed it as written with his band, and inserted it into the current rotation of arrangements he and they played. It was a good arrangement and it was somewhat different from the charts that formed the core of that band’s repertoire, written by the brilliant Jerry Gray, their chief arranger.

But three and a half months after the 1939 recording of “Pyramid” was made, Shaw walked away from his band, went to Mexico for several weeks to try to assess his position, and then returned to Hollywood in early 1940 with many new ideas about how he wanted to make music. It appears that Shaw had little to do with the book of arrangements his band had been using in 1939 until he was contracted to appear on a weekly radio show, NBC’s Burns and Allen show, in mid-1940. Then, as a part of the rotation of arrangements he and his band would play on that show, and a bit later at a lengthy residency at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, Artie and his main collaborator then, the gifted Lennie Hayton, who was very experienced with radio music, chose some lesser-known charts from 1939, including “Pyramid.” Shaw focused his attention on them with a view to having Hayton add strings to them, and including them in his 1940 book of arrangements, which of course also had to include the hits he was known for. But being who he was, he also began critically evaluating them, hoping to make them more effective. How Shaw did that with “Pyramid” is a classic example of how he operated as a rigorous editor.

The 1940 Artie Shaw recording of “Pyramid” reveals that he had “tightened” the chart, reducing the solo drum parts, speeding the tempo slightly, and generally upping the rhythmic content of his solos. The other soloists are Nick Fatool on drums, who drives the band mightily, Billy Butterfield on plunger-muted trumpet, who preaches a jazz sermon, and Johnny Guarnieri on piano, as elegant as ever in his improvisations. (Nick Fatool is shown above in 1940.)

The recordings presented with this post were digitally remastered by Mike Zirpolo.

Notes and links:

(1) Here is a link to the story and music of Juan Tizol’s “Bakiff”: https://swingandbeyond.com/2020/08/11/bakiff-1941-duke-ellington-juan-tizol-ray-nance-and-1971-billy-may-lew-mccreary-marshall-sosson/

Here is a link to a great performance of Juan Tizol’s “Caravan,” played by Bunny Berigan: https://swingandbeyond.com/2018/05/13/caravan-bunny-berigan-1937/

(1A) Sonny Greer, Ellington’s long-time drummer, told me about Duke calling Tizol “Juanito.” Greer knew Tizol before Ellington, as they worked together in a Washington D.C. theater in the early 1920s.

(2) The World of Duke Ellington by Stanley Dance (1970), 14.

(3) Here are links to stories about and music of Artie Shaw from the summer of 1939:

https://swingandbeyond.com/2017/09/04/buddy-rich-at-100-1939-with-artie-shaw-traffic-jam-shoot-the-rhythm-to-me-john-boy-and-carioca/

https://swingandbeyond.com/2021/04/17/rose-room-artie-shaw-1939-two-versions/

https://swingandbeyond.com/2019/06/13/i-surrender-dear-1937-and-1939-artie-shaw/

And here are a couple of posts comparing Artie Shaw’s approach to swing with that of Benny Goodman:

https://swingandbeyond.com/2022/08/20/oh-lady-be-good-1937-benny-goodman-1939-artie-shaw/

https://swingandbeyond.com/2023/06/16/i-didnt-know-what-time-it-was-1939-benny-goodman-with-louise-tobin-artie-shaw-with-helen-forrest/

(4) One of Elton Hill’s bandmates in the Eddie White band in 1929 was tenor saxophonist and arranger Jimmy Mundy. Hill may well have learned the basics of arranging for a big band from Mundy.

(5) Here is the link to Artie Shaw’s recording of “Temptation”: https://swingandbeyond.com/2022/03/31/temptation-1940-artie-shaw-with-les-robinson-and-nick-fatool/