Duke Ellington's I Didn't Know About You (aka Home, aka Sentimental Lady)

Here's the deal, vocalist: This tune isn't just a beautiful ballad. It started its life as an actual Hodges ballad, with no vocalist involved. Then, of course, the silly trend begun during the instrumental musician's union recording strike of 1942-1944 (to quote Wynton Marsalis discussing this subject at a concert last January, “Sometimes we do some really stupid things”) that turned vocalists into the main attraction in popular music (and that prevails still to this day) took hold, and Duke re-purposed the Hodges tune as a vocalist feature for Joya Sherrill. Your arrangement was the one Duke wrote for Ella Fitzgerald. So your job, in essence, is to sing this tune as though you were Johnny Hodges. After the hasty Hodges introduction, that is (as if to make the point even more bluntly!).

From the liner notes to Black, Brown & Beige (the 1944-1946 RCA/Victor recordings): “Often played by Ellington at the Hurricane Club in 1943, this song was first recorded as I Didn't Know About You on April 5th of that year by Woody Herman, featuring [Ray] Nance, [Juan] Tizol and [Johnny] Hodges, with Frances Wayne singing the newly added lyrics [by Bob Russell, the same lyricist who penned the words that turned Never No Lament into Don't Get Around Much Anymore]. However, this piece of music was born with the name Home during Duke's engagement at the Hotel Sherman in July, 1942. Written to feature Hodges' alto, the title was soon changed to Sentimental Lady, and it was recorded on July 28th and included in the companion Bluebird collection The Blanton-Webster Band. Both arrangements, which share only a few details, were probably by Strayhorn. As a vocal featuring Joya Sherrill, this one is more delicate, Strayhorn replacing Rex Stewart's bursting solo on the bridge with a tame reprise by Lawrence Brown.”

The Essentially Ellington arrangement, however, is the one for Ella Fitzgerald some fifteen years later. The short comment on this tune in the liner notes to that set reads: “'I Didn't Know About You' . . . evolved from instrumental origin to vocal popularity. Duke recorded it as a feature framework for Johnny Hodges's saxophone in July 1942, when it was known as 'Sentimental Lady'. It earned a slightly changed melody and a new title in its new guise after Duke held a conclave with Bob Russell, a sensitive lyricist whose hits include 'Brazil', 'Ballerina', 'Frenesi', 'Maria Elena', and 'Taboo'.”

Here are the liners notes for the original recording of Sentimental Lady from The Blanton-Webster Band (the 1940-1942 RCA/Victor recordings): “Earlier called Home, this attractive vehicle for Johnny Hodges later became popular as the song I Didn't Know About You (lyrics by Bob Russell). The melody seems inspired by Hodges' seductive phrasing and silky tone. Note how easily the saxophonist makes the first big leap (an octave) in the bridge, sliding to the upper note as though it were the next step in the scale. But later in the same place, Rex Stewart has problems with the interval. The second time he tries to over-compensate and hits the note too hard, too soon. In a way this contrast resembles that between Hodges and Ivie Anderson in I Got it Bad: the former sings like an angel, the latter like a mere mortal.”

Ironically, according to A Duke Ellington Panorama (a 95+% complete Ellington discography that I often use as my master index, available at www.depanorama.net ), Ellington recorded this tune far more times as Sentimental Lady than as I Didn't Know About You—though one can fairly assume that the same is not true of the numerous vocalists who included the later version in their repertoire of the Great American Songbook (to which Ellington is easily one of the most prodigious contributors). Personally, I find it interesting that this tune was already a popular success in its strictly instrumental arrangement; Barry Ulanov's contemporaneous press review of Duke's December 11, 1943 Carnegie Hall Concert enthusiastically stated of Sentimental Lady “Johnny Hodges and Rex Stewart took the solo bows, and deserved them; as on the record, affecting music amply justifying its bright title.” (Barry Ulanov, “Ellington's Carnegie Hall Concert a Glorified Stage Show,” Metronome (January 1944), 8, 48, in Mark Tucker, ed., The Duke Ellington Reader 209-12).¹ But even a giant like Duke occasionally bowed to the trends of the time.

 

Here are the rehearsal notes from the Essentially Ellington edition of the score, written by David Berger, the Jazz At Lincoln Center house transcriptionist and a perennial judge at Essentially Ellington festivals:

