Our new stove chimes a catchy riff that has been challenging me to recognize it. Finally, it hit me: the stove’s timer chirps the first four bars of Duke Ellington’s “Creole Love Song.†This is a remarkable coincidence or the engineering staff at KitchenAid has the hippest designer in the appliance business. Either way, it’s a bit of serendipity with which I am happy to be greeted every morning when my tea has steeped.
I don’t have a recording of the timer, but here is the first—and many listeners think the best—of Ellington’s many recordings of “Creole Love Call,†from October 26, 1927. The band was Ellington, piano; Bubber Miley and Louis Metcalf trumpets; Joe “Tricky Sam†Nanton, trombone; Otto Hardwick, Harry Carney and Rudy Jackson, reeds; Fred Guy, banjo; Wellman Braud, bass; Sonny Greer, drums. The vocalist, at once ethereal and earthy, is Adelaide Hall. Gunther Schuller has written of the “radiantly singing New Orleans-styled solos” by Miley on trumpet and Jackson on clarinet.