"Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" is a popular song composed by Harold Arlen with lyrics by Ted Koehler in 1931. It was written for the Cotton Club revue Rhyth-Mania, where vocalist Aida Ward introduced it at the famous Harlem nightclub. The song was one of the earliest fruits of the Arlen-Koehler partnership, which would go on to produce such standards as "Stormy Weather," "I've Got the World on a String," and "Let's Fall in Love" during their prolific Cotton Club years. The tune follows a classic 32-bar AABA form with an adaptable, lithe melody in the A sections that works equally well at jaunty or languid tempos. The bridge is particularly notable for its harmonic craft: it opens with an abrupt drop from the tonic to a chord a whole step below, which functions as a dominant seventh leading to a new key area, then steps back to the home dominant, creating a satisfying key change within the middle eight bars. This harmonic surprise, combined with a descending scale pattern that appears twice in the bridge, gives the tune a swinging momentum that has made it attractive to improvisers across generations. First recorded by Cab Calloway in 1931, the song quickly became a durable jazz standard, with influential early readings by Louis Armstrong in 1932 and a celebrated 1935 Benny Goodman version featuring Helen Ward and Bunny Berigan. Its chord changes also serve as the harmonic foundation for Bud Powell's bebop composition "Parisian Thoroughfare."
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