“Caravan” is an American jazz standard by Juan Tizol and Duke Ellington, first performed by Ellington in 1936. Irving Mills wrote lyrics, but they are rarely sung. The song has regained popularity since being featured prominently in the 2014 film Whiplash. Barney Bigard and His Jazzopaters introduced “Caravan” on the Variety label in December, 1936. The recording entered the pop charts in June of 1937, rising to number four. A month later, the recording by Duke Ellington and His Orchestra on the Master label (pressed in May, 1937) found its way onto the charts and rose to number twenty.
Around the same time that publisher and manager Irving Mills was writing the lyrics for “Caravan,” he was launching two new record labels, Master and Variety. A veritable who’s who of the jazz world attended the over-the-top party and jam session in celebration of the new labels. Mercer Ellington and Stanley Dance, authors of Duke Ellington in Person: An Intimate Memoir, report that the guest list included Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Lester Young, Herschel Evans, and Jo Jones while Duke Ellington played in a trio with Artie Shaw and Chick Webb. Ella Fitzgerald sang. The press coverage, as planned, was terrific.
As with many of Duke Ellington’s compositions the idea originated with one of his musicians. In the case of “Caravan” it was trombonist Juan Tizol. Ellington is quoted in Stuart Nicholson’s Reminiscing in Tempo: A Portrait of Duke Ellington as saying “… that’s one of those things Tizol came up with. See, it wasn’t in tempo, he stood [and played it] sort of ad lib. He played it, [the] first ten bars, we took it and worked out the rest of it.”
The first version of the song was recorded in Hollywood in 1936. The musicians were members of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, which often split into smaller combinations to record songs under different band names. For this recording, which included Ellington and Tizol as performers, the session band leader was Bigard. As of 2024 this is the most covered song in history, with over 500 versions published.
The sound of “Caravan” appealed to exotica musicians; Martin Denny, Arthur Lyman and Gordon Jenkins all covered it. The Mills Brothers recorded an a caplla version of the song. Woody Allen used the song in two of his films, Alice and Sweet and Lowdown. The song is featured on Rachel Portman’s soundtrack for the 2000 film Chocolat. Steven Soderbergh used the Lyman version in his 2001 film Ocean’s Eleven. The Brian Setzer Orchestra version was used in The Sopranos episode “The Second Coming”.
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