• Billy Strayhorn wrote this arrangement of one of Ellington's prettiest ballads for a record date with Ella Fitzgerald in 1957. The original score started at letter B where the vocal comes in. I imagine that Strayhorn had in mind that Ellington would play a piano introduction of his own creation. This would be normal procedure. In addition to a two-bar piano intro, Ellington adds eight measures of alto melody for Johnny Hodges—all of this in the key of Gb. Why Gb? I Didn't Know About You was originally an instrumental number called Sentimental Lady written in 1942 to feature Hodges. The original key was Gb. The tritone relationship between Gb and C (the vocal key) makes for a very refreshing start to the vocal.
• The form of this arrangement is an intro and a section in Gb, which modulates to C major within the form, followed by an AABA BA tag. This is a standard chorus-and-a-half vocal chart² with the addition of the alto A section in the key of the tritone.
• As usual, the unisons are played with no vibrato, or as Duke would say, “dead tone.” However, the harmonized passages beg for a little vibrato, warmth, and personality.³ The clarinet is written on Jimmy Hamilton's part, which means a more classical, sophisticated, or Benny Goodman-style⁴ approach (as opposed to the New Orleans style).
• The rhythm section parts are all improvised and should be looked at as one of many possible solutions on how to accompany this piece. Improvisational interplay among the band, vocalist, and rhythm section is essential for a true jazz performance.
• I have transcribed both the alto and vocal solos. They both stay fairly close to the melody, but they do dress it up just a bit.
• This is not an easy song to sing. Like nearly all of Ellington's songs, it involves a wide interval leap: in this case, the downward octave jump in the fifth measure of each A section. Although this is a focal point in the construction of the melody, it is the G# at the beginning of that measure that is the prettiest moment. The G# is the augmented eleventh of the D⁷ chord (the secondary dominant V of V). This is exactly the same note, chord, and key (C) as that great moment in Strayhorn's 1941 masterpiece, Take the “A” Train.

Here are the Comments From Wynton Marsalis:

• In general, ballads are difficult for students. Remember that the ballad is a dance. The rhythms need intensity; otherwise, everything will drag, leaving us all very sad. It's important to feel the spaces between the beats. Notice how many of the ensemble parts accentuate the “and” of the beat (see the piano part at D and the trombones at B).
• There are several instances of call-and-response within this piece. Answering parts (like the saxes at two before C) must listen and follow the lyrics closely.
• It's important for our singer to be very accurate with intervallic relationships (e.g., the 6th that begins the bridge). He or she should also learn the piece on the piano so as to identify the sound of each note in relation to the chord (e.g., the 9th of the G minor chord at D).
• Pay attention to ensemble texture and take note when it builds up or breaks down. For example, notice how the ensemble expands and contracts at letter D. These changes in orchestration give breadth and depth to a slow arrangement.

Lyrics by Bob Russell, as sung by Ella Fitzgerald:

[Full 32-bar statement of the tune]

I ran around

With my own little crowd

The usual laughs

Not often, but loud

And in the world that I knew

I didn't know about you

Chasing after the rain

On the merry-go-round

Just taking my fun

Where it could be found

And yet what else could I do?

I didn't know about you

Darling, now I know

I had the loneliest yesterday

Every day

In your arms, I know for once in my life

I'm living

Had a good time

Every time I went out

Romance was a thing I kidded about

How could I know about love?

I didn't know about you

[One more B section and A section end the arrangement]

Darling, now I know

I had the loneliest yesterday

Every day

In your arms, I know for once in my life

I'm living

Had a good time

Every time I went out

Romance was a thing I kidded about

How could I know about love?

I didn't know about you

I didn't know about you

1Do not mistake Ulanov's critical title for criticism of Ellington's presentation of jazz. To the contrary, Ulanov—who before the decade was out would become Ellington's first biographer—was exasperated not that Duke had returned to play a second Carnegie Hall concert, but that Duke, harkening to the ignorant and asinine insults leveled against him by stooges and imbeciles masquerading as music critics following his January 1943 Carnegie Hall concert, at which he premiered Black, Brown & Beige, his first (and, consequently, only) full jazz symphony in three sprawling movements, had returned only to play excerpts and a succession of the “three-minute symphonies” that had made him a popular radio and recording success. Ulanov very badly wanted (as do we all, in retrospect) Duke to have told off his critics and come back with a new 45-minute masterwork even more ambitious than Black, Brown & Beige. Instead, Duke would never perform the full symphony again, and would never write another full symphony again. Instead, he changed his extended work form to the “suite” format, began a practice of premiering the full suites at Carnegie Hall but only regularly performing one or two select movements from the suites, and was thereby able to market both the long-form composition and the shorter excerpts to their respective markets. It was a compromise that Ulanov and virtually all latter-day Ellington fans have forever been disappointed by.

2Standard though the chorus-and-a-half arrangement may be, I still suspect that it arose out of necessity due to the three-minutes-and-change limitation of the 78 RPM record side.

3Well, yeah. The original tenor player on the original recording of the original 1942 arrangement was Ben Webster, who personified the warm saxophone tone.

4Benny Goodman made enough radio aircheck recordings to choke a horse, and if your students are enterprising enough, they should check out the comprehensive series of Goodman LPs issued by Sunbeam, which cover the first several decades of his career from early Chicago sessions in the 1920s (under other leaders) to at least the late 1940s (and possibly the early 1950s).  Clarinet players wondering what the “Benny Goodman-style” of clarinet playing means should check them out if at all able.