musical thoughts

Another case of transcription with a bonus analysis at no extra charge. Warm Valley is a marvelous Duke Ellington composition. It doesn’t get played enough, probably because it’s in very few fakebooks. When it does appear it’s hideously disfigured (at least the chart I finally found turned out to be grievously flawed).

I do not have this piece in my Duke Ellington library (I have a lot of CDs, but the guy recorded profusely). So I had to turn to Rhapsody to even get to hear this. And they did great–I started with the Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges versions, and then found the Paul Desmond and Stan Getz versions to be superb as well. The real point is that I am giving you a sort of “average” melody line based on a lot of different renditions of this. It’s always played pretty loosely, so I’ve notated a couple different versions of the basic melodic line.

Okay, grab the chart right here: Warm Valley by Duke Ellington

Right, this is a really simple song with a tremendous amount of complexity. Classic 32 bar AABA with an intro like a long list of other Duke tunes. But in no way is this piece formulaic.

The intro on the chart is from the Duke version–several other versions used different intros, but the Desmond and Hodges versions reproduced this lick faithfully. The intro alternates between Bb major and Bb diminished three times, and then sets up the first chord of the form with a ii-V belonging to Bb.

The A section melody is a descending line. It mostly follows the chromatic scale down from the seventh scale degree, with some embellishments to the basic whole note line. The sixth bar is a descending whole step instead of a half step, which breaks the pattern and sets us up to anticipate a change, which then promptly comes in the form of a walk back up a gentle blues lick to the first scale degree. Interestingly, instead of landing on that root and holding it, the melody drops down to the sixth scale degree.

The changes that Duke uses to harmonize that simple melody are what makes this an unusually beautiful piece. The fist measure is a tonic chord (Bbmaj7) with the major seventh in the melody. The descending melody note become the third of E9, a root movement by tritone. This is enharmonically Bb7#5, which is not coincidentally the dominant chord of the Ebmaj7 in the third measure. We only get two beats to enjoy the repose that cadence gives us, because we get a minor ii-V next belonging to D minor on beats 3 and 4. But the chromatic melody gives us an F# in the fourth bar, which is a violation of the expectation set up by that minor cadence, and outside the key signature as well. The melody then drops to the root of the D7 chord, because that much tension prolonged for a whole bar would tend to unbalance things somewhat.

The fifth bar has F in the melody over the minor ii-V belonging to C minor, but the sixth bar gives us C half-diminished seventh instead (much like the tune “Spring is Here” does), and breaks the chromatic pattern in the melody too with a descending whole step. The seventh bar gives us a dominant chord, but the melody line lands solidly on Bb, which is not a chord tone of F7, so I have spelled this as F11, which would customarily be played as Cmi7/F. The last chord has the root doubled in the melody on beat one, but most of the time soloists drop down to the sixth after playing the root.

For the bridge, Duke takes us to the key a tritone away, E. The melody walks down the E major pentatonic scale, and lands on F# while the second bar introduces a familiar device used in a lot of Duke tunes–a turnaround where the chord connecting the iii and ii chords is a diminished triad with a melody note that does not belong to the chord symbol. It’s beautiful, and recognizable. It’s not trite because it voice leads so marvelously. So the second and third bars of the bridge together are iii-VI-ii-V of E, but we land on Bmi7 instead in bar 4, functioning as the ii of A. Bmi7 E7 in the fourth bar of the bridge sets up the second phrase which starts on Amaj7, with a melody that seems to parallel the first phrase, but is not a strict sequenced version of it. In fact the second phrase ends higher than the first, even though is starts lower. More importantly, the G natural it lands on in the fifth bar sets up our series of modulations back toward the home key. The fifth bar, Bbdim7, A7, is functionally ii-V of D minor. The sixth bar delivers not D minor, but D major, violating expectations just as when he does it in the A section. The held F# melody note is the connective tissue between D major and Cmi7b5 on beat on of the eighth bar of the bridge. Dmaj/C# serves to make a smooth root transition (descending chromatically) down to what is the ii chord of the home key, Bb. It’s that held F# which is enharmonically Gb in the Cmi7b5 chord that makes this weird sequence work. I can’t think of another tune that gets out of the bridge this way. It’s actually hard (for me at least) to play something that sounds convincing here–there’s not a cliche that easily applies in this situation.

Okay, this tune is an excellent example of why Duke Ellington was a genius. This thing is really a composition, even though it fits into the 32 bar Tin Pan Alley form template. The haunting effect of it is due to the unconventional harmonizations. For me the most poignant moment is the fifth and sixth bars of A, where the Cmi7b5 substitutes for a Cmi7 chord that would be the choice within the parent key and scale. If Duke had not made that choice, this tune would have been pretty unremarkable. Getting out of the bridge is just unusual, and I’m not sure that I like it. The modulation from D back to Bb is awkward enough that I have a hard time with my internal representation of the melody there. To analogize, the background (harmony) is preventing me from focusing on the subject (melody). I had a real hard time singing the second phrase of the bridge melody because of that. It analyzes in a satisfying way, butit’s sounds a little awkward to me. Idon’t think the tune suffers, since this is happening at a natural boundary. But the reappearance of Bb major at the end of the bridge leaves me feeling a little unprepared every time.

Hey, I hope you enjoyed this. As far as I know, this is the only good chart for this piece. It appears in the Hal Leonard fakebook “Jazz of the 50’s” compiled by Rob DuBoff, which is an excellent book, but his chart for Warm Valley is severely defective. To my knowledge this is not in any Real Book, new or old.

Please leave a comment or send me email if you found this useful. (I guess if you think it sucks I’d like to hear that too.) It takes a lot of effort to do this kind of article, so I appreciate knowing that it helps you.

Some albums containing excellent renditions of Warm Valley:
Duke Ellington: Never No Lament: Blanton-Webster Band (Box Set)
Paul Desmond: Pure Desmond
Stan Getz: Soul Eyes
Johnny Hodges: Passion Flower (1940-46)