Duke Ellington was honored in 1973 with a Quincy Jones-produced television special called Duke Ellington: We Love You Madly, which featured some of the greatest jazz and soul artists ever – including Count Basie, Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr., Roberta Flack, Sarah Vaughan and Ray Charles, just to name a few. Chicago also appeared on the show as the only “rock” representative, and turned in a fine performance of Ellington’s “Jump for Joy.”
Walter Parazaider later described meeting the jazz legend backstage: “I said, ‘Mr. Ellington, it really was an honor to be asked to be on your show,’ and he looked at Jimmy [Pankow] and me, and he said: ‘On the contrary young men, the honor is all mine because you’re the next Duke Ellingtons.'”
It was inevitable, then, that Chicago would pay their respects to Ellington by covering his signature song, “Take the ‘A’ Train” 1995’s Night & Day: Big Band. What an amazing job they did.
Robert Lamm’s piano rolls lead us into that familiar tune, as arranged by Pankow. When Lamm comes back in on the lyrics, inviting us to “get to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem,” we might as well be back in the days of Chicago V or Chicago VII. And the brilliant, slightly atonal fadeout reminds me of the more experimental work on Chicago Transit Authority, even though the song is obviously about the New York transit system.
Closing Night and Day: Big Band triumphantly, “Take the ‘A’ Train” makes me wish Chicago had included more big-band covers on their earlier albums. The A train still runs up to Harlem, and now you know the quickest way to get there.
