Duke Ellington’s “The Mooche”: Three Classic Recordings
The Mooche was one of Duke Ellington’s signature pieces. Composed in 1928 by Ellington and the jazz promoter Irving Mills, it is an example of the Duke’s characteristic “jungle style,” with its exotic, pseudo-African undercurrents. These are the jazz age sounds which filled Harlem’s Cotton Club in the late 1920s. According to Ellington, the title, underscored by the infectiously languid rhythm, refers to “a certain lazy gait peculiar to some of the …