Yet More On Arrangement...

I'm going to be hitting arrangement pretty hard here- for me, it's the key to making jazz fun and great to listen to, and it can so easily go by the wayside. Last post, we learned that technically arrangement is taking an already written tune and laying out how the instruments are going to play it. The best arrangers use the whole palette of sounds available to them from their band or group, structuring the music so that each instrument harmonizes with the others and has its own niche to explore.

Here's a better illustration, musically. The tune is "Sentimental Journey," by Les Paul. This was a big hit when soldiers were returning from WWII, and you can hear in this early big band version the soothing, soporific strains of the original:




Fast-forward to the early 1960s. "Hi-fi" stereo has just been invented, and a handful of arrangers go crazy for the new stereo field. Spurred on by the need to sell record players and illustrate what stereo can achieve, musicians like Juan Garcia Esquivel (Latin beats were also de rigeur at this time) took tunes like Sentimental Journey and arranged them with a style that today seems outrageous:



Esquivel uses his instruments like special effects to hit the whole tonal range, from those punctuating clangs to the low notes on the trombone that open the piece. He uses lots of mallets, on xylophones and vibraphones and who-knows-what-aphones. Esquivel's arrangement takes the tune out of sleepy-time and onto the dance floor.