Rabble Without A Cause
Wednesday August 18th, 2010 with Bernard Stepien
Ten versions of Caravan

Like every year since over a decade, Jazzworks is hosting a Jazz camp where top caliber Jazz musicians offer advice and direction to Jazz musicians aficionados. It is never too late to register, see http://www.jazzworkscanada.com. For a number of years, I have contributed indirectly to this event by giving some head start to the Jazzworks participants by taking a tune and see how many versions I can find in my records/CDs collection. This year, we will have a look at Juan Tizol's composition Caravan, one of the flagship tunes of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. The original performance took place in 1936 and in its first version, Caravan happened to be the first official Latin Jazz composition. It also is influenced by middle eastern music, thus gives a glimpse of early modal improvisation. It is a relatively challenging tune mostly because of the lack of harmonic diversity. Chords usually act as markers, reminding the performer where he is. Too many chords are technically demanding, but only one chord for most of the tune like Caravan generates an absence of markers resulting in the performer often getting lost. The Jazz greats have all found ways to avoid this problem. The original version's arrangements were as usual carefully engineered and gave the maximum diversity of solos to fit in the then 3 minutes 78 rpm record side. Tonight we will listen to nine additional versions that illustrate the creativity of Jazz musicians: a very coltranish sheets of sounds version by alto saxophonist Arthur Blythe a stunning version by pianist Erroll Garner a very serene version by vocalist Jeanne Lee and pianist Mal Waldron another version by Duke ellington in 1945 featuring the melody played as chords a rather deconstructed version by pianist Thelonious Monk that adds some thematic color and assymetrical rythmic patterns. a full effects oriented version by saxophonist James Carter on baritone saxophone, reminiscent of Cat Anderson's original version rendering. An up-tempo version by guitarist Joe Pass that features burst of melodic improvisations. a quasi-symphonic version by clarinetist Louis Sclavis a small combo version by Duke Ellington's trio with bassist Charles Mingus and drummer Max Roach.