Why this tune?
I’m posting this week from Star Island, New Hampshire, off the coast of Portsmouth. I’m here for a songwriting workshop led by Scarlet Keys and Susan Cattaneo from the Berklee College of Music, learning from them about the craft and art of songwriting. I hope to share some new work from the week later on. For now, I’m sharing a short version of the jazz classic “Stella By Starlight,” a tune that I’m re-learning after it somehow dropped out of my regular repertoire.
Victor Young wrote “Stella” for the 1944 film “The Uninvited,” and it passed quickly into the jazz canon, picked up by Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, and later hundreds of other musicians. Ned Washington’s lyrics opened it up to generations of vocalists. With over a thousand recordings, it’s the 10th most popular jazz standard according to jazzstandards.com.
This is a harmonically complex tune, meandering through a journey of chords and keys, not reaching the tonic until the end of the bridge in bar 23! This naturally appeals to jazz musicians who appreciate the challenge of navigating the changes in their solos.
Tunes On Tuesday Reel
Check it out
From “The Uninvited”