Uncovering the Origin Story of Juan Tizol’s Caravan: A Predecessor

ABSTRACT Caravan is a popular jazz standard that is recorded frequently. The first recording of Caravan by Barney Bigard and his Jazzopators from December 19, 1936, credits Juan Tizol as the sole composer. However later recordings give credit to both Duke Ellington and Tizol as the composers and his manager, Irving Mills, as the lyricist. Because Ellington and Mills commonly used the band members’ ideas and compositions, it is perhaps easy to assume that the conception of Caravan follows a similar narrative. Despite Tizol’s insistence on compositional independence, trumpeter Rex Stewart contends that Caravan’s melody “evolved from another tune, Alabamy Home,” which is credited to Ellington. And indeed Alabamy Home and Caravan are quite similar in melody, harmony, and exotic affect. Inconsistent information in Stewart’s account and the fact that the first recording of Caravan was made three months before the Gotham Stompers had recorded Alabamy Home initially complicate Stewart’s assertion. However, a trombone part from the Ellington archive at the Smithsonian Institution for Alabamy Home, dated between 1926 and 1928, indicates that Alabamy Home was written first. I suggest that Tizol refined the exoticism of Alabamy Home, originally devised for the Cotton Club, to create Caravan, the most famous of his self-proclaimed “Spanish melodies.” I trace the back-and-forth musical exchange between Caravan and Alabamy Home through four manuscripts and five recordings dated between 1926 and 1937. By doing so, I explore the irregular case of these two pieces connected by their shared melody, harmony, and affect, but with differing levels of success in the Duke Ellington songbook.