Beautiful tune performed by Duke Ellington and John Coltrane in 1962.
According to Ellington, the song was born in Durham, North Carolina.
“We had played a big dance in a tobacco warehouse, and afterwards a friend of mine, an executive in the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company, threw a party for us. I was playing piano when another one of our friends had some trouble with two chicks. To pacify them, I composed this there and then, with one chick standing on each side of the piano.”
Ellington composed the piece in 1935 and recorded it with his orchestra the same year. Lyrics were later written for the tune by Irving Mills and Manny Kurtz.
The song uses a technique called contrapuntal or chromatic embellishment of static harmony. A “line cliché”.
This is the best-known version of the song, and is featured on “Duke Ellington and John Coltrane” and “Coltrane for Lovers”.
I heard it while watching the documentary Chops about high school jazz bands competing in a Duke Ellington competition at Jazz At Lincoln Center in New York.